12 Uses for the Mr. Clean Magic Eraser

Since I started this blog I have done a few recipes and DIY blog posts but never a cleaning one. I figured since Spring is finally here, it would be good to do a few cleaning posts to help you with some of your Spring cleaning tasks. 

So today, I will talk about Mr. Clean Magic Erasers. I have used these for the last year or so, ever since my mom told me to give them a try. I never thought I would love these as much as I do, especially since I always thought good cleaning products and a little elbow grease would take care of whatever surface I needed cleaned. That is, until I met my bathtub.. 

This is exactly what my tub looked like before and after. But this is a picture from a blogger who used another great DIY tub cleaner to clean her tub! Check her out at The Craft Patch

My bathtub was a pristine white when I first moved in and after 3 years of renting the same unit, the tub hasn't looked quite the same. I have tried the foaming scrub bathtub cleaners, I have tried products with oxyclean, I even tried Chlorox bathtub and tile products. The Chlorox product worked well, but the fumes were too much for my asthma and lungs. I needed something else to get the grimmy brown spots on my tub to come off without the toxic fumes. So one day I decided to give the magic eraser a try and I am so glad I did! Everything came off fairly easily, all i had to do was get the white pad wet and apply some elbow grease to the tub and scrub. All the dirt that's accumulated over the years and not come off with other cleaning products (I swear I clean my tub mom!) came off instantly. And best of all, no toxic fumes. I was so impressed by the results that I decided to put the magic eraser to the test and came up with a list of surfaces you can use this product on for great results! 

You ready for some Spring cleaning? Here's a list of uses for the Magic Eraser. Make sure to test the surface before fully using to ensure that no discoloration or damage to the surface occurs. 

12 Uses for a Mr. Clean Magic Eraser

1. Remove crayon or pen marks from walls with a damp Magic Eraser (ME).
2. Scrub sneakers or running shoes with a damp ME to make them look like new.
3. Remove tarnish from silver.
4. Remove grime and soap stains from bathtub and tile.
5. Clean splatter from microwave (my boyfriend loves this tip).
6. Remove rust spots and stains (I used it on my shower caddy and it now looks like new).
7. Remove green algae on cement from bird baths, flower pots, etc.
8. Remove bird poop (I used it for this on my balcony and it was great! Make sure you wear gloves though, you don't want to "catch" something from the bird poop).
9. Clean car tires (will be trying this in the coming weeks when I wash my car).
10. Remove grass stains.
11. Clean the inside and outside of a refrigerator ( I cleaned mine, it was awesome. After a while, fridges start to change colors from all the fruits, veggies, and spilled sauces that don't always get properly cleaned up).
12. Remove the sticky left over from a price sticker on any surface.

Once you are done using your ME, you can either re-use or discard depending on how much you used it for your Spring cleaning project. You can buy various sizes and multipacks of this product at your local grocery store or at places like Target and Wal-Mart. Prices start from $5.99+ depending on the size and number of pads in a box. I bought a multi-pack with various sizes for different types of projects around the apartment for less than $7.00. I will be buying my boyfriend his own pack. It is hard to get him to clean his place as thoroughly as I clean mine (although I am quite OCD about cleaning). This is a great way for someone who doesn't pay too much attention to detail to get just as good of a job done without too much trouble. 

Do you have any other great tips for a Magic Eraser? Leave a comment and share what other uses you've had for this great product. Or if it didn't work for you, tell us! I had read these products were great for toilet bowl cleaning, and I tried it, but it didn't work so well for me. So something that works for you might not work for me, but it is almost always worth a try!

Coffee Table Makeover

It is time for my very first DIY project (furniture wise, anyway)!

I have been watching too much HGTV and stalking the blog Young House Love for far too long. It is time to crack open the DIY can o' worms! I don't exactly own a home or a condo yet, so my projects are limited to just decorating, but I am re-doing my apartment to be a little bit more "grown up" and slowly replace old college furniture with new. So the first thing I decided to work on was my coffee table.

Here it is, isn't she a beaut!

Don't hold your breath...

This is an old wooden table from college that was found on a street corner. Ha. One Frat's trash became this girl's treasure. The first time I tried to make the table over, I took some Martha Stewart gold textured paint and painted over the wood in a horribly failed attempt to "make it work". Fail. Huge Fail. It was fuglier than the time my Calculus teacher in High School pooped her pants during class.

True story.

So what next? I looked thru countless magazines and pinterest pictures and decided on a look. This look to be exact.

Simple enough, right? Just sand the table, paint the bottom part with some paint and stain the top wood and gloss it. I had it all planned out, and I knew it would look amazing. Until I started to sand the table..

(oh yeah, sanding away... sorry about the dead plants.. I did eventually clean up my balcony mom, I promise!)

And I realized that my cheap street find wasn't entirely made out of wood. It was wood for the most part, except the top, the top is made of this formica made to look like wood, but not wood. Great. There goes this entire idea. I got bamboozled. 

So after some more brainstorming I thought, hmm, maybe I should paint this table a solid color that is fun and pops but matches what I currently own. Ala Jonathan Adler. And that quickly went out the window too. I am a commitment phobe, especially for my first furniture DIY project. 

So finally, I settled on an idea. I will try to recreate the look from the pinterest photo. Try being the key word.  I painted the frame white and decided to paint the surface a vintage gold. This way, the table would fit in with most decor options I already have running thru my head (well, various pinterest boards) and with my existing decor as well. As Charlie Sheen would say, Winning! 

(winter is back, couldn't finish the table and it sat in my living room looking like this for a few weeks)

It turned out pretty nice! I got the supplies at Home Depot. I bought $4 sample sized paint pots, some brushes, painter's tape, breathing masks and a sander. Yes I bought a sander. My very first power tool yeeeaaa!! I read the instructions and got completely freaked out. So it took me about a week to get the courage to actually use my new sander. And then I felt pretty dumb for being so scared of electrocution or something. I figured the sander will come in handy as I re-do other pieces of furniture, which is why I invested in it. Plus, I tried sanding this table by hand, and it would've taken me months to do. Seriously. 

(in between coats of paint)

So a quick run down of what I did:

1. Took my table out on to my balcony. Put on a breathing mask (in case the paint on the table was lead base) and started to sand away
2. After I stripped the table of the textured paint I wiped it down with a moist cloth to ensure I got all the sand dust off.
3. Once dry, I used painter's tape to tape the edges of the surface so they would not get painted while I primed the frame. 
4. Primed the frame of the table and let it sit outside overnight so that it would dry completely.
5. Spray painted the frame with a white lacquer. Let it dry overnight.
6. Taped the edge of the frame and painted the surface of the table with Martha Stewart's Vintage Gold metallic paint. Let it dry.
7. Coated the entire table with a protecting clear coat to prevent stains. Let it dry.

One last word of advice: invest in a good paint brush. I can't tell you how many fiber hairs from my brush I had to pick off the painted table. So annoying! 

(more painting..)

Isn't she pretty? 

Home Depot is now my favorite store. Can I register there for my birthday? This crazy weather has put a damper on the finishing touches for my table (lots of days went by waiting for the weather to warm up enough for paint to dry), but I am hoping today's Spring weather will help the last coat of gold paint dry so I can post a good final picture and bring the table inside. If you have any tips for painting furniture or if you want to share your DIY project feel free to leave a comment! I love snooping on other people's craftiness! 

**Update: Here's is the table finally in my living room! (the rest of the room needs some work, but I have many projects in mind to pull the whole look together).

xoxo

Elephants, Bananas, Oh My!

I am a huge fan of Jonathan Adler, but I unfortunately do not have the budget for it. On a recent trip to his store, I fell in love with his brass decorations. Especially this banana..

Jonathan Adler Brass Banana $595

But since i do not have $600 laying around to spend on a brass figurine for my coffee table, I had to leave the store with sadness and empty handed. So I went to a bookstore and bought the newest issue of my favorite magazine HGTV to cheer me up and found out Target was selling a brass figurine that was much more within my budget!

So what's a girl to do? I got into my super speedy deluxe Japanese soccer mom looking car that hasn't been washed/cleaned in over a year and headed straight to Tar-jay! Unfortunately, the $10 brass rhino figurine I saw in the magazine was nowhere to be found. Not at Target or online! Once again, i was bummed.

So I came up with a brilliant idea thanks to some Pinterest inspiration! I was going to make my own, for less than $10. That's right, less than $10. Bring on the challenge!

I went to Michael's and found a $1 plastic elephant that was the perfect size for this project.

I then took some white primer wall paint I had lying around and painted this baby up. Once it was dried, I took some gold spray paint and sprayed it. Rotating it to make sure I got every inch, and letting it dry outside. I already had the rest of the materials from other projects, so it made this project well under budget. As in $9 under budget. 

I highly recommend using a primer before the spray paint (unless you buy spray paint with a built in primer, which they sell at Home Depot for around $7). If you don't use a primer, you will have a hard time having the spray paint adhere to the figurine as well as provide a good cover. 

Once I finished painting my elephant, I got some pieces of wood I got for free at Home Depot. I just asked one of their employees for their scraps and found blocks that were the perfect size! Unfortunately, these had a lot of imperfections, and although i tried to cover all the imperfections with some wall putty and sanding it still wasn't a perfect fix. After i tried to smooth it out as much as I could, I painted it with white primer paint and then spray painted it with a white lacquer.

Once the elephant and the wood were dry, I took some crazy glue and glued the elephant to the piece of wood. I let it dry, and then sprayed it with a sealer to make sure it wouldn't get scuffed up. 

And voila! It looks pretty nice! And the best part is that it cost me $1! He is going to look very pretty on my bookshelf or coffee table once I redo those.  I think the next one I will make will be a giraffe. But I might try to find a smoother block of wood to glue it on so it looks a little bit more smooth and sleek. 

Now if only I could hack every single thing from the Jonathan Adler store... hahaha. 

xoxo