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Archive for the ‘Housekeeping’ Category

Olive Oil and Shoes!

Saturday, September 24th, 2011

copyright Bettina Network, inc. 2011

What in the world would Olive Oil have in common with SHOES????  The two together sounds like the beginning of the end of the shoes and a grand mess to clean.

 

We had an interesting breakfast with a bed & breakfast guest sitting on the side sofa in the dining room, joining the conversation and cleaning his shoes!!!

 

Using normal kinds of shoe cleaning materials that could have been a smelly mess and interfere with breakfast, causing smells that would make most of us stop eating and leave the table.  This guest, however, came down for breakfast and asked if we had a bit of Olive Oil that he could have in a small saucer or cup or any kind of container.

 

We thought he was going to use the Olive Oil on his eggs or maybe he didn’t want butter on his toast and was going to use the Olive Oil on his toast so we gave him a saucer and put the bottle of Olive Oil on the table in case any other guest wanted to do the same.

 

This guest had a small rag with him which he dipped into the Olive Oil which he had poured into his saucer and sat on the side sofa and began to wipe his shoes all over with the rag full of Olive Oil.  Imagine the surprise around the table!  He very nonchalantly joined the conversation, which came to a halt when folks saw what he was doing.  He spent a little bit of time carefully wiping his shoes all over with the rag and at the end took his shoes into the bathroom and rinsed off the soles of his shoes.  Wow!  The only thing the rest of us had ever done was to take off our shoes and, if we weren’t too tired, put them in the closet.

 

His shoes looked spectacular.  He took them to his room and came back to join the group for breakfast.  The questions were all waiting for him.  Was he going to wear them that morning?  Wasn’t he afraid the Olive Oil would ruin the leather?  Why did he do this to his shoes?  Didn’t he use regular shoe polish to take care of what looked like very expensive shoes.

 

He said his mother made him do this when he was a kid growing up.  Every night before going to bed he had to clean and polish the shoes he had worn that day.  He rubbed them all over with Olive Oil – taking off any dust, etc. which might have collected during the day and would carefully rinse off the soles of his shoes so he didn’t keep in the house any debris tracked in from outside.  He didn’t want that kind of ‘dirt’ in his closet.  He then put his shoes in his closet overnight and let the Olive Oil soak in.  He didn’t wear his shoes out immediately when he cleaned them with Olive Oil, he wanted them to dry first, but he didn’t have Olive Oil with him and since he arrived late at night, didn’t want to bother anyone so he waited until morning to clean his shoes.  The airlines wouldn’t let him keep his little bottle of Olive Oil, so he had to give it up before boarding the plane.

 

Well, you can imagine what followed.  All but one of us poured Olive Oil into our coffee cups’ saucer and tried rubbing it on our shoes.  The results were great!  It was a hilarious time and I was converted. I have continued to use Olive Oil on my shoes and I have not been someone who cleans their shoes after each use -not even during a long shoe-lifetime of wearing.  When the shoes get too dirty – out they go into the trash.  Now, I will probably have shoes lasting close to forever from what I’ve experienced as a result of cleaning my shoes daily with Olive Oil.  The first time I tried this I put the shoes in the closet and took them out the next day to see the results.  I didn’t clean any ‘good’ shoes because I was a skeptic.  Wow! Those everyday shoes now look really great – as though I had them professionally shined and all I did was to rub them all over with a little bit of Olive Oil.

His mother trained him well.

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Want to join us? Have a home that you want to open to become one of Bettina Network’s Hedge Schools? Call us and lets talk – or email us.

Ed. Note: Members of the Bettina Network Lifestyle Community can contribute to the Bettina Network Blog whenever they have anything they want to say and be heard by this fantastic group of people. Send your blog to bettinanetwork@comcast.net or mail it to us at P. O. Box 380585 Cambridge, MA. 02238 or call us on the telephone at 617-497-9166 to tell us what you want to say and we will write it for you.

Volunteer with Bettina Network Foundation, inc. to work estate sales; to help move items from one home to another; to contribute your ideas on how we can better use our resources in this effort to relieve and eliminate homelessness and poverty. We also need photographers; designers; and more. However much or little time you have, we are grateful.

Send your event information to be included in Bettina Network’s Menu of Events to: bettina-network@comcast.net

This is a curated blog so you cannot write your responses at the end of each entry. TO RESPOND TO THIS BLOG email bettina-network@comcast.net or info@bettina-network.com

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1-800-347-9166 inside the U. S. or 617 497 9166 outside or inside the U. S.

How Do You Keep Your Linens?

Thursday, September 8th, 2011

copyright 2011 Bettina Network, inc.

A guest at a bed & breakfast in the Bettina Network wrote:

“I just left one of your homes and it was a fantastic experience.  I have become a Bettina Loyalist – hey, I coined something new and hope you use it, it can be payback to you for what I just learned during my visit.

 

I have beautiful linens from my grandmother which I used only once and when I used it, it became  hopelessly stained, by a friend who couldn’t eat without dropping food on the tablecloth.  Because of that and because I want to keep the linens she left me to pass on to my children I needede to know how to use them without causing damage and how to take care of them.

 

I’ve read everyplace and every tip.  The eye opener was my trip to a Bettina home ,just recently.  They had beautiful linens on the table with linen napkins which were exquisitely embroidered by somebody’s grandmother.  I was amazed that she was using such linens for us!!!!  Someone at the table spilled coffee all over the side of these hand embroidered, very old pieces.  I about had a fit.  I couldn’t believe that guest was so careless with something he will probably never again experience in his lifetime unless he stays at another Bettina home.

 

I hung around the kitchen all morning after breakfast because I wanted to know how they were going to handle those stains – and I was too embarrassed to ask.

 

No one was upset about the coffee spill except me.  If these were your usual hotel-type linens which are sent out to a cleaners and bleached, starched and ironed to within an inch of their lives – substantially shortening their life-span I would have thought nothing of it.  But these were very elegant hand made linens.

 

At first, I just hung out in the kitchen, too embarrassed to say I didn’t know how to take care of my grandmother’s linens so I didn’t use them.  When she took the linens up the back stairs it was just to much for me to hold back.  I went after her to see what she was going to do with the linens.  When she saw me following her I had to tell her why and we both laughed – thank goodness!

 

She put almost a cup of non-chlorine fabric bleach in a plastic pail full of water – the kind of pain you use to scrub floors.  She, apparently, only uses this plastic pail for her linens.  Then she put the linens in the pail of water – which was luke warm to my hands and let them sit.  She does this after every breakfast – so when she does the wash for the day – a couple hours later – the linens get dumped in the washing machine on ‘hand wash’ cycle and cold water and washed.  Simple.  But then what?

 

Well, if I didn’t have time or want to do the wash that soon or didn’t have those regular habits and times for doing the wash,  then her advice was to just wash the linens whenever I did have time – the next day is not a problem, but she cautioned me not to wait much longer than that.  She did say she had a friend who uses her home for bed and breakfast guests who sometimes lets her tablecloths stay in the water and bleach for a couple days because she isn’t that organized to be able to do it just a couple hours after breakfast.

 

She puts her linens on a hanger in her laundry room to dry because she doesn’t like to use the dryer when it isn’t necessary.  That’s unusual!

 

Once dry, she irons her linens and rolls them on a roller which she gets from rug stores.  They have the large rollers which carpets come on and these stores throw them out periodically so she keeps a supply in her basement for new additions to her linen wardrobe.  Before she rolls the linens she has old sheets she puts on the roller and then rolls the linens over the sheets.  Her linen storage closet is impressive!

 

It all sounds complicated and time consuming, but I went home and tried it with the stained tablecloth I was grieving over from my grandmother.  It was quite dry from the dinner of several weeks ago and very clearly stained – and I thought forever.  I should have been listening and watching when I was little to see how my grandmother kept these linens so beautifully – but I wasn’t.

I soaked it, per my host family’s instructions, left it overnight – put it in the washing machine with a couple other things the next day and then into the dryer.  (I felt really guilty using the dryer after my stay at that Bettina home, but bad habits are hard to break – especially when convenience is an issue).

 

When the linens dried and were ironed, I rolled the tablecloth on one roller and the napkins on another – she doesn’t roll her napkins on rollers, this was strictly my own contribution.  They came out beautifully.  The stains are gone. I used another one of my grandmother’s beautiful handmade linens last night because we had a dinner party  with special friends.  Eveyrone ooohhed and aaaahed over the table cloth and worried that they would stain it.  I was very nonchalant and advised that they should relax and enjoy their meal.  If they spilled on the cloth – no problem – I could take care of it easily.

 

It was a really enjoyable evening.  I was relaxed and not hyper about what my dinner guests might do to my grandmother’s table cloth and my husband was amazed because he knew how hyper I had been in the past about using these linens.

 

After dinner, when we cleared the table, I took the tablecloth and napkins downstairs to the washing area, put them in the plastic pain  with the all fabric bleach I bought for the occasion, – after looking long and hard for just the right one – went upstairs and enjoyed the rest of the meal.

 

Thanks folks! One never knows where the next little bit of enlightenment to help us live an easier and elegant life will come from.  This time from your Network and I really appreciate the discovery.

 

This might sound trivial to all of you who are still using those plastic placemats, but when you decide that way of eating is no longer satisfactory, come back to this lesson and move up in the world:)

________________________________________________________________

Learn More About How We Use Your Donation!

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______________________________________________________________

Want to join us? Have a home that you want to open to become one of Bettina Network’s Hedge Schools? Call us and lets talk – or email us.

Ed. Note: Members of the Bettina Network Lifestyle Community can contribute to the Bettina Network Blog whenever they have anything they want to say and be heard by this fantastic group of people. Send your blog to bettinanetwork@comcast.net or mail it to us at P. O. Box 380585 Cambridge, MA. 02238 or call us on the telephone at 617-497-9166 to tell us what you want to say and we will write it for you.

Volunteer with Bettina Network Foundation, inc. to work estate sales; to help move items from one home to another; to contribute your ideas on how we can better use our resources in this effort to relieve and eliminate homelessness and poverty. We also need photographers; designers; and more. However much or little time you have, we are grateful.

Send your event information to be included in Bettina Network’s Menu of Events to: bettina-network@comcast.net

This is a curated blog so you cannot write your responses at the end of each entry. TO RESPOND TO THIS BLOG email bettina-network@comcast.net or info@bettina-network.com

TO LEARN MORE about Bettina Network, inc. try www.bettina-network.com

IF YOU ENJOY OUR BLOG, USE OUR SERVICES TO BOOK ACCOMODATIONS WHEN YOU TRAVEL!

1-800-347-9166 inside the U. S. or 617 497 9166 outside or inside the U. S.


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