OK, ‘member how I said I would pick one green thing and work it like a Vegas call girl?

Done…and done!!

A week ago (maybe two…who’s counting?) Dom was greeted downstairs on a weekend morning by a whole bottle of merlot crashed on our kitchen tile.  It happened sometime during the night.  A large platter scooted from its precarious position on the top shelf of a built-in hutch, nudging a bottle of wine to the edge of the shelf where it was able to escape because I had not secured the door shut earlier the day before.  The wine fell six feet to a cardboard box, which I assume broke its fall, and it bounced off the box to fall another fifteen inches and crash on the ceramic tile.  I guess this is why no one, including our two award-winning watch-dogs (har, har), heard anything at all during the night.  The purple wine-stained mess was waiting for Dom when he awoke at 6-something with the dogs, and it had already mostly dried.  (Ironically, NONE splattered on the nearby walls. I’m sure stranger things have happened.  Just not to me.) Dom spent a fair amount of time cleaning the broken glass, etc, before waking me to alert me to the purple grout under our table.  Lovely.

Confession:  I don’t know what else I had going on that weekend, but I’m sure I was super-busy, and whatever occupied my agenda was obviously waaaaaaay more important than wine-stained grout.  Don’t judge, ‘k?

So, like I said, that was a week or two ago.  I could say that I spent all that time researching the safest and most effective way to eco-clean my grout, but I’d totally be lying.  I honestly thought we’d be chiseling it out and refilling it with new grout so I didn’t give it much more thought.

But then I realized I was middle-school nesting and all, and well…suddenly one of the only things left to clean was my grout.

So here’s my news: You can clean two-week-old merlot from beige grout with baking soda and peroxide.

Yes, really.

I’m not such a fan of scrubbing my teeth with the smile-whitening combo, but grout I can scrub!! I let it soak for probably 30 minutes before scrubbing it up and seeing the resulting sludge turn a purple-grey color.  Because of the spill radius, and because I worked on small areas at a time in case I faded the original grout color, in just under two hours we went from this

To this

The next day when the area had dried sufficiently I could still see some baking soda residue, so I used our Shark Steam Mop to clean it all up.  I was so completely enamored with my new-found discovery that I tackled the kids’ bathroom grout next.  That took an hour and a half and included me dismantling the toilet to scrub under the seat screws.  When will this nesting dementia end, I ask you?! (FYI, if you have one or more sons and you suddenly have the desire to dismantle the toilet seat for a pure and proper cleaning, DON’T.  The seat screws open up a portal to the Seventh Dimension of Hell. I couldn’t call myself a friend if I didn’t warn you.)  I tossed the entire toilet seat into the bathtub, sprinkled it with baking soda and filled the tub.  I am honestly amazed at its power.

All in all this weekend I scrubbed and cleaned and un-disgusted the kitchen and bathroom with nothing more than castille soap, baking soda and hydrogen peroxide.  And the best part of it all was that since I was using completely harmless cleaners, Victoria joined me and began scrubbing right beside me.  Considering that the bathroom grout started out a funny brown color, the end result is worth sharing.

Yeah, that’s the floor.  My photography lessons have obviously been put on hold so I could sharpen my cleaning skills.  😉 Now, if only that 1967 Avocado Green would come back in style…