THE UNLIKELY CLEANER

I know a good number of mums who would swear by Axion "the grease stripper”. It was my mum’s favourite until a few years ago when she discovered that panga soap could pretty much strip off any food grease if you just had time and a little more elbow grease. Some cleaning products are self-explanatory. For instance, you use the toilet duck to wash the duck - in the toilet. I love my unlikely cleaners. Some will put your bad habits to good use.

Ketchup

Have you been to the tomato sauce shelf at the supermarket lately? There's a flavour for every taste. I am very picky with tomato sauce, but I could use just about any ketchup.
The former goes into my meat stew recipes, the latter only as seasoning. You've used tomato sauce or ketchup numerous times so you know what this is, don't you? Ketchup has more acidic properties and should not be used in cooking. Tomato sauce is oily, less acidic and a common cooking ingredient (pizza, pasta sauce, mince meat...) This post refers to the former.

If you own silver jewellery then this is for you. When was the last time you cleaned your bling? Silver jewellery tarnishes with time due to moisture and sulphur in the air. It can go from bling to black depending on how long it is exposed to air pollution. So unless you leave in a vacuum you probably need to know this hack, the ketchup cleaner. Pour some ketchup into a bowl. Dip your silver jewellery and let it sit for just five minutes (it could get damaged if left too long). Use a toothbrush to scrub gently and rinse in warm water, then wipe dry. Caution: Wear sunglasses to protect your eyes from the new shine. You can also use ketchup to clean copper based cooking pans; the ones you got as a wedding present but never use. 

Beer

Men love beer. Most men, anyway. My dear brother has his very own [original] beer recipe. He's now working on creating 'the perfect balance'. It must have sugar but should not be sweet. It must have hops but should not be bitter. It must ferment, but not into wine! Beer isn't all bad. Incidentally, I read somewhere that beer is simply liquid bread (...is it?) Besides the hops and alcohol, it does contain cereal, sugar, yeast... In short, if taken in moderation, like bread, beer has health benefits...as well as cleaning properties. Once in a while, you may have left-over beer in a can...watching a movie and dozed off, now the beer has gone flat. Flat beer is good as a wood polisher. Dub some in a rug and give your coffee table a buff. So the next time the wife finds a crate of Pilsner in the pantry, you can tell her its for the hardwood floor.

Bread
Bread is one of those things we should watch in our daily diet. It's highly nutritious, yaani, very rich in carbohydrates! Too much consumption and your waist-line is transformed into a waist-tyre. I remember when in high school, bread was such a delicacy. Nowadays, I almost gag on my third slice (unless it's toasted, in which case I can't stop). So its interesting to find other ways to use bread as a household cleaner.
Running a cleaning service, I have had to be extremely careful not to damage my clients' property. You simply can't go all willy nilly spraying multipurpose cleaner on everything. Enter google. With a fresh slice of bread you can now carefully lift dust off your prized oil paintings. Don't add water, since fresh bread is already a little moist. Just make sure you pick up the crumbs after. It could be one of Panye's pieces, celebrating my beauty (the curvy African woman). Or it could just be another generic savanna painting, which you bought in the Uhuru Highway traffic. Clean it! Apparently, you can also buff away fresh fingerprint smudges from non-washable wallpaper.

Coke

I love Coke. It's my guilty pleasure. Does it really bring happiness? Yes. It goes down really well with fries. I wouldn't have fries unless there was a coke coming with it. However, lately I've reduced that kind of consumption. I don't take it into my mouth, I take it into my toilet. Yes, coke is a fantastic toilet cleaner due to the carbonic and phosphoric acid it contains. Give your toilet a good clean first, then treat the mineral stains by pouring a glass of coke into the bowl. It may be a good idea to let it sit over night. I read somewhere, that you can treat more stubborn stains by using heated soda (but do not heat soda in the microwave while still in its bottle or can). You could use Coke to strip rust from nuts, bolts and tools, and it also removes corrosion on car battery terminals. You see, even if you don't drink it, you can still share the happiness.

Chewing gum

You may not find it sanitary but you will thank me for this discovery. I use a macbook pro. It is over 5 years old and works extremely well. A few months ago, the charging port suddenly started malfunctioning; it wouldn't charge. It hurt to imagine that I had to either find a new charger or get my mac opened up. But then I thought, “What if I just scrape off the contact pins…” Better still, my husband suggested I use chewed gum to remove the dusty mess that had accumulated in there over time. It worked perfectly. I now use the same method to clean all the other the connection ports including my phones'. I find that hard gum like Orbit or Trident works better.

So there you have it, just five of my unlikely cleaners. I would like to go on record that I do not wish to promote the over consumption of beer in any way. In fact, I'm embarrassed to admit that I secretly hope my brother's brewing experiment flops. Pole bro, si kwa ubaya. Lastly, Beer is NOT liquid bread so please don't bring it to the breakfast table. On that note, even though research shows that it contains lower calories than milk and has zero cholesterol, it doesn't mean you should have it with your weetabix.