Dirty & Clean

Ha.  How's that for a grabby title?

I'm afraid my post might disappoint: it's about two quick fixes in our home to make the clean less dirty (i.e., replacing the one shower head in our guest bath) and to keep the clean and dirty straight (i.e., creating a little "clean/dirty" magnet for the dishwasher).

Replacing a Shower Head 

Up first: the guest shower.  One thing that has been on my ever growing list of things to do around the house is to replace the showerhead in the yellow bathroom.  Granted, this showerhead doesn't get much use: we have our own master bathroom and the kids usually take baths in the yellow tub.  Still, every time I looked up when giving the kids their bath, this is what I saw.

Ew! Gross!  The showerhead worked great, but it had clearly seen better days.  I hesitated a little because I worried that replacing the showerhead might be tricky.  Happily, it was not.  In fact, it is insanely easy and took less than 10 minutes total.  Here's how to do it.

I bought a water-saving showerhead at Lowe's.  This Moen model, the Nurture 3-Spray Showerhead, for about $25.

I used my wrench to remove the old showerhead.  The Moen came with some teflon tape, which per the directions, I wrapped around the threads of the pipe coming from the wall (please pardon my hands: I was painting. Again).  

Then I just tightened the new Moen to the pipe and ... voila!  Done.

It works great! I tested it out to make sure there were no leaks and that the pressure was good.  Now I want to replace the one in our master bathroom with something else! 

Creating a Clean/Dirty Magnet for the Dishwasher

One issue I have with the dishwasher in the new house is the "clean" light is really dim and small.  I cannot tell you how many times one of us threw a dirty spoon or coffee cup in a totally clean basin of dishes and ran the dishwasher again, only to realize that we should have unloaded it first.  The dishwasher in the old house was a lot better at letting us know when the dishes inside were just clean.  Eventually, we'll replace the dishwasher with a new one, but for now, we'll make do with what we've got.  

I took a few minutes on a rainy Sunday to create a little "clean/dirty" magnet that we can turn around depending on the state of the dishes inside.  All it cost me was about $1.  I bought a small lightweight magnetic frame at Wal-Mart (sold in packs of two), which was on sale for $1.

Then, I just opened up Adobe Illustrator and created the document with "clean" on one side, a little divider and then "dirty" upside down.  Like this:

Then I just cut it out and stuck it in the little frame.  Here it is!

What about you? Have you done any little upgrades to keep it clean at your house? Please do tell.

See you swoon,