Play the Kitchen Game

I find that waiting in the kitchen for things like the kettle to boil, the microwave to ping or the washing machine to finish tends to be dead time when there is just a few minutes left.  There's no point in going elsewhere to do anything - by the time I get there, the time will be up and I just will have to go back to whatever it was I was doing in the kitchen.  So I just hang around, waiting.

But I spotted a good way to take advantage of this time - play the kitchen 'game'! Grab a cloth and see how much you can wipe down, put clean dishes, glasses and crockery away, empty the recycling, anything that yu can quickly do to tidy just a little. And stop whenever what you are waiting for has finished! You'll be amazed to see how much can be accomplished with little effort and in very little time.

Descaling the Kettle

If you live in a hard water area like me, limescale builds up on your kettle very frequently.  Not only does this affect the taste of your drink, but horrid chalky bits end up in your tea or coffee and it's just vile!  Look at mine today - gross!

In order to combat this, you can fork out on chemical descalers.  However, apart from the cost of these, my main problem is the fact that it's so unnatural and I imagine if it's not rinsed from the kettle properly, it would be nasty.  Which is why I was so pleased to discover that plain old malt vinegar does the same thing as a chemical descaler.  Any malt vinegar works; I usually use supermarket own brand, but I guess they had run out as I was substituted with some posh stuff!

To descale the kettle, pour the vinegar into the kettle - use as much as you like.  I then top it up with water to cover all the limescale, but you could use more vinegar if you don't want to dilute it too much.  Wait at least half an hour, rinse and voila!  A sparkling clean kettle, at a cheap cost with no chemicals (albeit a bit smelly - rinse, rinse, rinse)!  Perfect!