DIY

How I Re-Grouted My Shower For Under $50

WARNING: Gross mildew pictures ahead. If you are eating or are overly sensitive to disgusting things, you might want to skip this post.

For awhile now, I’ve been really discouraged about my shower.

You know you try this product or that to clean it, but it just NEVER looks clean? Well, that’s why I got it into my head about a week ago to re-grout and re-caulk the entire thing.

A little background, about me. I’m not a DIY’er. I usually leave tasks that involve trips to the Home Depot or power tools to the Husband. But I thought, “Angela, why don’t you do this yourself? It will be good for you. You might just learn something.” So that is exactly what I did.

I debated calling this post “How to re-grout your shower,” but it’s more “How I re-grouted my shower.” I’m not a pro (as you’ll soon discover), but my goal here today is to inspire you to take up a task or two around the house you’ve been putting off. It might not be so scary/hard/expensive as you thought.

How to Re-Grout and Re-Caulk Your Shower – Step by Step

horror

Yeah, folks. It was that bad. I don’t care what you say, all the baking soda, vinegar, bleach, or Scrubbing Bubbles ain’t gonna clean that.

So I started by removing all the caulking. This was a rather tedious project, but not difficult. I just used a razor and slipped it under the sides of the caulking.

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This was both disgusting and delightful at the same time. Disgusting, for the reasons you might imagine and delightful knowing I was actually finally addressing the root of the problem!

How to Make a Mason Jar Bug Catcher

My daughter has decided that bugs are very, very cool. So cool in fact that she hopes to become an entomologist when she grows up! For awhile now, she’s been begging to craft a bug catcher so she can trap and observe this special little creatures.

I figured that surely we could assemble something ourselves without a spendy trip to the craft store. I came up with a very simple, but fun solution that I wanted to share with you today using mason jars.

In fact, I bet you have most of these items lying around your house right now!

How to Freeze Your Greens {and a couple ideas for how to use them!}

What do you do if you end up finding a tremendous deal on leafy greens or end up with a surplus from your garden? Well, one simple thing you can do is freeze them! Yes, that’s right – greens such as kale, collards, and spinach can be frozen.

I found several nice bunches of greens at my local grocery store recently – they had a few varieties of organic kale, plus rainbow chard, and spinach, all at very good prices, and I couldn’t resist.

Now there are two schools of thought when it comes to freezing greens. First, you can freeze them as-is, raw. This is going to be the easiest, quickest way to achieve your goal. The second way involves blanching them. This helps the greens last a bit longer in the freezer. As you’ll soon see, this method also helps reduce the space in the freezer your greens will take up.

How I Cleaned My Car’s Upholstery for Less Than $10

How I cleaned up car's upholstery for less than $10 - Shopping the Dollar Store

I drive the classic Mom Car. You know the type – it’s crusted with spilled drinks, the crumbs of fishy crackers,  and those annoying bits of black turf from soccer practice. Quite frankly, it’s almost always a hot mess. While I do periodically take the time to empty it out and vacuum it, the truth is it needed some more TLC than that.

The Internet is no short of solutions. Just head to Pinterest and you’ll see all these DIY type posts with make it yourself cleaners with oils or vinegar or Blue Dawn (which seems to be the cleaning solution to just about everything). Today I’d like to share what I decided on. Is it the most amazing car clean you’ve ever seen? Probably not. Will I be putting car detailers out of business? Unlikely. Are there products likely better than the ones I used? Sure.

But here’s what my method gets you: it’s cheap. REALLY cheap. In fact, just about everything I’m using in my post today I purchased at the Dollar Tree. This is a good kind of car cleaning method if you want good results that will make you feel a ton better about your car but you don’t want to pay squat for it.

Here’s what I picked up at the Dollar Tree to prep for my monster car clean sesh:

Awesome Laundry Pre-Wash Stain Remover

Why this? Well, I found a comment someone left on a random YouTube video suggesting its use for car upholstery. At $1 a bottle, I decided it would be AWESOME to try. I also picked up some Awesome Orange All-Purpose Degreaser to use on the tougher, ground-in dirt stains on the floor.

Scrubbers at the Dollar Tree

The Dollar Tree has a plethora of scrubbing devices. I chose the pink one at far right. I wanted something with stiff bristles to scrub away the grime.

Spray Bottles at the Dollar Tree
Tarp at the Dollar Tree

I found some empty spray bottles as well and picked one up. You could use this if you end up making one of those fancy homemade upholstery cleaners. Me? I was just planning on using it for water.