Snowed In: Pinterest Projects

The weather forecast told us that we’d wake up to a blanket of snow yesterday morning. However, the streets were bone dry when Sam and I walked Jonathan to work at 7. I went back home to start my Monday chores and get ready for the gym when it started snow-storming. 

Enormous flakes were falling from the sky, quickly covering everything in a sheet of white. 

I decided to book out early to drive to the gym, and good thing too. The roads were already slick and even my four wheel drive SUV was sliding all over the place. It was quite scary but I managed to get to and from the gym safely.

However, my usual Monday excursion to the ‘burbs for the big weekly grocery run was postponed. There was no way I was risking driving out to the country where the snowfall would surely be even heavier.

With my snowed-in afternoon now free I had two choices: 
1) Make a hot cocoa, slip on my Ugg slippers, and read Game of Thrones whilst taking breaks between chapters to nap and/or practice my Mario Karting skills. Or 2: Work on some pinterest inspired home remedy projects. Since I am an amazing housewife and blogger, I of course chose the latter.

Our shower drain has been getting seriously clogged lately. By the end of a shower, the water is usually standing at ankle height, leaving our toes very pruny. 

We poured a whole bottle of draino down the sucker and got zero results. I spotted this ‘all-natural’ home remedy solution to un-clog drains on Pinterest and decided a snow day was the perfect opportunity to try it out. 

Source for original picture and idea.

All you need is Baking Soda (Or what Brits call Bicarbonate of Soda...because they are fancy), White Vinegar (Which I’m hoping the Brits call Pickling Vinegar because I didn’t see no ‘white vinegar’ at the store), and boiling water (which the Brits boil in a tea kettle). Easy enough.

First step: Put 1/2 cup of Baking Soda followed by 1 cup of Vinegar down the drain. 

You may recognize this formula from your 3^rd grade volcano science project days. (Ah, science. I'm so glad I'm using you to hone my domestic skills instead of raking in a 6 figure salary. Anyway...) 

Once the vinegar and baking soda solution ‘erupts’, chase it down with 3-4 cups of boiling water. 

Once it finishes bubbling you can test to see if the solution unclogged the drain. In my case, the drain showed signs of improvement, but for the most part, the entire tub portion was still filling up within 2-3 minutes and the drain was unable to keep up with the water pressure level.  

If this is the case, you can use a plunger and then try to gather any gunk with a wire hanger. Or you could call the plumber. Which is what I did, since my landlord’s paying for it and all.  Ah, the perks of renting a property.  

Since this experiment took all of 5 minutes and I still had 2 hours to kill before Jonathan came home from work, I decided to keep on home improving. I’d been wanting to try out that organized t-shirt drawer I showed you last week. 

Source for original picture and idea.

I usually wear 3 t-shirts a day: one for working out, one for an undershirt, and one for sleeping. I have 3 preferred varieties of t-shirts for each different activity. However, I live in a Scottish house and therefore do not have the luxury of 3 separate t-shirt drawers (First world problem?).

Since I’m constantly digging through the pile, the drawer ends up looking like this:

Shudder.

So I spent a good 30 minutes refolding my tshirts so that when I open the drawer, I can easily pluck out the desired cotton without disrupting the whole collection. Score!

Plus the blog I found the post on turned out to be a really funny and interesting narrative on life in the Pacific Northwest, aka Jonathan and I’s dream retirement locale. Double score!

P.S. I realized after I posted my blog yesterday that I didn’t give an update on my grandpa. I’m happy to announce that he is doing much better. He ended up sneakily using his knees to pull his respirator out, which is about right. Super James Bond-esque. Since he was able to breathe on his own without it, they decided to just leave it out and he’s been speedily recovering ever since. Praise the Lord and thank you for all of your prayers. My dad sent me this picture to demonstrate the good news and this was our email exchange afterward:

Me: He looks great, but I thought there were no cell phones allowed in ICU?
My Dad: Well, they don’t actually let you remove your respirator either. What are they going to do, kick him out?

Ohmygoodness I love my dad. He always makes me laugh.

P.P.S. We got to wake up to a fresh blanket of snow this morning. 4 inches. So pretty, yet so hazardous for driving. 

Anyone have any other pinterest ideas to keep me busy while I'm house bound? What are your favorite things to do when the weather outside is frightful?