To see the whole series on how to have a {fake} immaculate house, go HERE! A basket of cleaning products is great Years ago, I was inspired by Emilie Barnes,the author of MANY organizing books.  I can't even tell you exactly which book it was that inspired me.  It may have been Simply Organized or another one I can't even find now!  I set up a schedule for myself based on reading something of hers. Here is how I did it {I actually found this schedule from years ago on my computer}: **I no longer use any bleach products. I suggest using one of my favorite cleaning products instead** You see...it's not much.  If you timed yourself, you can clean a bathroom in minutes - REALLY!  You do not have to sit there with a toothbrush and scrub the floors absolutely, perfectly clean!  Just wipe down everything and get it sanitized!  Depending on your house, you can vacuum it in 15-20 minutes.  Our old house was smaller than our current one - it was about 1800 square feet, but it was also two story, meaning I had to drag a vacuum cleaner up and down stairs AND vacuum stairs! 

This would also make a difference if you have more or less bathrooms {my absolute most-hated room to clean}. If you need to vacuum daily....you may have to give that up - let it go!  If you have a dog {which we have} you need to keep that dog OFF your furniture {yep, it's possible} and assign him/her a spot to sleep in so the fur stays in one place.  This doesn't mean you now ONLY have to do 15 minutes a day of anything for keeping your household up, either.  This is just to maintain the cleaning! Just as a quick side note...I no longer do just fifteen minutes of cleaning a day.  Our house is a bigger so it takes me about 20-25 minutes a day but I still do one chore for the day.  Remember, as your kids grow, your schedule will need to change and be more flexible.  For example, my summer schedule can be seen here. Are you an Organized Reader? I'd love to see your organized space. Email me HERE and show me your space to possibly be featured as one of my Organized Readers.

For more organizing ideas, go HERE!One day, after using my old Kenmore Canister Vacuum cleaner, its motor would not turn off, even though I flipped the switch to the off position. The only way to turn off the vacuum in this state is to pull the plug, which causes sparking at the outlet because the motor is a big inductor. This vacuum has the on-off switch built into the hose handle so that it is easy to turn on and off. This vacuum is actually made by Panasonic, and has been super reliable for the 10+ years that it has been in my family. This repair guide should apply to many vacuums made by Panasonic, and other manufacturers. After some debugging, I found that the problem is a high amperage relay inside the vacuum canister that welds itself together from repeated on-off cycles. This actually happened twice to our vacuum. The first time this happened in 2007, I replaced the relay with an Omron 25A contact / 120VAC coil relay that I found on Mouser; it fit perfectly, and is the relay pictured below.

Unfortunately, Omron discontinued that model of relay, but I bet something like this relay on Amazon would work just fine if you use the normally-open terminals. Eight years later in 2015, the relay got stuck again; this time I decided to service the relay instead of replace it. After opening up the relay, I confirmed that the contacts welded themselves together from repeatedly turning the vacuum on and off, which causes arcing and enough heat to eventually melt the contacts together.kirby vacuum cleaner sales and service To repair the relay, I used a screwdriver to pry the contacts apart, and then used sand paper to sand off the carbon build up on the contacts and to remove the melted bits of the contact. bissell toy vacuum cleanerAfter the contacts were clean and shiny, I put the relay back together and tested it out. hello kitty vacuum cleaner

We've been using the vacuum for a few months since then, and the repair has been holding up. It might not hold up as long as a brand new relay, but it should hold up for a while, and I can just repair the relay again if it melts again. Here are the steps for the repair: FIRST UNPLUG THE VACUUM! Then, remove the hose from the canister: Pull up on the HEPA filter cover to remove it and expose the case screws: Remove the HEPA filter: Remove the screws under the HEPA cover: Open the bag compartment: Remove the screws holding the blue case half to the grey case half: Here's what you'll find inside the vacuum, the motor, the wire reel, and the relay (in my case, beside the motor): Take a look at how the motor is oriented. You'll need to orient it the same way for the motor to fit into its spot: Lift out the motor and move it aside, leaving the wires connected. You can now see the relay (the small box will all the wires connected to it):

Pop open both sides of the relay with something thin and small, like a small flat screw driver: Slide the cover off: Here's the contacts inside the relay. Noticed that the contacts are welded together. This is why the vacuum didn't turn off! Here's the relay after separating the contacts: Next, I sanded the contacts to remove the melted metal, and shine up the contact area: At this point, I reassembled the vacuum which is the reverse of disassembly. The vacuum has been working great ever since!MakerBot CEO Bre Prettis is a pretty cool customer, so I took it as a good sign when he yelped with excitement at SketchUp's 3D Basecamp 2012 after the announcement of SketchUp’s STL plugin. Reading and writing STL files from SketchUp is something that users have been able to do for a while with the help of two separate ruby plugins. But as 3D printing has continued to boom, we’ve been thinking of ways to make this file exchange easier. So we emailed the original plugin developers, Jim Foltz, Nathan Bromham, and Konrad Shroeder, and asked if they would be interested in letting us combine their tools into a single open source plugin.

All three responded with a resounding “yes!” But, what’s the big deal with STL, anyway? There are many who believe, and so do I, that we're on the verge of a new age in fabrication and prototyping. You can now take designs and make them a reality in the comfort of your own creative space. We're just scratching the surface with this technology that brings digital back to analog, and for the moment, the STL file format is a lynchpin between 3D models and print-ready objects. At the SketchUp office, we’ve been experimenting with MakerBot Replicators for a while now. Our experiences range from high-five successes to epic failures. One tale that sticks out in my mind, however, is when we helped our friend Omar save $120. Omar owns a vacuum cleaner that had a small, uniquely shaped plastic piece that broke. To repair the piece, he had to replace a whole section of the vacuum (hence, the $120 price tag). He sent me an email and asked if we could try replacing the piece with our 3d printer.

I told him to stop by my desk with the broken piece and pair of digital calipers. After about an hour of SketchUp modeling, we had what looked like a perfect replacement. I exported the model to STL, opened the file with Replicator G, exported the file to Alpha (we’ve named our three Replicators Alpha, Bravo, and Charlie) and let the MakerBot do the rest. To my pleasant surprise, the piece worked perfectly. While you can bring your custom SketchUp designs to life with the STL plugin and a 3D printer, you can also import pre-made content to modify prior to print. For example, my oldest son wanted to play with an R2D2 last weekend. I found one on MakerBot's Thingiverse database and imported all of the STL files into SketchUp to rearrange the pieces to fit on a single build platform (you can download the model here). I exported to STL and about 7 hours later, I had a complete R2D2. Pro Tip: Run ThomThom’s Cleanup script to reduce triangulated geometry into single coplanar faces.