The power of Mean Green

Mean Green has been a part of my life for nine months already and I have to say that in all honesty, it’s become one of my go to products for cleaning up around the house. It gets used all over the place but the place where it gets used more than anywhere else is my kitchen.

I’ve been baking and cooking instructor for three years now and as culinary instruction has taken over a larger portion of my professional life, so has the amount of time I spend in our kitchen.

It seems that I’m forever testing out new recipes, developing new courses of study and prepping for classes. For example, I have a class of 20 students this week and I’m teaching them the fine art of laminating pastry dough for croissants. What this means is that I’ve spent the last two days cranking out 20 batches of croissant dough my students will later use to roll out and shape croissants. It’s a lot of fun and the expression on my students’ faces when they pull off something as deceptively complicated as a croissant makes my exploits as an instructor worth it.

In the meantime, my kitchen at home just cranked out 20 batches of dough and looks like a bomb went off in it. Baking for a household generates a mess as it is but baking for multitudes while at the same time keeping Frank and me fed leaves me with a kitchen that has to be cleaned up and cleaned up properly.

Enter Mean Green. Nothing I’ve ever used gets my granite counters so clean so quickly. My stainless cooktop stays looking new(ish) and I’ve ever started using it on my floors. I add about a quarter cup to hot mop water and my travertine floors look like something you’d find in the home of someone who doesn’t cook at all.

A year ago we replaced our dying double wall ovens with a new model from Fisher Paykel Professional and honestly, it’s the best oven I’ve ever worked with. One of the features that drew me to it in the first place is its full extension oven racks. They're great and they make using my ovens a lot easier. However, they have one design flaw and they have it in common with all oven racks. They can’t be left in the oven during the self cleaning cycle. Due to their bearings they can’t be immersed in water either.

This leaves me with a great appliance but dirty oven racks and that makes me crazy.

Again, enter Mean Green. I sit my racks in the sink, spray them with Mean Green, let them sit for five minutes and then wipe them down with a paper towel. They look brand new.

This is not some half baked endorsement of a product in exchange for a sample. Although Mean Green did send me samples I have to say that the stuff works to keep my kitchen ship shape. And given the amount of mileage I put on my kitchen that’s really saying something.

5 Ways to Make Your Rooms Lighter and More Spacious

When designing a new kitchen, or indeed a house as a whole, it's essential that it's functional, of course, but also that it's spacious, stylish, and welcoming. It may be, however, that you're looking to remodel, renovate or redesign existing rooms; if so, making them appear lighter and larger can be easier than you think, and it can cost you much less than you imagine too. Here are five simple tips to help you change your rooms for the better, giving you modern kitchens, living rooms and bedrooms without losing any of their functionality.

1. Adopt a Minimalist Style

We live in an age of rapid technological advancement and innovation, and we all love a new gadget, but this and the increasingly consumer-oriented nature of society can easily lead to cluttered rooms if left unchecked. Minimalist design is the perfect antidote to this, and it's not only the height of fashion, but it will also give you rooms that have lots more space to walk around in. Minimalist design and décor can be used in every room of your house, and at its heart is the importance of space and clean lines. White and silver are the perfect minimalist colours, and these also create the impression of lighter rooms that are still warm.

2. Replace Curtains with Stylish Blinds

Curtains are very effective at blocking out light but they're not so great at letting light flood into a room, and if not carefully chosen, they can also give a room an old-fashioned feel. That's one reason that more and more people are choosing blinds for their window coverings, allowing them to regulate the amount of light entering a room with ease and precision. Elegant blinds come in many styles, designs and colours, meaning that you can easily coordinate them with your soft furnishings and walls, and expert soft furnishing companies such as freshideas.co.uk can help you find blinds that perfectly meet your requirements. They have a wide variety of blinds from the traditional roller and vertical options to motorised and child safe products. 

3. Add Up-lighting

Lighting is one of the most important aspects to consider in kitchen and interior design, as the correct lighting can show your rooms off at their very best, while understated lighting can create a less than thrilling experience. This is especially important if you like to entertain guests, and one easy way to make your home more welcoming is to install carefully positioned up-lights. Commercial and retail properties have long known the importance of up-lighting, but it can make an invaluable addition to a domestic property as well. They help to create extra light in the areas that need it most, so that they can be used to negate naturally darker areas of a room, or as feature lighting to pick out pictures or other items of décor.

4. Use the Illusion of Mirrors

There often comes a time when we feel we need just a little more space in our rooms, but moving house can be costly and expensive, and is one of the most stressful things we can do in our lives. There's another solution, however, that is much more practical and much less stressful, and that's to install beautiful mirrors in your rooms. High-quality mirrors are not only an exciting design feature in their own right, but they also create an illusion of more space in your room, which can, in turn, make them feel a more relaxing environment to live in. There are mirrors in many styles, shapes and sizes, so take the time to find a mirror or mirrors that are perfect for your home; long and wide mirrors can be particularly effective with regards to making rooms look and feel more spacious.

5. Favour Brighter Colours

Scientists have shown what artists have long known, that colours can have a massive impact on how we feel. That's why it's so important to get colours that make us feel happy and contented when we're in our own home, and the way to do this is to favour brighter colours such as yellows and light blues. We can all react differently to individual colours, however, so study colour charts and think about the effect they're having on you and your mood. Brighter colours can also make a room seem much lighter, and that can be particularly helpful when the dark, gloomy months of winter make their appearance.

These five tips can all be acted upon without having to break the bank, and yet they can have a significant transformational effect on the way your rooms look, and just as importantly on how they feel. When you remove clutter, install beautiful blinds with matching soft furnishings, adopt brighter colour schemes and add up-lighting and mirrors, you'll have rooms that seem bigger, bolder and brighter. It's a quick and easy way to turn your house into a home, and whether you're entertaining guests or just relaxing with those you love, you're sure to feel the benefits.