Breathing the Clean

A few weeks ago, I joined up with Cat over at 4 Nuts in a Nutshell. She is doing a 120 mile challenge for this summer. I didn't jump on it right away because although I loved the idea (and desperately needed a new workout jumpstart), I wanted to do more. So, I set a personal goal of 200 miles, with a reward of a new wardrobe at the end as I'm very tired of wearing clothes that tell the world my kids have been here.

After a week of tracking my miles, I realized I needed the added boost of being accountable to someone. I mean, I was committed and rediscovering my love for running, but I knew it was going to be tough to keep on keeping on unless I had someone else to report to. So, I joined up and it's been fun seeing my miles go up. I'm at 41 now, and eventually I hope to be pulling in 20 mile weeks. Right now I'm doing about 3 miles a day, and have once managed to do 5, which I've never been able to do before now. I'm very excited about that.

With all that said, I took today off and instead depuked our house. Wyatt bounced back from his nightmarish bout of vomit, taking a three hour nap the next day (you can tell he was sick because he hasn't had a nap since he was just past the three year mark). Oliver very nicely scrubbed their room and bathroom, and I did a huge load of yucky laundry. We thought we were good until Oscar starting throwing up yesterday evening. Thankfully, it happened during the day, but since he's so young, it was a much greater challenge to keep it all contained. I actually had to change myself once because he missed the bowl I had out for him and got me instead. Oliver finally went out and bought a soda from a vending machine (because nothing on or off base is open past 1830) and that seemed to calm his stomach enough for him to sleep. He's been doing great today.

So, in hopes we are done for good, I went through round two today and scrubbed our bathroom, the kitchen, and living room (where we'd spent most of our time with Oscar). I figured I'd take this opportunity to introduce you to my newest love:

Biokleen's Bac-Out

I ordered this stuff about a month ago. I actually heard about it through the cloth diapering forums I used to peruse. I'm not sure why I didn't try it back when we were doing diapers full-time, but people swore it was fantastic at getting the stink out. I actually decided to buy it because the carpet in our living room stinks, and I have no way of having it professionally cleaned until we return to the States. I should have had it done before our move, but I kept putting it off and finally ran out of time. I did borrow a friend's steam cleaner and ran it literally two days before the movers showed up, but it wasn't enough. We rolled it out in our new place and were greeted with a nice musty funk. Bac-Out was my last ditch effort to do something about it.

So, this afternoon, after rinsing out all the puky laundry outside with the hose, I came back inside and sprayed down the carpet. I let it sit while I loaded the dishwasher, then came back and went over it all with a wet rag. It's now dry, and most of the smelliness is gone. It actually says on the back that it's used by professional carpet cleaners, and I think I can believe this. I've tried more than one carpet cleaner and have never had it work particularly well.

I'm also using this stuff in our laundry. The washing machine here isn't that great, and our whites often end up still smelling a little musty due to all the sweat they have to absorb living here. I found that just setting it for a 15 minute soak, then adding a squirt (it's pretty concentrated) while it's filling gives us fresh smelling clothes for once. I'm curious what else I can get this stuff to do.

I also have a couple of boxes of their laundry detergent sitting in our bedroom. When we finish the box we're on, I'm going to give that stuff a try. I hope it works out well. I'm bummed I can no longer buy Country Save now that we don't have a commissary available to us. That stuff is awesome; environmentally safe, and only six bucks a box. Oh, and it works well, too. Can't argue with that. 

Although, now I'm looking at their website and realizing I can order it since we have an FPO address, but it's a couple dollars more than I could find it in our commissary and has a decent shipping cost. I'll have to see how it balances out with the BioKleen I've been able to get on sale from Drugstore.com.

P.S. I appreciate the comments I had on my last post. I felt like I was having an "a ha!" moment when I read them. It's always great to find out people totally get what you are saying because they've been there, too.