I’m sure you’ve all been annoyed with dirt in your home at some point. Now, imagine a stain on your favorite shirt, mold in the bathroom or wine on the carpet. What would you do? Call Mom? Noooo! You’re mature and able to survive on your own. So who is always by your side and will never ask intimidating questions? The internet of course!

So thanks to the internet you’re here, which is where you’ll be provided with the tools you need to survive in the household. This is a guide for all the (soon to be) masters and mistresses of the household who may need a little help in the cleaning section. Here you go!

A few things you should keep handy, even if you wouldn’t normally use them, is some liquid soap, baking soda, vinegar, lemon juice, salt and some hydrogen peroxide. You’ll get the latter at a pharmacy. Those are prime ingredients for non toxic, cheap, eco-friendly and effective cleaning solutions. Seriously, you don’t need to waste your money on the expensive stuff!

Time to open up some online resources.

(1) DoItYourself

Does your apartment look like ALF just landed in it, tried to catch a cat, abused your kitchen, made a bed out of your laundry, had dinner in it, and you just learned [enter family member here] wants to visit? I guess the regular stain removal guide won’t get you anywhere, you need serious help!

DoItYourself.com features several articles on the Household. Just pick a scene, such as Bathroom and Kitchen Cleaning, find the respective article and follow through. The instructions are detailed, so you’ll know exactly what to do.

By the way, you may also find the Natural Disasters section helpful.

(2) About.com & How Stuff Works

Ok, it’s not that bad, your apartment is under control, no disasters, just regular spills. What do you need to know?

Generally, my first stop when I need help, since I tend to end up right there anyways, is About.com. In this case I found 10 Stain Removal Tips you should absorb, and several more helpful articles. Their A – Z list is not as comprehensive as the one that will follow, though.

HowStuffWorks has a three part series on stains. Part one – How to Remove Stains and Spots – sums up what sort of stains you may face. Part two gives some Basic Rules for Stain Removal, which are in fact different than those found on About.com. In part 3 you will See all General Removal Tips articles they have, which are not that many, but they cover the most common incidents.

(3) Precious Textiles

Textile Affairs provides a comprehensive list of Stain Removal Answers To Common Care Questions, tailored to deliver solutions for seriously stained laundry.

(4) A – Z Stain Removal

GoodHousekeeping has a very detailed and helpful A – Z Stain Buster guide. Perfect to quickly look up a cleaning strategy for a specific stain.

(5) Video Instructions

Then, if you hate reading, I recommend searching YouTube for answers. Yes, you heard right, YouTube is a good place to find practical instructions on cleaning. Here is one of my favorites:

Alright seriously, that video is very entertaining, however not helpful. But directing you to YouTube is not a joke. You just have to focus, don’t let the nonsense distract you.

(6) Cleaning Your Computer

And finally, did you know you could Remove Stains from a MacBook with Toothpaste? Would Mom have known that one?

Do you have some ingenious cleaning tips to share? Maybe a website full of cleaning ideas that we can all benefit from? Go ahead and use the comments! And in case your Mom, girlfriend or best friend forwarded this article to you, please let us know so we can reward them with a virtual flower bouquet!

(By) This post was written by one of our regular authors, Tina from Recommended.

Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!

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The thing that stands out about these recipe websites is the fact that all featured recipes are tried and tested and allow for user commenting/reviewing, so you can be assured of the quality of the recipe. Enjoy!

Top 5: Recipe Websites (again in no particular order)

(1) GroupRecipes
Almost 100% user-contributed recipe website that does an excellent job at making huge recipe database easy to digest and browse through. Browse by flavors (spicy, sour, chilly…), images, ingredients (whats in your fridge), popularity, menus, users, and tagcloud.

(2) SimplyRecipes
A wonderful recipe-based food blog where all recipes have been personally tested by either the blogger, her family/friends. Browse recipes by primary ingredients (chicken, seafood, meat…), meal course (breakfast, desert…), diet type (veg., low carb…). The quality of the recipes is reflected in the number of subscribers (over 230k!)

(3) 101CookBooks
This one is for the foodies…the people who love to eat food with their eyes and would like a short intro for each of the recipes. Basically, another excellent recipe-based food blog (2006 food blog winner) where readers can feel a nice personal bond with the blogger through her writing style (a short personal and technical history for each recipe) along with beautiful imagery. Lets you browse recipes by type (appetizers, baked good, mains, etc.)

(4) AllRecipes
Over 40,000 recipes along with complementary extras i.e. nutritional content, user rating and an interesting meal accompaniment tool that lets you search for accompaniments such as side dish/desert/… to this recipe. Other features include recipe videos and related food guides such as healthy eating etc. (Note: website navigation is slightly confusing).

(5) Chow
Apart from recipes gives other foodie related information such as food events, user stories etc. Simply yet efficient recipe browsing method where users can browse through recipes by sides, mains, sweet and drink. Plus insightful video section which gives a good selection of videos on cooking and food etiquette howto’s.

And some more recipe stuff …

• Epicurious – very similar to the above mentioned Allrecipes
• SmoothiesRecipies – over 100 smoothies recipies
• BakeSpace – social networking website for foodies

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