Category: Household tips

The long drought period has finally ended and I was dancing the happy dance with the girls when it finally poured cats and dogs last week. I had been waiting for that day to arrive for over 3 months!  I can now put behind my worry and fear of the impending water rationing plan that had been threatening us in the dailies for the past few months as the rain water is now filling up the dams, thank God!  But I am welcoming another new worry now – our laundry.  During the rainy season, our clothes do not get dried fast and have the musty odor the next day after wash. While I love living in a condo, one of the things that I have to grunt is the lack of space in the kitchen and balcony for the laundry. With an existing headache of finding a space to put a new dishwasher, another headache is the damp clothes piling up everyday during the rainy season. When the hubs and mil saw the eye-sore sight in the dining area yesterday, the hubs bought a new clothes rack yesterday, which we will have to place in the dining area temporarily, directly under the ceiling fan to air-dry our clothes LOL!  Well, it is still more practical, economical and space-wise than a clothes dryer which we do not have space to put and shoots the electricity bill sky high.

Eye-sore in the dining area…

This weekend,we will also have to go shopping to get Alycia another pair of black shoes for her school.  Last night, the hubs had to use a hair-dryer to dry Alycia’s pair of black shoes which was still very damp, which she only started to wear 2 weeks ago. She passed her probation and is now a school prefect. And guess what? The hair-dryer got over-heated and is now spoilt!

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My dad has been making his own fruit enzyme liquid to be used as cleansing agent for years. During our recent trip back to Ipoh, I found that the fruit enzyme cleans oily dishes very effectively, so I asked my mum for some of their fruit enzyme cleaner. The fruit enzyme is to be mixed together with a little dishwashing liquid. Dad mixes about 1 part dishwashing liquid to about 4 -5 parts water and stores the liquid in a used transparent shampoo bottle with pump.  He uses it to clean bathrooms too.

This is how dad prepared the fruit enzyme for me to bring back to KL.

Back in Oct 2011, after a collection of lemon and orange peel (these 2 fruit peels smell fresher and more invigorating than other fruits – you can use grapefruit too), he mixed the peel with some sugar and water.  He prefers white sugar as white sugar will produce enzyme that is light colored while brown sugar produces brownish and dark colored enzyme which does not look pleasant.  He mixed the concoction in a large plastic tub and labelled the cap with date.  The fermentation process takes 3 months.

This is how the fermented fruit peel looks like and now dad has to filter it.

Filter your enzyme solution with a piece of cheesecloth or a fine strainer.

He then pours the enzyme into a used and cleaned orange cordial bottle. Now I have a large bottle, that can last me till my next trip to Ipoh in December

Wait, he does not throw the fermented fruit peel away. He recycles it as compost for my mum’s potted herbs!

My parents’ humble and fertile garden. There was once a rambutan tree, mango trees and several papaya trees but all were chopped down after they were inflicted with some kind of plant disease. All the trees bore us lots of sweet fruits for years. Now there are still pandan leaves, cili padi plants, lemon grass, green ginger and my mum’s whole range of herbs, which she uses to cook and infuses healthy tea for herself. She also uses the herbs to self treat minor ailments.

Alycia pointing to a green cili padi.

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