How to Clean Your Reading Glasses

Even if you bought your reading glasses from a store instead of an optometrist’s office, they still need special care. Any glass or plastic lens can scratch and pit, making it hard to see through them. Most scratching and pitting is caused by improper cleaning.

The easiest way to keep your glasses clean and minimize the risk of scratching and pitting is to buy a system. Optometrists sell containers of cleaning fluid along with soft, lint free cloths, or cloths already saturated with cleaning liquid. These are quite expensive, but they’re very safe for your glasses, prescription or otherwise.

Since the main ingredient of this cleaning liquid is alcohol, if you want to save money, you can buy rubbing alcohol from the health care section of your grocery or drugstore. Alcohol dries quickly and doesn’t streak, but if you don’t wipe it quickly, you won’t get smears or splashes off the glasses.

Dish washing liquid diluted with water will clean lenses and frames of oil and dirt. The most thorough cleaning is done by making up a small bowl of a drop dish washing liquid and warm water. Dip your glasses into the mixture and rub with your wet fingers. Rinse well and wipe dry with a soft cloth. Alternately, you can wet the glasses, put a drop of dish washing liquid on each lens and rub with your wet fingers. Rinse and dry.

There’s third mixture that’s more convenient and works well in a spray bottle. Mix one quarter cup of plain ammonia, one teaspoon of dish washing liquid and a cup of water. Stir this together and spray it on your glasses, rinse and dry.

Always clean the frames when you clean the lenses. Oil from your face and fingers is acidic and will degrade plastic frames over time.

Don’t use tissue of any kind to either clean or dry because they contain small fibers that can damage glass or plastic lenses.

How to Clean Wine Stains

Some stains are a huge nuisance to remove especially if not treated immediately. Red wine stains definitely fall into that category. Fortunately, there are some things you can do to make sure your garments or furniture aren’t ruined forever!
First check to see if the garment is dry clean only. If it is there’s not a lot you can do about as treating it can cause irreversible damage to some fabrics. Instead, try to immediately get it to get it to a cleaners immediately. Either way, you can blot the stain with paper towels to remove as much wine as possible.

If your garment is not dry clean only you have a few options. But before you pre-treat your fabric make sure to lay a towel or washcloth between the front and back of the garment to make sure the stain doesn’t soak through, staining the back of your clothes. You could make a solution using a teaspoon of laundry or dish detergent and one cup of hydrogen peroxide in bowl, soak a sponge in it, squeeze about half the mixture out and then gently dab on to the stain.

Or you could mix one third a cup of a white household vinegar with two thirds cup water and gently dab on. Or to really fight fire with fire, you could even try pouring white wine over the stain (this works even on table cloths and carpets!) as white wine has been proven to get red wine out of fabrics.

After you’ve treated the stain with one of the above methods then wash it. If the garment is machine washable, wash it in cold water and let air dry. If it’s hand wash only, wash it in the sink with cold water and a mild detergent.
With proper pretreatment and delicate care, red wine stains hardly cause a problem!

How to Fix a Scratched CD

You love listening to your favorite song–just not the same part over and over–that is, if it plays at all. Even the smallest scratch can make a CD unplayable. Whether it skips a segment or an entire song, it is disruptive to the music-listening experience. Instead of throwing your disc away, try repairing the scratch. Here are three unique ways to fix a scratched CD.

If you don’t have a CD repair kit, or you want to save some money, a CD-repair cream is in your bathroom drawer. Toothpaste works wonders on a scratched CD. Take a small amount and rub it into the scratch. The CD won’t look better–in fact, it will look worse, but it will play much better.

Another cleaner hiding in your house is vaseline. Apply this to a clean cloth and rub in a circular motion on the disc. Wipe the disc from the center to the outside. You may have to repeat the process several times.

Bananas are not only a good source of potassium, they’re also good for fixing scratches. Cut the banana in half. You can eat the other half unless you have a box of scratched disc. Rub the banana onto the CD and use the peel to polish it. Remove the excess banana with a towel. Spray on some glass cleaner and wipe again.

These three methods will save your disc and money, unless you have to make a grocery run for bananas. Now you can enjoy your disc again.