Letting off some steam

The inlaws are coming tomorrow so I've spent most of the morning doing chores. Michela was eager to help, but remembering last time I trusted her with a dustpan, I pacified her with her favourite snack 'apple and nana in a bigger bowl' [her own words] and nearly new paper [some redundant one-sided photocopies] on her drawing table.

So while she was busy chomping on fruit and drawing circles all over the paper and table, I scrubbed my dirty cooker, loaded the dishwasher, washed up the items that are not dishwasher friendly and hung the wash out to dry.

I was about to relax and make myself a cup of tea, but the sight of the kettle made me reach for the descaler. I don't know what is in the water here in the Midlands but the inside of my plastic kettle is brown. I have never seen brown limescale before - the London equivalent was a more appealing golden hue.

A sachet of Oust and 15 minutes later my kettle was sparkly white, the metal coil as shiny as silver. Having tried alternative methods before I have never experienced such a satisfaction and no elbow grease needed! I have tried to be green about it, using vinegar once and soda crystals plus raw potato another time but the results were far than satisfactory as I don't descale that frequently and there is always a good build up inside.

And don't start me on steel kettles! I used to have one that looked great on my kitchen worktop, except it was a pain to descale. I remember emailing Oust to enquire why their wonderful product was not doing the job and being told that steel kettles are a magnet to limescale so I'd need to buy a special product, which, of course was not stocked at my local supermarket. So after a lot of scrubbing, the steel kettle ended up on Freecycle and we purchased a plastic one. There you go, you have been warned about steel kettles!

My top tips: if you want to be green, there is some good advice on Times Online and if you have a descaling fetish, why not browse my Google Search? There is even a video about the subject. Happy Descaling!