Welcome. We started At Home to help readers lead a full and cultured life during the pandemic, featuring great reads and helpful advice alongside recommendations for things to do and watch and listen to and see.
Four months into the experiment, we see a hunger, as well, for direction. One reader wrote recently to ask if we might suggest to her, forcefully, that she clean her oven, her washing machine. She wanted, she wrote, “something along the lines of ‘At Home: This Week Clean This.’”
It’s too hot for oven cleaning, though, in most parts of the country, and not everyone has a washing machine. (If you do, just run it with no clothes at its hottest water setting, with bleach. Easy win.)
No, this weekend, you should clean your stove. Take the grates off if your stove has grates, and get them soaking in warm, soapy water. Make a paste out of baking soda and water to scrub the stovetop — don’t use anything abrasive. Get all the gunge off everything with elbow grease and time. Wipe down the front of the stove with all-purpose cleaner. Clean up the grates and dry them. Put everything back together. The gleaming result is its own satisfaction.
And here’s your soundtrack: The Go-Go’s, “We Got the Beat.”
More good advice for living a good life at home and near it is below. Please let us know what else you’d like to know: [email protected]. We read every letter sent.
How to pass the time.
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