No Stupid Questions
No such thing. Ask away!
!nostupidquestions is a community dedicated to being helpful and answering each others' questions on various topics.
The rules for posting and commenting, besides the rules defined here for lemmy.world, are as follows:
Rules (interactive)
Rule 1- All posts must be legitimate questions. All post titles must include a question.
All posts must be legitimate questions, and all post titles must include a question. Questions that are joke or trolling questions, memes, song lyrics as title, etc. are not allowed here. See Rule 6 for all exceptions.
Rule 2- Your question subject cannot be illegal or NSFW material.
Your question subject cannot be illegal or NSFW material. You will be warned first, banned second.
Rule 3- Do not seek mental, medical and professional help here.
Do not seek mental, medical and professional help here. Breaking this rule will not get you or your post removed, but it will put you at risk, and possibly in danger.
Rule 4- No self promotion or upvote-farming of any kind.
That's it.
Rule 5- No baiting or sealioning or promoting an agenda.
Questions which, instead of being of an innocuous nature, are specifically intended (based on reports and in the opinion of our crack moderation team) to bait users into ideological wars on charged political topics will be removed and the authors warned - or banned - depending on severity.
Rule 6- Regarding META posts and joke questions.
Provided it is about the community itself, you may post non-question posts using the [META] tag on your post title.
On fridays, you are allowed to post meme and troll questions, on the condition that it's in text format only, and conforms with our other rules. These posts MUST include the [NSQ Friday] tag in their title.
If you post a serious question on friday and are looking only for legitimate answers, then please include the [Serious] tag on your post. Irrelevant replies will then be removed by moderators.
Rule 7- You can't intentionally annoy, mock, or harass other members.
If you intentionally annoy, mock, harass, or discriminate against any individual member, you will be removed.
Likewise, if you are a member, sympathiser or a resemblant of a movement that is known to largely hate, mock, discriminate against, and/or want to take lives of a group of people, and you were provably vocal about your hate, then you will be banned on sight.
Rule 8- All comments should try to stay relevant to their parent content.
Rule 9- Reposts from other platforms are not allowed.
Let everyone have their own content.
Rule 10- Majority of bots aren't allowed to participate here.
Credits
Our breathtaking icon was bestowed upon us by @Cevilia!
The greatest banner of all time: by @TheOneWithTheHair!
view the rest of the comments
Back in the Before Times of Reddit, there was a guy who knew quite a bit about vacuums. Did an AMA at least a few times.
Long story short, powders such as baking soda or any of the common ‘freshness’ options damage vacuums. Avoid using them.
while I agree that the air freshener sorts are basically useless (they smell nice as you vacuum them up.) the baking soda does serve a purpose, and used in the correct proportions, you're not risking leaving the mild abrasive behind. (the other reason the baking soda is used as a cleanser. it's a relatively mild abrasive.)
for the record, this is for spot cleaning, not whole-carpet cleaning. for that get carpet detergent. you shouldn't be dumping baking soda on, instead, you give a light dusting, and just enough that it falls into the pile (but not so much that it falls through the backing.) you're not scrubbing. you're letting it's reaction with vinegar do the work so you don't have to scrub. You absolutely should do a test patch somewhere, just in case you're carpet is bleached by it... and water in the solution can slow down the reaction as well, but if you used the correct amounts of baking soda and vinegar, there isn't anything solid left. If you're unsure add more vinegar+water
the products are sodium bicarbonate + acetic acid (and water) -> sodium acetate (and water, it's aqueous) + carbonic acid, which decomposes into water and carbon dioxide. just run the extractor over it to remove it, and then proceed with the full carpet scrub and extraction. as far as I know, it's relatively safe for pets and kids (sodium acetate is what they use to make salt and vinegar chips- they dry it out of solution and use it as salt.)
during college, I worked on the cleaning crew for the college dorms. this includes a summer of working through all the dorms... and let me just tell you there were some new and interesting smells discovered (in all the wrong ways. the worst is either the closed-down dorms that the security guard took a shit in, after they turned off the water and the aircon.... ozone generators. Trust me.... or, the dorm room that tried to keep a tortoise hidden in the closet, and got away with it for six months. poor tortoise.)
The vinegar attacks proteins in organic stains, causing them to lift off. the fizzing action helps get it out of the fibers if it's soaked in, so it can be removed with the extractor. Also because it attacks proteins, it breaks down smells caused by organic sources. (you can just use vinegar if it's, ah, fresh.) Another side note is, if you have stuck on pans (like from baking fish or chicken breasts or something), heat up enough hot water (as hot as you can stand, I usually go at around steam lifting off.) add a table spoon or two of vinegar to the pan or pot, and a drop of dish soap, then pour in the hot water. (the heat makes the vinegar work faster. Alternatively, take a tablespoon of vinegar some water, and some cornstarch and deglaze that beautiful fond into a sauce... Just saying.)