You learn a lot about someone when you decide to live with them, I think that’s part of what makes marriage so fun.
Growing up with two older brothers I’ve spent most of my life living with boys — I’m used to their antics — but Nick still finds ways to surprise me.
In the past 7 months of marriage/roommate times I’ve learned:
- Nick cannot commit to rejecting future “cyborg” technology
- I can poop faster than he can pee
- He is an extremely thorough pre-dishwasher-dish washer
Now this last lesson has been an important one. I hate cleaning dishes before I put them in the dishwasher, it seems redundant to me. But Nick hates even more when those little bits of leftovers get baked onto dishes in the dishwasher. Valid.
So, I’ve learned to at least rinse my dishes before I put them in. Baby steps, right?
The harder part has been figuring out when the dishwasher is clean & when it’s dirty because if Nick’s loading it.. it’s always “clean.” More than once I’ve unloaded the entire dishwasher only to discover a small fragment of peanut butter on the last utensil which screams, “I just put a whole load of dirty dishes away in the cupboards!”
I may have lower standards of dish cleanliness than Nick but even I know that putting dirty dishes in the cabinets with clean ones is not cool.
So for months I’ve been contemplating making dishwasher magnets to signify if the dishes inside are “clean” or “dirty.” I found a blog post about making your own salt + flour clay a few weeks back & was bored on the couch at the time so I gave it a try.
To my surprise they turned out okay, but I never fell in love with their floury outside & the way they puffed up in the middle. So I put them in the closet under the guise of waiting to buy the appropriate magnet backing for them. Nick has already figured out if I put a project in the dungeons of the craft closet, it’s never coming out again.
Weird, crumbly magnets
So I’m making newer, better, cleaner ones!
DIY Kitchen Magnets
Supplies:
- Oven bake clay (I used Sculpey brand)
- Rubber stamps
- Ceramic disc magnets
- Hot glue sticks + glue gun
- Acrylic paint (optional)
Steps:
- Using a rolling-pin roll out the clay to approximately an 1/8″ thick.
- Cut the clay into your desired shape. I used spice jar lids to cut mine into 1.5″ circles, use what you have!
- Once you have your clay shapes cut to your liking, stamp your desired words into the discs. For mine I stamped: clean, dirty, NW, Anderson & yay! The possibilities are endless! Don’t worry too much about your letters lining up straight, it just adds to the character.
- Line a baking sheets with parchment paper or foil & bake your discs according to the package instructions (mine baked for ~8 minutes at 275°).
- Allow the clay to cool completely.
- Paint them lightly with acrylic paint to leave the imprinted letters white. Tip: Painting across the word, instead of up the word, will help keep the letters white.
- After the paint dries use your hot glue gun to glue the magnets on the back. Just a dab’ll do ya! Be sure to firmly press the magnet to the clay disc as it sets to make sure it fully adheres.
- Attack your kitchen/office with your cute & helpful new magnets!
What a proud moment for our ghetto dishwasher, eh?
PS. Learn how to make this easy & wicked comfortable headband here! And yes, egg cartons are indeed the perfect poor woman’s paint tray.
Eats & Makes 