First-World Problems...Part Deunaw

I'm blowing through lots of propane because with Sino-Lung-Rot hysteria, we are not eating in restaurants. And I am not a fan of outdoor dining that is exposed to the street, with its cars and dogs and people and wind blowing filth onto my food, which is all that is available here in the People's Republic of Goldman Sachs New Jersey.

Grilling steaks is one thing...I'll bet I could go an entire summer without cleaning the grill if that is the only thing I cook, but there is chicken and ribs and fish and marinated stuff and fatty stuff and all sorts of food that makes the grill a big mess after only a few weeks.

The grates are the easy part. I have a spiral grate cleaner that does a great job and doesn't leave little shards of steel all over the place. I use it when the grill is roaring hot, and dunk it in a pail of water so that the water and then steam helps the cleaning. It works great and it is fast.

But the rest of the grill requires that I remove everything and scrape it down. That is messy, and I would rather be drinking a beer and reading a book. And because I am obsessive-compulsive, I also bring out my compressor and use it to clean the starting mechanisms and the burner tubes.

Any tips for doing this quickly and easily? Yeah...it's elbow grease and time. No way around it.

Don't limit yourself to grills...it's an open thread as long as we keep the topics to tools and repairs and amusing stuff. And I'll start. I have a marble threshold and ledge in a shower that is pitted from cleaning products. I have started sanding it smooth with a small electric palm sander and 80 grit. I figure I'll move eventually to 320 (that's the finest I have) and then quit, because it creates lots of dust and is sort of messy, and sanding the marble when it is wet does not work at all, so I have to time it to just before shower time.

posted by CBD at 02:00 PM

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