Baby Oil is my new best friend

The next time you’re cleaning up after staining fine wood furniture, or even cheap wood furniture, and you find yourself fresh out of mineral spirits, take heart, a solution is at hand.  Ahem.  

Today, with my hands covered in brown stain, and a brush in the same condition, I pondered clean-up solutions.  No mineral spirits, per stain label instructions.  I thought of the last time we needed to get off some of the sticky goop left behind by medical tape.  Rubbing alcohol required too much rubbing.   But baby oil takes off the adhesive very easily, and near a fresh wound doesn’t risk screaming pain.  

If you want to know why wood stain made me think of tape adhesive, well, it’s in the chemistry of it all.  The adhesive and the wood stain both have oily, or at least hydrophobic compounds in them.  

So.  I dug out a bottle of baby oil that is as old as at least one of my children, maybe more.   I doused both hands with the oil and rubbed it in.  Then I rubbed in a great glop of dish soap before putting them under the running water.  It worked better when I waited on the water.  And it worked great for my brushes too.  

The hydrophobic stain, bonded with the hydrophobic baby oil.  But that alone wasn’t enough, it merely spread out the stain in a more even coating on my hands.  When I tried to rinse that away, the water just sheeted off (because the water and the stain said, eek! water, get it off!).  So, I needed the magic of soap, which has both hydrophobic parts and hydrophilic (mmm,  water) parts and can form micelles that carry off…. what?  Too much chemistry?  

Ok, anyway, it worked really well.  And left my skin soft to boot.  Later, I took the baby oil and dish soap into the shower to get the spots off of my arms, shoulders, neck and cheek.  Take note, the baby oil and soap will not remove the bruise on your thigh that you got when the rocking horse runner slammed into it yesterday but you forgot about and thought was a splotch of stain that had soaked through your old (favorite) jeans, no matter how much you scrub before you realize it is actually just a bruise and not stain.  Do be careful though, the floor of the tub/shower will be slippery when you’re done.  Leave a note for the next person.  Or better yet, rub the floor of the tub/shower with a soapy rag.  

The stain was for the twenty-one (!), four-foot shelves that were cut, sanded and stained today (their supports were assembled yesterday and stained today as well), that will go on this wall of our living room.  

Or perhaps this one (if I move all of that other stuff).  Notice how for one wall I will have to move stuff but for the other one I won’t.  (Also, please notice on the back of the couch the two-tone blue afghan that my mother-in-law gave me for Christmas.  I love it.  Ok, maybe you can’t so much see it in this picture, but it’s lovely and she had to weave in a bazillion ends in the crocheted hounds tooth pattern, for which I think she is the most lovely person because I know how much work that can be.  Also notice our lovely antennae job, imitating speaker wire thumb-tacked on the wall and stretching across the room.  Oh no, wait, DON’T notice that.)