Cleaning with Baking Soda

Well my mom took back her good camera so I'm stuck with my old point-and-shoot for a while.  My picture quality will be less than stellar but oh well...

I might have to ask Santa for a fancy camera.

Anyway I got stainless steel pots and pans as a wedding gift and although I love them, keeping them clean is a little bit harder than when I had cheap non-stick pans.  I have been getting black stains on them that won't come off no matter how hard I scrub.  I can get them clean enough to cook with but I want them looking new again.  I tried several methods but here's what, in the end, worked the best.

Step 1:
Soak pan in warm soapy water.

Step 2:
Boil the soapy water for 10 minutes.

Step 3:
Let cool to the touch and then scrub with non-abrasive (I use plastic) scrubber pad.

Step 4:
To get that brand new look back in your pans, sprinkle the wet pan with baking soda and scrub with the scrubber side of a sponge.  Rinse with water and the pan should look like new again :)

While we are on the subject of baking soda...
I recently had a incident with the dog secretly marking some areas of our carpet over in front of the TV.  I have no idea why he decided to do this but apparently we missed it and as the weather started heating up the smell started coming out.  Let me tell you it was dis-gusting!!  I tried everything to get the smell out.  Eventually I ended up thinking we could never have people over again because our house will reek of urine forever!

My mom suggested baking soda so it was my last effort before having to call in professional carpet cleaners.  I waited for the carpet to dry completely (from all of my other cleaning efforts) and sprinkled it with baking soda.  I used a lot actually because I was desperate.  I rubbed it in also.  I waited about an hour and then vacuumed it up.  It was a MIRACLE!!  No more smell :)