Dull Men's Club
An unofficial chapter of the popular Dull Men's Club.
1. Relevant commentary on your own dull life. Posts should be about your own dull, lived experience. This is our most important rule. Direct questions, random thoughts, comment baiting, advice seeking, many uses of "discuss" rarely comply with this rule.
2. Original, Fresh, Meaningful Content.
3. Avoid repetitive topics.
4. This is not a search engine or advice forum.
Use a search engine, a tradesperson, Reddit, friends, a specialist Facebook group, apps, Wikipedia, an AI chat, a reverse image search etc. to answer simple questions, identify objects or get advice. We accept very few questions, and they must be over topics much more difficult than what is easily discoverable with a search. Also see rule 1, “comment baiting”.
5. Keep it dull. If it puts us to sleep, it’s on the right track. Examples of likely not dull: jokes, gross stuff (including toes), politics, religion, royalty, illness or injury, killing things for fun, or promotional content. Feel free to post these elsewhere.
6. Not hate speech, sexism, or bullying No sexism, hate speech, degrading or excessively foul language, or other harmful language. No othering or dehumanizing of anyone or negativity towards any gender identity.
7. Proofread before posting. Use good grammar and punctuation. Avoid useless phrases. Some examples: - starting a post with "So" - starting a post with pointless phrases, like "I hope this is allowed" or “this is my first post” Only share good quality, cropped images. Do not share screenshots of images; share the original image.
8. All polls must have an "Africa, by Toto" option. Why? Because we hear the drums echoing tonight.
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Then what’s an alternative?
It depends on the surface.... but whatever we used before they were invented in the early 2000s, I suppose.
I'm being a little snarky, but they are a general purpose "shortcut" method, not really specialized for any particular use--kinda like duct tape. So there is almost certainly a better way depending on what specifically you're trying to clean.
Yeah it's amazing that in all my years of crafting and fixing, I've found that the least-suitable application for duct tape is on ducts.
A white wall
I'd start with a good quality microfibre cloth and a little water.
If that didn't work sugar soap, which is mildly abrasive and acidic. Painters use it to prep walls before painting.
Finally an abrasive cleaner like Ajax, Jif, or Gumption. These all have tiny particles of calcium carbonate that provide the abrasive quality. Calcium Carbonate readily occurs in nature, it's called Limestone. These are intended to strip grease out of your nanna's oven with her 80 year old elbows though, so with a mark on a wall I would start with a very, very weak mixture.
Whatever you do just be aware that you're mechanically altering the surface you're "cleaning" whether you use a magic eraser or abrasive cleaner. If you go at a nice shiny enamel finish with a bottle of jif you're going to end up with nasty foggy spots. This will be more noticeable than you might expect, and might even deteriorate over time.
Thanks! I just want the white walls white. This is very helpful. Thanks for writing it out :)
Elbow grease.
Steel sponge or sandpaper
So damage or polute?
... both of which magic erasers do