Archive Category: 'Household Tips'

• How To Turn Bacon Grease Into Soap (Really!): Today’s feature is from Little House In The Suburbs with a tutorial for Making Soap from Kitchen Grease: If you’re saying to yourself, “Ivory, I don’t wanna to BUY fat to make my soap. I have plenty of fat in my grease can!” then this is the post for you. So, how do we turn icky, blech-y, [...]
• Quick Tips For Plants & Garden: Plant Lots of Garlic: Garlic is an effective and natural bug repellent. Plant lots of it in your garden in among other vegetables to protect them from pests. You could also make your own garlic spray by boiling a pint of water, throw in roughly chopped garlic cloves and steep until the water cools. Remove [...]
• How To Create An Autumn Entry Display For Under $20: Today’s feature is from Cottage Magpie with How To Create An Autumn Entry Display For Under $20: With perennial borders all but spent and autumn leaves putting on the big show, attention in the front garden is focused on the home entry. Using materials gathered from the garden and discounted end-of-season perennials, create this welcoming seasonal display [...]
• 15 Kitchen Tip Quickies: Here’s a handy list of kitchen tips sent in by readers over the last few weeks. Each of these were selected because of their usefulness and I’ve included the name of the person who submitted them beside each tip (thank you!). 15 Kitchen Tip Quickies Whole tomatoes can be washed and frozen in containers or plastic bags. [...]
• Homemade Moisturizing Lotion: How To: Today’s feature is from Wabi Sabi Baby with a recipe and tutorial for How to Make a Moisturizing Lotion with Only 3 Ingredients: For less than a dollar and using common kitchen equipment, I want to show you how you can make a 12 oz batch of moisturizing lotion. That’s even cheaper than your Wal-mart petroleum-based [...]
• Homemade Bath Jelly Recipe: Bath jellies can be made as luxurious home spa goodies or they can be packaged for the kids (set with toys inside). Great to give as gifts. They may not bubble up as nicely as some liquid bubble baths, but definitely a nice bath treat. Homemade Bath Jelly Recipe Ingredients: 3/4 cup water 1 envelope unflavored gelatin 1/2 cup liquid soap [...]
• Budget Decorating Tip: Frame Decorative Pictures From Books: With a sharp razor blade or exacto knife, you can fill piles of picture frames cheaply and easily with just one picture book! Because the collection of illustrations are from one book, they’re easy to mix and match as you wish–each are the same size and of the same subject. Use a sharp razor and a careful [...]
• Kitchen Tip Quickie: Use A Reward Card As A Pot Scrubber: Today’s feature is from My Sister’s Kitchen with this Handy Dandy Kitchen Tip for using store reward cards as stubborn crust busters: Some good things: the cards are free and I seem to have a lot of them. So far, I haven’t even worn out the first one. I’m saving my fingernails. I’m saving my Pyrex [...]
• Get Organized Using Everyday Household Items: Today’s feature is from RealSimple with Get Organized Using Everyday Household Items: Take a look around you, and you’ll find familiar items that can easily be put to use organizing your life. Here are a few examples of the tips you’ll find: Use Nail Polish to Color-Code Keys Business Card Holder as Sugar Packet Carrier Laundry Bag as Dishwasher Item [...]
• Tips: Getting Your Garden Ready For Winter: Roses Before hard freeze, tie tops of the individual plants together with cloth strips to strengthen them against wind. Then mound earth up around stems to six or eight inch depth. After ground freezes, surround plants with 12 to 15 inches of straw, hay or loose leaves. If wind threatens to remove your mulch, anchor it [...]
• Utilize Tight Spaces For A Clean Home: Today’s feature is an article from Homemade Simple with Utilize Tight Spaces For A Clean Home: We all have those small, oddly shaped “nooks and crannies” in our homes that usually end up being unusable or dead space. But you can bring those spaces to life and create extra storage space by being resourceful and creative. Steps [...]
• Homemade Lip Balm: Recipe: Today’s feature is from Green Bee with Homemade Lip Balm: I’ve been making my own lip balm for a few years now, and I love the recipe I use so I thought I’d share it here. It’s very, very simple. This makes about 3 tubes. There are just three ingredients: beeswax, jojoba oil and peppermint essential oil [...]
• Composting Leaves Without A Bin: How To: Leaves are one of the main ingredients of a compost heap, kept by many gardeners to furnish soil enriching humus material for their plants. The collecting of material for a compost pile is a year-around process, but autumn, with its abundance of fallen leaves and garden refuse, is an excellent time to start the accumulation. There are [...]
• Storing Garden Crops: Cold Storage Tips: Home storing of the less perishable vegetables for winter use has almost become a lost art. Cabbage, turnips, radishes, beets, carrots, Brussels sprouts, celery, potatoes and apples may be stored in cool and moist surroundings. Onions require a cool and dry atmosphere; and pumpkins, squash and sweet potatoes need a dry place where it is relatively [...]
• Price Books Save Money: Here’s How: Today’s feature is from Frugal Village with Use A Price Book To Pay Less: Your goal is to try to pay less than you’ve previously paid for items. Once you’ve recorded prices for a few weeks, you might recognize a pattern of when your regularly purchased items go on sale. You can also decide whether you [...]
• Make A Household Notebook: Ideas & Printables: With a binder or planner, some paper and a printer–you’ve got all you need to setup a complete household management hot spot: your Household Organizer (aka Household Notebook, Journal, or Planner). These are a great tool to keep your household chores, To Do lists, activities and notes organized. You may also find they help motivate you [...]
• 15 Helpful Household Lemon Aids: Mothball odors can be removed from drawers by rinsing with a strong lemon solution. Remove rings inside the toilet bowl by applying a paste of borax and lemon juice to the stain (first flush toilet to make the surface wet). Allow to set for 2 hours then scrub. A cloth dipped in lemon juice will clean discolorations [...]
• Environmentally Friendly Baking Tips: Today’s feature is a video giving a few ideas for helping both your power bill and the environment: Video Summary: Buy larger cookie sheets (that will fit inside your oven) rather than small ones. This will allow you to bake more cookies (bigger batches) at once. Consider purchasing recycled parchment paper, baking cups, etc. Make drop cookies rather than [...]
• 10 Projects To Help Organize Your Home: The Undercover Crate: Hmmm. I knew there had to be a way to pretty up those plastic stacking crates, check this out. Fabric liners/covers that keep the stackable function intact. Tutorial download is here: (pdf). DIY Sturdy Magazine Holders: I’ve seen lots of these made from cereal boxes but these are nice and sturdy made from [...]
• Free Yourself From Shampoo: The No Shampoo Alternative: Today’s feature is from Nature Moms with The No Shampoo Alternative – No Poo: Almost three months ago, I was introduced to the idea of no longer using shampoo. I was intrigued. After looking into it somewhat, I figured I didn’t have anything to lose. So I picked up some baking soda and apple cider vinegar [...]
• How To Get Your Spouse To Do Housework: Today’s feature is from CanadianParents.com with How to Get a Man to do Housework: Here’s the key: we men want to feel that we are doing housework either because we want to do a task (usually because we are good at), or because we simply want to please our women. Men are much less likely to take [...]
• Homemade Makeup Brush Cleaners: 7 Recipes: Recipe #1 1 cup Distilled Water 2 TBS Rubbing Alcohol 1 TBS Baby Shampoo Recipe #2 1/2 cup Warm Water 1/4 cup Vinegar Recipe #3 1 cup Warm Water 1 tsp Liquid Castile Soap Recipe #4 1 cup Warm Water 1 TBS Baby Shampoo Recipe #5 1/4 cup Warm Water 1 TBS Woolite Recipe #6 1 cup Warm Water 1 TBS Liquid Dish Detergent Recipe #7 1 cup Warm Water 1 TBS Baby Shampoo 1/2 tsp Tea [...]
• Good Things: $1 Desk Drawer Organizer: Today’s feature is a video with a tip for using a $1 plastic organizer to hold office supplies: The video’s a bit long but the gist of the idea is to pick up a plastic cutlery organizer that you would use in a kitchen drawer and use that for holding office supplies in your desk drawer. [...]
• Off Season Clothing Storage Ideas: If you’re getting ready to pack away the Spring & Summer wardrobe and pull out the Fall & Winter stuff, here are a few tips & ideas for finding storage space: Cube Shelving: We have small closets in our home but we do have a spare closet we can use for storage. I picked one of [...]
• How To Recycle Anything: Today’s feature is from RealSimple with an A-Z guide for How to Recycle Anything. There are 8 pages full of items and how to recycle them, did you know: Backpacks. The American Birding Association accepts donated backpacks, which its scientists use while tracking neotropical birds (www.americanbirding.org). Crayons. Send them to the National Crayon Recycle Program (www.crazycrayons.com), which [...]