10 additional great household tips.
Recently I sent you information about 20 household tips you could use to save time and money. They included storing a couple of marshmallows in a bag of brown sugar to keep the sugar from hardening, slicing a bunch of cherry tomatoes at once by sandwiching them between two plastic lids and running a sharp knife through them, and hanging a bundle of chalk in a closet to absorb excess moisture that could otherwise soak into your clothing.
Saving time and money is an important strategy that patriots can use to help them remain self-sufficient and independent. Some of these activities involve repurposing, which is basically using an item for a purpose that it was not intended, rather than throwing it out and having to spend money on a different item to accomplish the same task.
Following are 10 more of these ideas:
• Don’t you hate how your bath towels start to smell after awhile, even right after they’re washed? To rid your towels of that musty smell, wash them using one cup of white vinegar in a hot cycle, then repeat with ½ cup of bicarbonate of soda.
• And speaking of towels, toss a dry one into the dryer along with your just-washed wet clothes to reduce the overall drying time.
• Have you ever wondered whether an egg is fresh enough to eat? Simply place it in a glass or bowl of water. If it floats, it’s stale. But if it lies at the bottom, it’s fresh and good to eat.
• If weeds are growing through the spaces between sidewalk or patio slabs, sprinkle salt on them. It should kill them.
• Your wooden chopping board is probably getting stained if you’ve used it long enough. To clean it, sprinkle Kosher salt onto it and rub it in with half of a lemon. Then, rinse it with clean water and dry it.
• If there are indentations in your carpet made by furniture that you’ve moved, place ice cubes in the grooves to lift them out.
• There’s a faster and easier way to peel potatoes than with a peeler. Boil them with their skins on, immerse them in cold water for five seconds, then twist the potato between your hands so that the skin peels right off.
• A simple way to sharpen scissors is to cut through sandpaper.
• Before you chop up onions, wipe your chopping board with white vinegar. This will prevent your eyes from watering while chopping.
• For easy storage and access to your linens, store bed sheets inside the matching pillowcases.
More of these household tips will be coming your way, but if you have any of your own that you’d like to share, please let me know about them.
Read all the. Great. Tips and love the!!!
When I used to cut onions for a restaurant while in college, we used to tear off outer hull and put in a pan of water to soak to keep you from crying. I still use this idea at home.
Thank you so much for all that you share with us — you are appreciated!
This does work in mud, probably snow, too. Many door mats have a raised rubber pattern. If car is stuck in mud, gather your door mats, push them under edge of tires. Sure beats trying to push a car out of the mud without mats for traction. Might work with extra carpet squares, and you could hose them off after use. Carpet squares are also great in dog house in cold weather, as are old sofa cushions.
All good stuff!
Thanks
My grandmother taught me so many little home remedies, it’s hard to remember them all. For kitchen cuts (all those little slices when you are using a paring knife) – corn starch works well……………If you have a drawer that is sticking, you can run a bar of soap or a candle on the runners underneath & and that seems to do the trick. Enjoy reading all of the tips that are posted.
In an emergency of an open wound bleeding and no sugar is around, I have used flour to help stop the bleeding
Place a wet tea bag on a bleeding wound. The tannic acid in the tea will srop the bleeding. Learned this years ago from a doctor. Saved my father-in-law’s life using tea bags.
My neighbor and I both had water cisterns and his pump would many times lose its prime and not pump so he would try to prime the pump by pouring water into it as fast as possible and try the pump. Many times he would have to repeat the process. I took mt my garden hose and put on a washing machine hose with 2 female ends and hooked it to his hose able to prime his pump.and he was able to instantly
Epson salts with white vinegar and water, excellent herbicide.
Cat litter on snow or ice helps remove stuck vehicle.
White vinegar in water, excellent bacterialcidal agent on any surface.
i think all this survival food is a great idea but home canning works just as well and you know what goes in it and this came way before commercial canning ,
keep your empty bic type disoposble lighters. get a small 3″x ‘ zip lock bag and fill it tight with cotton. geta small travel size tube of vasiline. take the cotton with a dab of vasiline and fay it on your tender and spark the lighter . instant fire.
-don’t ditch your stored water at the refresh date, many uses in short term crises: washing, flushing the commode, watering food plants … you’ll think of others.
-if you’re on a well fit a crank to the motor to manually pump the water.
-for the suburbs, make a two hundred feet long garden hose with two female ends. If the water supply to your house fails, shut off the main valve, connect one end of the hose to the spigot nearest that main valve and the other end to a neighbor’s water spigot. Turn on the neighbor’s water and open your spigot. You won’t have great pressure but you’ll have water.
-at the first sign of emergency start filling all bathtubs & sinks … you can never have enough water.
-alternate water sources: know where the nearest bodies of water are, fresh or salt, you can desalinate with supplies you’ve already stockpiled. Ice cubes too. Never eat snow, melt it first (hypothermia risk). Rain water catch barrels, irrigation storage tanks, etc. sources abound if you look around day to day send are prepared.
-some folklore is one gallon of water per person per day, and ditto large dogs, cats less. I don’t know about livestock needs but they must be considered too.
-and store a couple pounds of bee pollen, you can last a very long time on water and a little bee pollen.
i agree with Linda would like books of hints and other things you talk about printing it all out takes a lot of paper and i might have trouble finding what i need
Two things
1. If you burn yourself use egg whites (only) to stop the immediate burn , leave it on for at least 5 to 10 minutes . I burnt myself with a extremely hot pot pie, it slashed all through my fingers and front and back side of my hand, what a relief it was to use the egg white . No Burns or blisters.
2. Use ashes from your fire place if you are stuck on ice or snow pack . I use it to get up my very steep driveway, dust the direction you are going to drive and drive out.
To sharpen scissors and paper cutters, cut some aluminum foil several times with them. Works great!
frank, you are a bit wrong about the floating test. it is the decree of the flat that counts. you need about 6 inches of water for one egg , in a med size bowl. how far up it floats indicates its approximate age. the one that lies on the bottom has not been long having left the hen. if the egg float to the top, like a cork, it is a definite gonner. a great site to check how long food is good for is http://www.stilltasty.com.
My husband gets diabetic sores and a doctor told him to mix sugar with betadyne to heal them. It works. I’ve also heard that honey will do the same thing, which makes sense since it’s sugar, too. Just because a remedy is ancient doesn’t mean it’s “out of style”!!
—– For colloidal silver — Sovereign Silver Bio-Active Silver Hydrosol 10 PPM — works for me and mine. My grandma used colloidal silver on us kids over 50 years ago for anything inside or outside on us. We are all still here.
—- Another tip putting the Space Blanket over insulation in attic has done a great job bring down heating and cooling cost for us in Savannah Ga. This blanket is layers of a foil with insulator between layers, will not tear. May be under another name , have not looked online for it lately.
I have books in my survival box that explain what herbs are for what ailment and how to make tinctures or syrups and how much you take for the ailments you have. I have also added my own herbs that I have grown and dehydrated.
Hi there, what is the name of that book, I find them with remedies but none with how to make and measure the tinture
I am a retired RN – 45 yrs in nursing.. at the lg. teaching hospital that I attended and then worked in for a couple of years after graduating, we used sugar for lg bedsores and other such wounds. It kept the wounds clean and and enabled healing from the inside of the the deep wound to outer edges and eventual complete healing with closure of the wound– no surgery needed, no septic infections.. This sadly went be the way of unacceptable “old treatments” when big pharm came around with their more expensive and more invasive forms of ‘standard treatments’ for such wounds came along. I never saw it used again in our hospitals or even mentioned any more as a possible way to treat a badly infected wound.
RE: Sugar on wounds – In 1938, when my mother was 12 yrs old, she fell and severely cut the inside of her wrist on glass. The first thing they did was to pour sugar on the wound. Even the doctor said it was the right thing to do.
RE: Essential Oils – For a great book packed full of useful information try ‘Modern Essentials’ from Aroma Tools. There are so many remedies in this book for just about anything you may be searching for. I refer to it as my health bible. Personally, I only use DoTerra essential oils.
Frank, something to think about, I started thinking after the fact. First I will never denie Christ…….,. This happened yesterday afternoon…. The door bell rang followed by a knock, I get to the door and a man stood. He ask if I wanted to sell the boat in my drive way. I’ve had it setting there for about three months, I bought It from a guy that thought he had a good title, but not. I took it out of his way and he’s trying to get the title straight. It’s taking a while but he’s working on it. I told the young man I had another boat around back I might consider selling, I closed the door and we walked to the drive way where his car set along with my other junk. We get there and he ask if I was saved, without hesitation I told the man I was. I then ask where he lived and worked and he pointed and answered BMW.
OK, then I wheeled and dealed. The guy didn’t have any money and he left. I got to thinking and wondering how he even knew I had this boat, I live off the beeten path. To the point……… He could have ask if I was a Christin, I would have answered with a quick YES. All I had on me was my knife and you know as I do you don’t bring a knife to a gun fight. I don’t mind someone asking if I’m a Christian, but I’m also going to have to remember to never leave my gun on the table and keep it where it should be. Times are changing and we must be on our toes.
Steve it sounds like you lucked out. It could have turned very nasty very quickly. My wife and I had just bought our house and we hadn’t even been there a week when several different people started coming around the house to see if I would sell my car, some of the stuff I had moved into the house excreta. I was really annoyed. It was as if they were sitting outside somewhere watching me as I moved in. In fact on the third night were we in our new home someone stole one of my hub caps from my Crown Victoria car.
It sad how others will try and get something for nothing by scoping you out to see what they can take from you.
I would like to see all your “helpful hints” all together in a printable copy also. Not able to remember all of them!!
Hey Frank, Thanks for all you do! Linda is right, a “Helpful Hints” note book would be Great!
Also, if you’re cutting onions, putting a piece of bread in your mouth will also keep your eyes from watering.
Here is a tip for all you Bar-B-Q grillers. After using your grill and you need to clean it, don’t use those brushes and other tools. While the grill is still hot, just cut an onion in half and rub it up and down the grill. The moisture from the onion, onion juice, alters the temperature of the grill and cleans it by knocking the crud off while leaving it fresh and clean, and it only cost you half an onion to do it.
I would like to see more printer material on different survival technology. I was looking up solar-powered eguipment, not knowing the different types and nothing about eathe one.It would be helpful if you had something on them that could help women, that they could trust.Not someone that’s trying to sell something.If you do have these kind of artifical I Would Be Interested In Obtain them. Thank you. THANKS
I put sugar on cuts as it kills the bacteria and heals without burning the skin (as salt can do). I use sugar to gargle with when throat is a little sore as you do not have to worry about letting it get swallowed as you would salt.
And a word to women it is also healing in the femimen area.
When you make gravy stir cold water into the flour and grease first then the warm or hot water..less likely to lump.
I had to read more about this as I’d never heard this particular folk remedy, but, apparently, it can work! http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-2278942/Pouring-granulated-sugar-wounds-heal-faster-antibiotics.html
You didn’t ask about Mark Levine or Dr. Michael Savage in your survey – how come ?
You may already know this and maybe I missed it because I don’t have time to listen to some of the lengthy videos, but I recently found out that if you put a clean silver dollar (or any pure silver) in fresh unpasteurized milk it will last for a very long time without spoiling.
Yes I read about it some time ago when I was doing research on colloidal silver. I ended up making a device to make my own and use it to kill germs and bacteria. Google “the benefits of colloidal silver”. You may see controversial documentation on some of the sites, but remember big pharmacy bucks don’t like to loose your money and their control. You can buy liquid silver products at your health store and places like The Vitamin Shoppe too.
I wanted to find a place to say thank you. My kids are grown and I find myself at least as concerned now that I can’t fold them under my wing. With your help I prepare for…and our lives.
You’re welcome, Barbara. Your kids have a great mom, I see.
I appreciate all your tips and hard work to help people like us. Keep up the good work!