Pearls of wisdom

I have precious few of these.  Mostly, someone shares a bit of wisdom with me and I'm all "Dude?  Really?  That's what you need?  Wow."

But. 

I do have a small pearls.  Not a 18 inch strand, or even a choker.  More like a few pearls spaced waaaaaayyyy far out on a strand.  But pearls nonetheless.

For instance, did you know that if you want to send cut apples to school with your kid, you can shake them with sprite and they won't brown?  Make sure you drain the Sprite.  If not, when the kid opens the container, the sprite sprays everywhere.  Not that I know that, or anything, from experience.  <looking the other way, whistling>

Fascinating stuff, indeed.

Or, if all you have is the ends of a loaf of bread, and no one wants that piece of bread, just flip it over and put the peanut butter on the end.  Once you fold it, or top it with another piece of bread, no one knows.  I'm so slick that way. 

I think I told you to wash your shower down with a washcloth and some cheap shampoo - if you do this every day, the gross scum doesn't build up.  I think this works - I really do, except that, um, I have a hard time remembering it. 

Gum in the hair?  Peanut butter or ice.  Necklace tangled?  A few drops of oil will help. Ink on your clothes?  Really cheap hairspray and wash as usual.  Need to clean your blender?  Fill it with water and a few drops of dishsoap - a FEW.  Like two.  Whirl it in the blender for a few seconds and rinse well. (Ask me how I know that you shouldn't use an entire squirt.)

So what tips do you have to share?  Cuz, I'm about out with the above. 

_________________________________________________________________________________

And in day 5 without a dryer, today I get to visit the laundrymat.  With baskets of wet clothes.  In the rain. THAT promises to be a whole 'nother blog post.  (I've got to go - no uniforms for today - Allegra borrowed a shirt from her girlfriend, and nothing clean for tomorrow - I switched Riley to paper dipes, which is causing her to break out.  So I NEED to go and dry some clothes already.)

Comments

[alana]

WE went through the broken drying thing a few weeks ago. I managed to hang dry all our stuff on two drying racks purchased from Walmart. Did that for about a week and a half and managed to keep up with the wash...of course, we have two fewer people and no babies in our family. Have fun at the laundromat.

Pearls of wisdom: Hmmmmmm. Nope. All I know is the same stuff you said. I also do the bread heel trick. My kids notice and complain, but I do it anyways.

[Owlhaven]

Let's see...

You can wash a shower curtain pretty well in the washer along with a couple towels. NO dryer though.

If you run out of paper towels, you can wash a window with newspaper.

If you get ants in your house but don't want to spread poison, sprinkle ground cloves around the door jamb on the floor or wherever the ants are coming in. Ants hate cloves.

If you have burned-on food in a pot, put a couple cups of water and a few TBSP of baking soda in the pot and boil two minutes. Most of the burned-on stuff should come off pretty easily. Repeat as needed til the pot is clean.

That's all I can think of now.

Mary

[A.]

No dryer for a family of eight? My heart just died a little bit. And since now I can only think about laundry, I'll have to come back to offer some of my brilliance...I mean, wisdom.

[Lylah]

I love my dryer. I even use it as an iron, because I cannot iron a shirt to save my life. I would try to imagine what you're going through with 8 people and no dryer, but if I did I would run screaming from the room and that would frighten the people who work around me...

My well-tested pearls...

- If melted wax spills onto a tablecloth or piece of clothing, let it harden, then scrape off whatever you can with a dull knife (carefully!). Then place brown paper on top of an underneath the remaining wax, and iron the paper with a warm iron. The wax melts and gets absorbed into the paper.

- Clean your microwave: chop a lemon and add it to a bowl of water, then nuke it to boiling. Let it sit in the microwave for a few minutes after that, then open and wipe down with a damp cloth.

- White vinager is great for wiping down stainless steel appliances. The smell disappears within a couple of seconds.

- You can clean dirty jewelry (but not pearls or opals) by mixing 3 parts peroxide to 1 part ammonia in a well-ventilated area. Put your jewelry in and the dirt foams up and away. Rinse well and dry with a soft cloth.

- You can deoderize a stinky lunchbox or ice chest with newspaper. Just crumple the paper up into loose balls and fill the stinky container about 1/2 full. Close the container tightly, and wait a couple of days. (I didn't say it was quick!)

- You can do the above with charcoal briquets, too, but line the bottom of the container with newspaper first for easier cleanup.

- Liquid fabric softer mixed with water and a couple of teaspoons of baking soda makes a pretty good "fabric refresher." Spray lightly.

- Ground coffee eliminates skunk or cigarette odors pretty quickly. Just put bowls of it around the room. You have to like the smell of coffee, of course.

- Spent dryer sheets make fabulous dusting cloths.

Ack, my brain just froze. Must need coffee!

-- Lylah

[Jill]

When you are 3 years old and you are trying to brush your hair with a round brush, and the brush gets stuck, use a lot of conditioner to get the brush out so you don't have to cut your hair.

[Heth]

Yay! I'm not the only dishonest mom who sneaks the heels of bread by my kids.

Delurking to say, I love your blog and these tips are great! So sorry about your dryer.....

[HolyMama!]

That apples/sprite tip is positively life changing. My kids will be so glad! (I always wondered how McDonald's did it, but they must have another method.)

My pearl of wisdom which can also just be called 'DUH! Mommy 101':
If you hear the toilet being flushed repeatedly, RUN.
This morning money (as in yes, who knows how many dollar bills) was flushed down the potty.

Usually 'money flushed down the toilet/down the drain' is a figurative statement, but it was literal today in our home.
In short, pearl = run.

[Lisa C]

Dirty shower and dirty high chair or kitchen garbage can? Place high chair or garbage can in shower. Apply non abrasive like Soft Scrub or baking soda to high chair or can. Wet a nylon scrubby. Scrub chair/can. Close shower door/curtain, leaving enough room to reach in and turn shower on. Rinse. Might as well wash yourself or a kid or two. Remove items and people from shower and clean shower.

[Erin]

Thanks for all the advice. I don't have anything to add but I'm learning a lot from these pearls of wisdom. Hope your dryer is fixed soon.

[PJ]

Here's a thought--take your wet laundry over to your neighbor's house and dry it in their dryer! That's what I did when my dryer wasn't working.

And thanks for the other pearls. You rock.

[xenia kathryn]

If you don't have Sprite, dip the apple slices in a bowl of lemon juice or diluted lemon juice. Or brush lemon juice on with a pastry brush.

Put your sponge in the microwave for 1 minute to disinfect it.

Put a paste of baking soda and water on your teeth each night before you brush your teeth. This helps whiten them!

Those are my "gems", whether they are valuable or not :)

[Melissa]

Don't really have anything to add except my motto - A margareta makes everything better.

[Elizabeth]

1) A good trick when you go away on vacation is to place a baggie with a few ice cubes in the freezer. If a power failure occurs while you are gone and the food thaws and then refreezes you will know about it when you get home.

2)For a window and glass cleaner, simply put club soda in a
sprayer and go for it. I clean my floors with a mixture of
water and vinegar in a one-to-one ratio. Finally, the best
scrub I found came from "Clean Home, Clean Planet" by Karen
Logan, which is a great primer on the hows and whys of non-
toxic, handmade cleaners. To make, mix 1 2/3 cup of baking
soda with 1/2 cup of liquid soap. Then, add two tablespoons of
water. Stir in two tablespoons of vinegar (be sure to follow
the proper order to get correct consistency).

3) I am a nurse and recently worked a shift at the local Poison
Control Center. We had a phone call from a frantic mother that
called in and said her four-year-old ate some really hot
peppers and now she was crying. Also, the outside of her mouth
was flaming red. The solution? Apply sour cream. Instantly,
the pain goes away. I had never heard of this. The first thing
I did when I got home was to eat some hot peppers and apply
the sour cream. I was amazed. It works!

I did NOT come up with these - but have them in a TIP file, so they're all original to someone else's credit ;-)

[Carrie]

I am loving the ends of the bread thing! That was a pearl. Totally!

[Anne Glamore]

Love the apple tip. And i am all about sticking things and people in the shower and washing them off. In summer, I do it in the driveway. If the kids are young enough they can be naked and it counts as a bath!

[kalisah]

Ugh....I LOATHE the laundrymat. And lugging wet clothes is horrid. Not to mention heavy.

My only tip is this (it's a good one, though. I use it alot.):

When you leave clothes sitting in the dryer and they wrinkle, throw a wet washrag in there and tumble them on regular heat for a few minutes and it will steam out most of the wrinkles.

I thought everyone did that, but when I was on the phone with my friend the other morning and she was all, "Oh,no! Are there dry clothes sitting in the dryer all wrinkled and now I have to iron them??" I was, "Dude, wet washrag." and she'd never heard of that.

Maybe other people just aren't lazy with the laundry like I am so they're not as resourceful.

[Chris]

Hey! I like the bread hint! It gets a little ugly around here when the heals are all that's left.

[Beth]

I leave my kids apples in the peel - no browning. Am I a bad mother?

[chris]

I want to be you when I grow up, seriously.

The only one I of these that I have used is the sprite one, but I have never done it for the kids just for fruit salads when we have company.

[Dot]

Delurking to say I love your sight. My tips: The shower curtain in the wash is good - you can put it in the dryer, but ONLY for a few minutes to get it hot, this will get the wrinkles out. Hang it up right away and don't leave it in too long as it will melt.

If you have soap scum build up in the shower already, use a magic eraser, also use this on the shower doors and rinse, let dry and it will look like you spent HOURS on it.

Burnt on food in a pot, you can also use dishwashing soap and water and heat and stir till it comes off.

To clean your coffee pot, use Lemon juice instead of white vinegar - Starbucks uses it and it smells better, too!

To clean the bottom of your sink, sprinkle baking soda and dampen, walk away for a while, come back and use brush or sponge then rinse.

Diaper tips - when changing baby, put clean diaper under baby FIRST, that way as soon as you are done wiping and pull the old one away, no accidents on the surface below. Also, if baby has a diaper rash, put cream in new diaper first, thus eliminating cream on your own fingers. Don't use first tip when doing this one!!

Hope those help!

Dot, mom to 6

[Amah]

Mr Cleans Magic Erasers are a blessing in this house. With 3 that write on all kinds of stuff every time ALL eyes are not on them it has cleaned walls, doors, furniture, metal, glass. Crayons, ink, and marker writing. The whirling dervishes have been at it again. I buy the family size!!

[Moe]

Crumb of Wisdom...

Not sure if this qualifies as an actual pearl but, I tried it recently and it worked for me:

When cutting onions and crying your eyes out, wear hubby's workshop safety glasses.(sunglasses work too but it's dark in here)

This works even better if you remember to put them on before you have tears streaming down your face and you're trying to cut the onions with your eyes closed.

[kathy]

You can also dribble fresh lemon juice over apples – it's the citric acid that keeps them from browning. The sharp lemon taste disappears and it's healthier than dousing them with Sprite.

[Natalie]

I'm cracking up about the goggles for chopping onions.. my mom did that once & it was hilarious!

A few tips:
Pour salt on spilled/broken eggs, wait a few minutes & sweep up.

When you're making dinner that is freezable, make two (like spaghetti sauce, taco sauce, lasagne, meatloaf) and freeze one. Then on a day when you are pressed for time, you have dinner ready to heat & serve.

When laundry gets piled up at my house (after I've been sick or super busy) & I don't want to spend all weekend washing/drying, I take it all to the laundry mat. Of course, I take up an entire row of machines.. but that's ok. :) I can have the clothes washed, dried, folded or hung up in about 2 hours. Well worth every penny, IMHO.

[margalit]

We went without a dryer for 6 long months. We hung our clothes out on the porch where I rigged up a few lines and two large drying racks. When we finally got the gas dryer hooked up (no gas line) and put the first load through it was like a religious experince. Soft warm clothes!

You can do emergency jewelery cleaning with a dab of toothpaste. Especially on silver, it takes off the tarnish and rinses clean.

Here via Michele