This is great advice. Do the same for dental floss, too - I have a box on my computer desk, a box by my bed, a box in the living room, and a box downstairs in the media room. Wherever I’m hanging around in the evening, there’s a convenient box of floss for me to floss with whenever I feel like it.
(And if you pick up a pen and it doesn’t write, THROW IT OUT. It’s not likely to get any more filled with ink next time you pick it up.)
---
### Author:  [@Quartz](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Quartz)
#### Post date: [April 3, 2005, 7:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/share-your-random-minorly-useful-tips-and-tricks/296863/143 "2005-04-03T19:39:39Z")
To clean copper, use salt and lemon wedges.
---
### Author:  [@DoctorJ](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DoctorJ)
#### Post date: [April 3, 2005, 8:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/share-your-random-minorly-useful-tips-and-tricks/296863/144 "2005-04-03T20:59:14Z")
> [@glassy](#):
>
> Like so: Place garlic clove on your cutting board. Rest the flat of your knife on top of the clove, holding the handle loosely with your left hand. Give the flat of the knife blade a firm, fast smack with your right palm, crushing the garlic. (Don’t do this with an itty-bitty paring knife, get a chef’s knife. If you’re hinky about smacking the knife, I suppose you you can use a pan or something to crush the garlic, but I’ve never cut myself doing this.) Remove knife and easily separate peel from the crushed garlic.
I use a dough scraper for this purpose. The chef’s knife works fine, but I just like doing it this way. I have one that is fairly sharp, and I can also use it to hack off the little nubs on the end.
You don’t have to crush the garlic; it takes surprisingly little force to release the peel from the clove, if you want the clove intact. Why would you want that? Because it makes it much easier to use in your [big wide Microplane](http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/B00004S7VJ/qid=1112560329/sr=8-2/ref=pd_csp_2/102-0422515-7124113?v=glance&s=kitchen&n=507846) with [slider attachment](http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/B00009WE3W/qid=1112560329/sr=8-8/ref=pd_ka_1/102-0422515-7124113?v=glance&s=kitchen&n=507846). Forget the garlic press; this is by far the best tool I’ve found for preparing garlic, plus it has a zillion other uses. (Like Alton Brown, I’m really not fond of unitaskers.) (Note that there is nothing wrong with just mincing it with a chef’s knife, either.)
Other kitchen tips (which may or may not be well-known):
To juice a lemon or a lime, cut it in half and wedge a half into the “handle end” of your kitchen tongs, then squeeze together the “tong end”. The best tool for straining out the seeds on the other end is your other hand. You can also get more juice out of a lemon or lime if you microwave it for about fifteen seconds and/or roll it firmly on the countertop before you cut it.
You have a far smaller chance of getting bits of shell in your eggs if you crack them on a flat surface (say, the countertop) instead of on the side of the bowl.
If you don’t want to buy one of those fancy “proofing baskets” for bread, rub flour into a clean “jersey-style” pillowcase and set a large colander inside it. Then place your once-risen dough in the colander, on top of the pillowcase. Cover with a kitchen towel. My experience is that the jersey-style pillowcases hold flour better than other kinds. Once your loaf has risen again, you can turn it out right onto a piece of parchment on your peel.
For ultra-crusty bread, place a small pan of water at the bottom of the oven before you pre-heat it. (I use a small cast-iron skillet.) Steam=crust.
Don’t spend $30-40 on a pizza stone at the gourmet shop when unglazed quarry tile from the hardware store does the same job for about $3. (The only problem is that the big-box hardware stores in my area–Lowe’s and Home Depot–have stopped carrying this sort of tile, but it can be found.) It is just fine to use four or six small tiles instead of one big one; even if you bake directly on them (which you should), the seams will make no difference in the final product. When they get all cruddy and discolored, you can replace them.
---
### Author:  [@WhyNot](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/WhyNot)
#### Post date: [April 3, 2005, 10:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/share-your-random-minorly-useful-tips-and-tricks/296863/145 "2005-04-03T22:04:05Z")
To clear up this lavender essential oil debate, it’s probably best to understand that essential oils are not actually oils. They’re alcohols. Use of a small amount on a first degree burn is very safe. A larger or more serious burn and I’d be concerned about the alcohol drying out the damaged skin. But lavender is one of the few essential oils gentle enough to use neat (undiluted).
> [@DrDeth](#):
>
> There are **no** drugs- prescripion or OTC, Vet use or human use- that would keep you from getting a cold, or cure a cold. Colds are caused by a variety of viruses.
This isn’t strictly true. There are, but the cost and/or side effects aren’t worth it for most of us. The attending physician in my daughter’s neo-natal intensive care unit did get a cold our second week there, and it lasted less than 24 hours because of something he prescribed himself. He told me the name of it, but said it’s really only used by doctors who treat immune compromised patients - so they don’t spread a virus through the unit.
Still, they’re certainly not something I’d want to prescribe myself from a veternary kit, if they’re even available for such use.
Hmmm… do I need to come up with a tip to justify the posting? I can’t think of anything good. Let’s see, I keep a whole bunch of hairbands wrapped around the handle of my hairbrush. That way, I don’t have to go looking for the little buggers all over the house when I want to put my hair in a ponytail.
A squeeze of lemon juice (even the from-concentrate kind) will perk up any cream-of-something soup and make it taste fresh made - even the condensed kind. It’s also great in any casserole containing a cream-of-something soup or mayonaise.
I only have a couple of bras, because they’re so expensive in my size. When I take a shower, I take my bra off and drop it in the bottom of the tub. As I shower, it gets soap and shampoo on it, and I stomp on it and swish it in the soapy water with my foot a few times. When I’m ready to get out, I simply pick up the bra, rinse it in the shower stream and hang it over the curtain rod. Saves the time of taking a shower and separately hand-washing my bra every night.
---
### Author:  [@DoctorJ](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DoctorJ)
#### Post date: [April 3, 2005, 11:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/share-your-random-minorly-useful-tips-and-tricks/296863/146 "2005-04-03T23:24:14Z")
> [@](#):
>
> Don’t put the medicine in your mouth first then drink the water. Then you have to taste the nasty stuff. Get a half a mouthfull of water, tilt your head back, drop in the medicine and swallow. You barely ever taste a thing.
It’s actually much easier to swallow a pill with your head facing straight forward than with it tilted back.
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### Author:  [@Battle\_Pope](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Battle_Pope)
#### Post date: [April 4, 2005, 12:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/share-your-random-minorly-useful-tips-and-tricks/296863/147 "2005-04-04T00:29:49Z")
If you have any rusty old steel tools - files, axe or hammer heads, wrenches. Make up a 12:1 mix of water:molasses and drop the tools into it. It may take a few weeks but the rust will be gone. It also leave the tools with a nice ‘gun-metal’ finish.
If the tools have wood or plastic handles, remove them or figure out a way to suspend them so only the metal is immersed.
[Here](http://members.iinet.net.au/~ash4/index/image/bolts.jpg) is a before/after photo of an old .22 bolt that we put through this.
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### Author:  [@Tentacle\_Monster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tentacle_Monster)
#### Post date: [April 4, 2005, 2:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/share-your-random-minorly-useful-tips-and-tricks/296863/148 "2005-04-04T02:13:40Z")
This is only really useful for the Linux users out there.
Suppose you’re running a program (usually a game in this case) that requires you to have a set of data files that you get elsewhere. However, the documentation sucks and you can’t find out exactly where you’re supposed to put them.
1. Get _strace_, a program that prints all system calls to stdout. This comes installed standard with SuSE. I had to install it myself under Gentoo. I can’t speak for other distros.
2. In your terminal of choice, do this:
```auto
$ strace programname
```
Where programname is obviously the program you’re trying to run.
1. _strace_ will spit what looks like a bunch of crap out in the xterm and exit when the program does. However, nestled near the end of this crap will be the names of the directories that the program you traced looked for the data files it needed before it peed the carpet and quit.
2. Put the files where the program expects them to be and hey presto, it works.
This helped me install different ports of Doom and Quake, and also helped me find where xmame wanted me to put its roms. _strace_ can also be used to find configuration files in a similar manner.
---
### Author:  [@Shoeless](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shoeless)
#### Post date: [April 4, 2005, 3:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/share-your-random-minorly-useful-tips-and-tricks/296863/149 "2005-04-04T15:31:06Z")
My stepdaughter, who used to work in a music store, taught me this excellent trick for easily removing that sticky label that they use to seal the top of a CD jewel case. After removing the shrink wrap, gently pop out the bottom “hinge” on the jewel case spine. You can then flip open the jewel case vertically rather than horizontally – the label now acts as the hinge. (At the music store, they did this so that they could open the jewel case without breaking the seal so that they could play the CDs in-store then later shrink-wrap them again and sell them as new.) However, once you have the jewel case open in this way, it is a simple matter to peel the label back off of the two halves of the jewel case. Then just pop the cover of the jewel case back into place.
---
### Author:  [@StillWL](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/StillWL)
#### Post date: [April 4, 2005, 4:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/share-your-random-minorly-useful-tips-and-tricks/296863/150 "2005-04-04T16:17:46Z")
When you get a bottle labeled for pharmacy use and a xeroed page of instructions wrapped around it telling you to quarter the (then penicillian) tabs for feline use, you can be relatively certain that these were not created for vet use. In another case, I am hard put to explain why an antibiotic for aquarium use would be put in 250mg capsules - the fish don’t swallow them, and the capsule simply slows dispersal. These also look like human drugs re-labelled to allow non-'script use. My MD is aware that I use these (it’s a mild broad-purpose antibiotic) and sees no cause for alarm (and he’s easily alarmed). There are other things sold at vet supply stores which I will not publicize, but this one seems benign enough - and yes, I know better than to over-use antibiotics. I have seen other antibiotics for aquarium use which were simply a coarse powder mixed with a binding agent - these, I would not touch.
Sorry, I was using “cold” as a catch-all for any upper respiratory infection - maybe “sore throat, sniffles, mildly elevated termperature, with or without muscle ache” would have been the better expression, but “cold” does it for me.
> [@DrDeth](#):
>
> There are **no** drugs- prescripion or OTC, Vet use or human use- that would keep you from getting a cold, or cure a cold. Colds are caused by a variety of viruses.
>
> You _can_ buy antibiotics at certain large Feed stores. They are meant for your livestock. However, if you are poor (and can’t afford a Vet), using some on Fido if he gets an absess or other _bacteriological infection_ isn’t a terrible idea.
>
> However, unless Hammerfall comes or something- do not, repeat **NOT** take these yourself! You run a very real danger of having been infected by an antibiotic restistant strain- or perhaps helping a strain achive antibiotic resistance.
---
### Author:  [@Annie-Xmas](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Annie-Xmas)
#### Post date: [April 4, 2005, 5:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/share-your-random-minorly-useful-tips-and-tricks/296863/151 "2005-04-04T17:34:51Z")
Hard stale bagels can be revived by wrapping them in a wet paper towel and microwaving for about a minute.
---
### Author:  [@WhyNot](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/WhyNot)
#### Post date: [April 4, 2005, 6:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/share-your-random-minorly-useful-tips-and-tricks/296863/152 "2005-04-04T18:17:28Z")
> [@Annie-Xmas](#):
>
> Hard stale bagels can be revived by wrapping them in a wet paper towel and microwaving for about a minute.
Or they can be sliced, brushed with melted butter and minced garlic and toasted, making bagel chips for snacking \*or \*croutons for later use.
---
### Author:  [@klintypooh](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/klintypooh)
#### Post date: [April 4, 2005, 6:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/share-your-random-minorly-useful-tips-and-tricks/296863/153 "2005-04-04T18:45:59Z")
Going to a football match? Light a match for every goal/touchdown scored and put it in your pocket. At the end of the game, count the matches to find out the score!
🙂
---
### Author:  [@brownie55](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/brownie55)
#### Post date: [April 4, 2005, 6:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/share-your-random-minorly-useful-tips-and-tricks/296863/154 "2005-04-04T18:59:53Z")
Slow drains?
Bleach straight, is better than any of the “plummers.” Also works great to keep them from getting clogged in the first place. A gallon down the kitchen sink every other month will keep most of the line clear.
---
### Author:  [@lizardling](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/lizardling)
#### Post date: [April 4, 2005, 7:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/share-your-random-minorly-useful-tips-and-tricks/296863/155 "2005-04-04T19:25:30Z")
> [@DoctorJ](#):
>
> It’s actually much easier to swallow a pill with your head facing straight forward than with it tilted back.
Split the difference – I take a few gulps of liquid before swallowing a pill to prime my throat, then do the following:
1. Toss the pill in and take another mouthful of liquid
2. Immediately toss my head back to make the pill sink to the back of my mouth
3. Bring my head back to level, and swallow the lot.
So the liquid’s acting as a chaser for the pill, in effect, and I don’t have to worry about it getting ‘stuck’. This method and years of practice (I was asthmatic as a kid, had to take capsules everyfreakinday) have ensured that pills rarely if ever melt.
Other hints:
If you have cats, get a Litter Locker. It’s like those diaper bins – dump litter in, turn the wheel to lock it, and presto. No more having to deal with rummaging for a plastic bag that doesn’t have holes in it and can be knotted. Just chuck out the full plastic tubing every couple of weeks. Although you do have to hit the local pet store to pick up the canister refills, but IMO that’s a small price to pay, especially when you’ve got two part-Maine Coons.
---
### Author:  [@Spectre\_of\_Pithecanthropus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Spectre_of_Pithecanthropus)
#### Post date: [April 4, 2005, 8:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/share-your-random-minorly-useful-tips-and-tricks/296863/156 "2005-04-04T20:02:21Z")
If you have to install a tiny screw, and because of the awkward position or angle you keep dropping it, you can weakly magnetize the screwdriver by holding it on a tabletop at a low angle, pointing North, and then giving it a sharp rap with another tool. Then, chances are, the weak magnetic attraction will be enough to hold the tiny screw on the end of the driver until you get it in place.
---
### Author:  [@Dob](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dob)
#### Post date: [April 4, 2005, 8:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/share-your-random-minorly-useful-tips-and-tricks/296863/157 "2005-04-04T20:24:29Z")
This one works great for new spills on carpets and such. Instead of reaching for a towel to clean up a spill, use sugar. The sugar crystals suck up the liquid faster and more completely than any towel will. then just vacum up the sugar, presto, spill gone and usually no stain at all.
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### Author:  [@Annie-Xmas](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Annie-Xmas)
#### Post date: [April 4, 2005, 8:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/share-your-random-minorly-useful-tips-and-tricks/296863/158 "2005-04-04T20:32:13Z")
> [@brownie55](#):
>
> Slow drains?
>
> Bleach straight, is better than any of the “plummers.” Also works great to keep them from getting clogged in the first place. A gallon down the kitchen sink every other month will keep most of the line clear.
A cup of baking soda followed by two cups of boiling water will do the same thing, and it is cheaper and greener.
---
### Author:  [@BarnOwl](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BarnOwl)
#### Post date: [April 4, 2005, 9:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/share-your-random-minorly-useful-tips-and-tricks/296863/159 "2005-04-04T21:08:38Z")
> [@brownie55](#):
>
> Slow drains?
>
> Bleach straight, is better than any of the “plummers.” Also works great to keep them from getting clogged in the first place. A gallon down the kitchen sink every other month will keep most of the line clear.
What does a gallon of bleach e.o.m. do to one’s septic tank?
And what do you put down the toilet to merit such extreme shit? 🙂
---
### Author:  [@BarnOwl](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BarnOwl)
#### Post date: [April 4, 2005, 9:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/share-your-random-minorly-useful-tips-and-tricks/296863/160 "2005-04-04T21:11:48Z")
> [@lizardling](#):
>
> Split the difference – I take a few gulps of liquid before swallowing a pill to prime my throat, then do the following:
>
> 1. Toss the pill in and take another mouthful of liquid
> 2. Immediately toss my head back to make the pill sink to the back of my mouth
> 3. Bring my head back to level, and swallow the lot.
1. Pat my stomach
2. Rub my head
3. Hop about my left foot.
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