Or, “I wish I’d known about that years ago”. Things that make a task a LOT easier. My nominations are:[ul]
[li]a spading fork (not to be confused with a pitchfork) makes clearing flower beds vastly easier.[/li]copper wool for cleaning cast iron.[/ul]
Hmmm - trying to think of some.
- precision screwdrivers - they make things much easier tha regular screwdrivers (in many cases)
- microplaner - great for setting citrus
- scotch brite pad - will restore satin finish to scratched up stainless steel watch bands
Lye drain cleaner for cleaning burnt-on rice from a pot.
Hem gauge - with the little sliding stop on it, it’s so much easier than a tape measure or ruler
I just used a $7 auger from Lowe’s with quick success on my clogged bathtub that I had previously attempted to unclog several times with useless liquid products. Wish I had known about those a long time ago, will keep forever.
I spent $120 on a FREAKING HUGE Calphalon skillet and found that all those recipes I had been trying which made 4-6 servings of stir-fry or jambalaya or chicken curry were suddenly a snap.
See also: sharpening knives every once in a while.
Similarly, discovering my mom’s 1/4" foot (OK, that sounds funny – I mean on her sewing machine) and later, her walking foot (ditto). I still mostly quilt by hand but these feet make the jobs they’re designed for much easier.
silicone spatulas are so much better than the plastic ones that you probably have 3 of in your kitchen drawer right now. they’re 100x easier to clean and don’t leave weird melty-bits of black plastic in your food.
do yourself a favor and throw those crappy plastic slotted spatulas away.
I have a 15-inch cast iron skillet, it’s a thing of beauty- but I almost never use it because it’s just too damn big for the burners on my stove. The center gets hot and the edges don’t. How do you use a really big skillet on a standard stovetop?
Well, fortunately (hah) I had the world’s smallest stove, so it actually fit over two burners.
[quote=“Lumpy, post:1, topic:642703”]
Or, “I wish I’d known about that years ago”. Things that make a task a LOT easier. My nominations are:[ul]
[li]a spading fork (not to be confused with a pitchfork) makes clearing flower beds vastly easier.[/li][li]copper wool for cleaning cast iron.[/ul][/li][/QUOTE]
Similar to the spading fork… I recently had the pleasure of digging 120’ of trench around my house. I started with a standard shovel, just to see how hard it was going to be. I very quickly decided that buying a trench shovel would be worth it…and wow, did it ever make a difference! Absolutely the right tool for the job.
-D/a
Oh, one I’d forgotten: I’d dug up some metal posts set in concrete that had to be disposed of. Recycling here will take metal posts but not if they still have concrete on them. Solution? A sledge hammer. Cracked it right off.
one of the virtues of a cast iron skillet is its even heating and retention of said heat…so you’re doing it wrong. allow the pan enough time to get hot before you start cooking.
also if you’re using an electric stovetop i’ve seen metal covers that go over the elements that supposedly spread the heat out more evenly over a larger surface area. i haven’t tried them myself though.
I used to teach high school science. All the lab write-ups for demonstrating how fuses work said to use a strip of aluminum foil for the fuse. It was rather difficult to cut a thin enough piece of foil to get it to burn out when short circuited. A bit of steel wool worked every time!
I spent a lot of hours scrubbing bugs off my bike until I learned that spraying peroxide on them would make the bugs just melt off. That is also when I learned that peroxide is in brown bottles because it turns to water if one pours peroxide into a clear bottle instead of putting the sprayer thingy into the peroxide bottle.
The silverware basket in the dishwasher is removable. So remove it when you unload the dishwasher, and carry it around to put up the silverware in the various drawers. We have a drawer for table ware, one for spatulas, and one for everything else.
Then put the basket in the sink while you load the dishwasher. It saves bending down to put that single fork into it. If you can’t completely fill the dishwasher right now, you can put the basket back into it, and drag it out later when it’s time to finish up.
Your back will thank you.
Completely unrelated: Get and keep a pair of cheap scissors for each room in the house. Keep your good scissors under lock and key. This way, when someone wants to cut duct tape, you don’t get stickum all over the blades of your good scissors, and you don’t have to get all stabbity.
Forgot one:
Automatic wire strippers. Works much better then the ones that basically are half circles that come together - and aren’t much more expensive.
To anyone pondering buying a dishwasher when you don’t have one to begin with- consider a portable model. Not only are the silverware baskets removable, but when the machine is finished, you can roll it around the kitchen to the proper cabinets so you don’t have to carry dishes across the kitchen!
And when you do get stabbity: nice, sharp scissors!
(excellent advice-- I’m writing “good, not but not great scissors” on shopping list)
Best advice ever. We have cheapo scissors everywhere and Suburban Plankton has known since the day we moved in together that if he even so much as touches my sewing shears, for any reason other than I ask him to hand them to me, he’s liable to be stabbed…but not with my shears because that would ruin them, probably with a pair of cheapo scissors with the added benefit of those hurting more from being dull.