Great Og almighty! The board has been invaded by Marxists!
If you are pinching pennies, making your own laundry soap, hand soap, and hand lotion is insanely cheap. I used to make six month’s worth of laundry soap for about $7. It’s easy to lose track of what these items do to your grocery bill. You tube has a hundred recipes and methods. (If the recipe starts with Naptha or Zote, boil the water first, before adding them.)
I buy our peanut butter freshly ground at our friend’s farm market. It’s sold in a small plastic container, like you’d get coleslaw in, and has honey mixed into it. When I buy a container we share it three ways; I get a couple of sandwhiches, my gf has a sandwhich and blends some into her smoothies, and Rocco (our parrot) gets a few PB crackers.
We infiltrated back at the beginning! We used to have a full complement - me, Exapno Mapcase (Harpo), Why A Duck (Chico), and Zappo (Zeppo), but the latter two haven’t posted in about 15 years. So now I’ve got just one ‘brother’ on the board.
A little late for folks to act on, but when putting away Christmas lights, I wrap each string around a piece of cardboard, rather than dropping them into a box to get tangled.
For swatting flies, particularly good sized flies, I like the clap method. Place your hands about six inches apart, slightly above the fly, then clap them together. The fly will instinctively jump up to avoid getting hit, and fly right between your hands for a quick death.
I’m not sure what the standard is in the US, but everywhere I’ve lived in Europe you can get canned products with a tab that you pull with your finger to open the can. The same result as the fancy can opener, but you save 10 seconds of your life per can, because the opener is already built in.
My tip here would be to buy the cans with tabs, disregard all other brands.
That reminds me of something that can save you even more time: only buying clothes that are easy to care for, with synthetic additions that make them flexible and less likely to crease. If you see something at the shop and it already has creases just from being handled, do not buy this thing.
Another tip for clothes is to not get them all the way dry in the dryer. Take them out semi-wet but not dripping and hang up to dry. They straighten themselves out under their own weight.
I haven’t used an iron in years except for especially formal occasions.
Speaking of jar openers, this type is by far the most effective. Maybe overkill unless you have arthritis.
Buy yourself one or two big, sturdy trays. Like this.
Keep them with your housekeeping equipment. When it’s time to dust and polish the tops or shelves of tchotchke-laden furniture, it’s easy to move all the stuff off the furniture and onto the tray. This is better than picking up each ornament one at a time to dust under it. When the furniture is all dusted, it’s easy to clean each ornament quickly and replace it.
I also use this method when cleaning out the interior of the refrigerator or the sink vanity tops in the bathroom. It goes much faster.
Thank you very much for this tip. It worked really well for me. I caught two of them within one hour. I had thought that pouring boiling water down the sink drains had solved the problem because I haven’t seen any for a few days.
But they must still be around because they went for that vinegar and water combo with relish.
Yikes! I just realized you said “apple cider vinegar” and I used ordinary vinegar. I will try apple cider and let you know the difference.
Thanks again.
Unfortunately, in the U.S., the only cans that have those tabs are cans of snack foods or other ready-to-eat foods. But canned food that you’re going to bring home, put in the pantry, and open when you’re cooking something - no tabs.
Cans of chicken broth, tomato sauce, kidney beans, evaporated milk - nope, no tabs.
Not in any brand.
Been awhile since I’ve been across the pond, and as tourists staying in hotels, we didn’t give much thought to grocery stores. But whenever I’m next in Europe, I’ll have to check this out.
It’s not something I discuss much with other people, but I get the impression that few Americans use an iron on clothes more than once in a blue moon. We’ve got an iron and an ironing board, but if we use them twice in one year, that’s a busy year for ironing in our house.
My tip for natural peanut butter: go to Whole Foods (literally the only thing I buy there.) You can grind your own, with usually a few different options to choose from. The packages are square and wide, instead of just tall and deep, so you don’t get the same depth of oil and it’s a lot easier to reincorporate it back into the pb. And you could always not fill it to the top. Plus it’s the best pb I’ve ever had. I don’t like crunchy very much but smooth is kind of boring. This has a pleasantly rough texture to it that is a great in-between for crunch and smooth. For Whole Foods, it’s not very pricey.
I haven’t done this one myself, but I read if you have facial eczema, use t-shirts instead of pillowcases and layer them. Each day when you get up, remove the outermost and you have a new one for that night already waiting. Having a new one every day is supposed to help with flare ups and using old t-shirts is a lot cheaper than buying 7 new cases per pillow.
You can also drill or poke a couple of holes near the bottom of your trash can. Then the air can escape whenever a new bag is put in.
I really like the idea of a dustpan for the kitchen counters. You can often find smallish ones at the Dollar Tree that would serve this purpose quite well without taking up as much space as a standard one.
I find not overdrying clothes keeps most wrinkles at bay. Lightweight items generally take about 20 minutes and heavier items or a mix take about 40-45 minutes. If anything is still slightly damp, I hang it up anyway. They dry just fine and it saves another trip down to the basement. Also, I believe not overdrying saves wear and tear on clothing. And the excessive heat probably damages many types of fibers. At any rate, I have things that I wear year after year that still look great despite frequent launderings.
Do you hate how the bottom of a cereal box contains powdered cereal and incy pieces that were crushed under the weight of the rest of the cereal? Grab your almost empty box of cereal, a fryer basket like this, and head to the garbage can. Pour the cereal into the basket while standing over the can, give it a few good shakes, and all the powder and tiny fragments disappear, leaving you with a nice bowl of sludge free cereal to enjoy.
One word to the wise, however: you might think birds or squirrels would enjoy the tiny broken bits. Several trials suggest that they would not, no matter what kind of cereal it is.
If you don’t keep your home environment cold, a couple of pitcher plants will snag your flying pests.
Whenever you need to shake something, like a bottle of dressing, hold the top on. Because the one time you don’t, it won’t be screwed or snapped on and you’ll spray dressing or whatever all over the room.
My dad made that mistake the first time he had dinner at mom’s when they began dating. 
It seems that mom’s family was the “always hold the lid” type and dad’s family was the “always put the lid back on tightly” type.
They are still married 55 years later, so all was forgiven.
I learned early in my second marriage that my wife has a bad habit of not closing containers after using them. It took awhile and many spills to learn to check before shaking a bottle or even grabbing something by the lid to pick it up.
Goya brand beans come in cans with the pull tabs. I have several cans in the pantry right now. It’s not the main reason I buy that brand, but it sure is convenient.
I wrap each string around my hand, secure with re-usable zip-ties (there’s a tab on the lock-down part), and lay them in the bottom of the box like so:
O O O
O O
O O O
O O
O O O
Then insert toilet paper cores in the center of each roll of lights, then a thick piece of cardboard (or something similar–I had some leftover Melamine and cut some pieces) on top. The rest of the display lights (I have strings of “presents”) in their boxes stack on top. You’d be surprised how much weight toilet paper cores can handle.
Yeah, I was going to say, most of my canned beans have pull tabs, but they are all Goya brand. A lot of Campbell’s soups have them, as well. (I don’t know if that comes under “ready to eat,” but I use their condensed soups as a pantry ingredient.)
My Campbell’s soups from their “Great for Cooking” line all have pull tabs.