Tips for the Home and Kitchen...

[boufa06]

To keep ants at bay, half fill a plate with water. Put a small bowl on top. You can then put your covered cake, dish on top.

Use scotch tape to pick up fallen hair on table top, floor, furniture etc.

[Alix]

Boufa, thats a cool idea for the ants. I am hoping that you would only need to use it outside!

As to the Magic eraser, any of you with daughters who are ballerinas, it is the best thing going for cleaning off the ballet slippers (obviously the leather ones, not the canvas ones) before a competition or exam. And calamine lotion is excellent for covering scuff marks on the slippers too.

GB and Michelemarie, I LMAO about taking the paint off! Oops! Thank goodness it was a wall you had to paint anyway GB. I guess most of the fingerprints on my walls are not of the "sticky toddler" variety. Mine are the "preteen-swinging-on-the-newel-post" variety. LOL.

[boufa06]

Alix, living in a tropical country most of my life, ant infestation was quite a problem. So we found out that this method works very well whenever there are sweet stuff in the kitchen. A lot of ants were trapped in the water.

[Dove]

Try keeping your Seran Wrap in the freezer. It is a lot easier to use.

[kadesma]

Making bread? Want it to rise a little quicker? You know those microwaveable neck collars? Heat the collar 1-2 minutes and fit the collar snugly around the bowl of covered dough. Gives the dough a kick start into rising in about half the time.

kadesma

[StirBlue]

Originally Posted by GB

It worked a little too well for me once. My daughter got some nail polish on a wall so I used the magic eraser to get it off. It took some work, but it did get it off, along with the paint underneath. Good thing that is one of the walls that we had not painted yet so I really don't mind.

Why didn't you use nail polish remover?

[GB]

Originally Posted by StirBlue

Why didn't you use nail polish remover?

Because I thought that for sure would remove the paint off the wall.

[subfuscpersona]

keep some Aloe Vera gel in the kitchen - really sooths and heals small burns if you put it on the burn *right away*

[bushy]

Never mind how I came to discover this...

But: If you hit an ant with this stuff, it stops moving now. If you look carefully, you will find that you have created perfect 2-dimensional models of ants.
I suspect that S&W is an enzyeme which dissolves their muscles, leaving only their exoskeletons.
For pure gravy - as long as the stuff is liquid, it forms a 100% effective barrier - I watched an ant start to walk into a wet spot - his front legs dissolved.

[CherryRed]

This thread is great! There's so much in here that I can see myself using. Seran wrap in the freezer? I definitely have to try that one. I'm constantly baking cookies and wrapping them up to give to people.

One of my favorites is to clean tea- or coffee-stained mugs with baking soda. Just put a small amount on a sponge, wet the sponge slightly, and gently scrub the discolored surface. It'll look brand new once you're done. If the stain is especially dark, it sometimes helps to soak it in a mixture of hot water and baking soda for a while before you start scrubbing.

Here's a question: Do any of you know how to get adhesive off of stoneware? My boyfriend got some new bowls for the apartment and the stickers on them are impossible to remove. . . I got one corner up and was so horrified by the amount of adhesive left on the surface that I stopped immediately. Any help you can offer would be great!