How to Give Your Carpet New Life

With the summer sunlight streaming in to your home, is your carpet looking, well, a little old? Don’t spend hundreds or even thousands on new carpet. Instead, try the following tips to give your carpet some new life. Rearrange the Furniture Carpet can get worn spots from all of that traffic. Change up the traffic patterns and you may just be able hide those matted or worn spots and reveal fresh new carpet that was previously hidden by your furniture. It makes good sense to change your furniture every so often anyway. Creating new traffic patterns will extend the life … Continue reading →

Simple Things Work

Eucalyptus oil is one of those commodities no home should be without. Eucalyptus oil for me brings back memories of childhood. When I was a child, my mother put it on the pillow at night whenever I had a cold. She also put it on handkerchiefs. It’s something I did with our children when they were young too. All these years later I still use a couple of drops of eucalyptus oil on the pillow to help me breathe, when I have a cold or flu. It seems to clear the nose like nothing else does. The other way to … Continue reading →

Saving on Electricity

With the price of electricity tipped to rise considerably in Australia, and probably the same in other countries, we need to find ways of saving money.So here are a few tips for saving on electricity. Switch off lights when you leave a room. It sounds simple but it’s amazing how many people don’t. Also make sure to switch off appliances when they are not in use. Don’t leave these switched on. Overhead fans are much cheaper to run than an air conditioner and quite effective. Use of blinds, curtains and awnings is another way of keeping heating and cooling costs … Continue reading →

Dental Floss to the Rescue

This inexpensive staple can really help you around the house. If you find yourself in need, take a look at the list below. Here are ten different uses for dental floss in your home. 1. When cookies are stuck on a baking sheet, use a piece of dental floss to release the, Just slide the floss under the cookies. You’ll loosen them without any breaks. 2. Use dental floss to hang picture frames, wind chimes and any other decorations or accents that need to be hung. Double the floss for heavy frames. 3. If you have a mesh bag or … Continue reading →

More Inexpensive Home Decorating Ideas

Last week we looked at some inexpensive home decorating ideas. Here are some more. Use your photographs as a decoration. One way is to make a collage of photos from your family’s life. I used to have one large wall in our family room dedicated to photos of our family. Eventually it spread to two walls. You could track our family, and the various homes we’d lived in and pets we’d had, through that wall. I bought simple inexpensive frames and then rather than only put half a dozen or so photos in the allotted spots. I took the sectioned … Continue reading →

Tackling Mount Washmore: Easy Laundry Solutions

It is amazing how quickly laundry piles up isn’t it? Just like Hercules, you no sooner get to the end when it build right back up again. If you dread the task of doing laundry, try the following easy solutions to make your life a little bit easier. Get into a morning routine. Throw one load of laundry into your washer each morning as part of your routine. Then, hang or put the laundry in the dryer when it is done or at the end of the day. Fold and put them away the same day. If you do one … Continue reading →

Great Home Tips

I’m always searching for great tips that I can use around the house. Sometimes the simplest solution is the most ingenious. When faced with a common problem, little household tips can come to the rescue. Here are some ideas that I have been thinking about or practicing lately. I keep a spray bottle with a half vinegar and half water mix under the bathroom sink, along with some soft rags. The spray bottle and rags make it easy to clean up the shower doors, the sink and anywhere in the bathroom in just a few minutes. Plus I know that … Continue reading →

Tips in the Kitchen 3

Don’t you just love it when you find a tip that makes your time in the kitchen so much better? I’ve been sharing some of my best kitchen-related tips and strategies. While melting chocolate in a microwave can be more convenient than using a double boiler, it can quickly become a disaster. Chocolate burns easily. To help reduce the chances of this happening to your chocolate, use a clear glass bowl that will allow you to see the progress of the chocolate in the microwave. Heat it in 30-second intervals, and always stir it between heating times. Sometimes what looks … Continue reading →

Tips in the Kitchen 2

Whether you want to spend more time in the kitchen or less, having an array of great kitchen tips on hand can make your time go by smoothly. Here are some more handy tips that you can use in and around the kitchen. You can reduce the sting in your eyes when cutting garlic by a number of ways. If you store your onions in the refrigerator, they will become sweet instead of stinky because some of the starch will convert into sugar (this will change the taste a bit, too). You can also make sure that your onion is … Continue reading →

Tips in the Kitchen

Whether you are Betty Crocker or Mrs Take Out, kitchen tips can make your life easier. From cooking shortcuts to cleaning dilemmas solved, isn’t it nice to know that help is on its way? If you are cooking anything that contains milk, eggs and flour (such as pancakes or a sauce), rice or pasta, and things get sticky, here is a tip to clean those pans up easily. First soak the pan in cold water. Hot water can set the starch in these foods, making cleanup tougher. The easiest way to make pie dough for a pie crust is by … Continue reading →