[singlepic=33,560,560,,center]
photo by Chuckmeister
I recently read about a book called Urawaza: Secret Everyday Tips and Tricks from Japan
- Make Your Mother’s Day Flowers Last Longer With Bleach. A few drops of bleach mixed in with the water you put your flowers in will work as well as the preservative the florist uses on cut flowers. If you don’t have bleach, you can also use copper to preserve your flowers–just drop a penny inside the vase. This works because chlorine bleach works as a disinfectant, preventing the growth of bacteria and keeping plant stems from becoming mildewy. Copper is a natural fungicide and also prevents bacterial growth on the stem, which keeps your flowers looking fresh for a longer time.
- Fix a Scratched CD With Toothpaste. Put a small amount of toothpaste on a cotton ball, and then gently rub it from the inside outward on the surface of the scratch. Rinse off excess toothpaste with water. This works because CDs are made from polycarbonate plastic, and if it gets scratched, this can cause the laser to skip when you’re trying to play it. If you use toothpaste as a mild abrasive on the plastic surface, it can even it out just enough to get it to be readable by the player again.
- Boil Spinach, Remove Coffee Stains. The water leftover from boiling spinach can be used, together with an old toothbrush, to remove coffee stains from carpet. Dab the toothbrush in the spinach water, scrub, and then use a towel to absorb the water. It might take a few runs to get it to disappear. This works because the oxalic acid in spinach can have a bleaching effect upon the acidic stains created by coffee. You don’t want to try this on a white carpet, though,since spinach also contains chlorophyll and may leave green stains.
- Clean a Toilet Bowl with Mouthwash. Pour a capful of mouthwash into the toilet bowl and let it sit for fifteen minutes. When you return, scrub and everything will clean up more easily than with a brush alone. Mouthwash is designed to disinfect your mouth and give your teeth a little bit of shine, so you can see why this would transfer easily to cleaning the toilet bowl. Although now that I think about it. Yuck.
- Keep Your Bathroom Mirror From Fogging Up With a Potato. If you rub the glass of your bathroom mirror with the inside of a potato before you take a shower, it will prevent it from fogging up in that portion of the glass, so that you can see yourself when you get out of the shower. The reason it works is because the potato contains protein and starches that absorb water, as well as lepodine, which repels water from the surface to begin with. An easier and probably cleaner solution to this, though, is to use your hairdryer to remove the fogginess from the mirror after you get out of the shower. That one’s all mine.
- Revive a Dying Plant With Garlic. Grate one clove of garlic into two cups of water, then use this to soak the roots of your plant. This works because garlic has an antifungal component that kills fungus on the roots, as well as help to control the spread of disease.
TWEET THIS
