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Discussion Boards => Off-Topic => Topic started by: moonangel on November 05, 2012, 01:25:39 pm
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i tear off a large piece of tinfoil use magnets to hold it in place on my fridge. It is the perfect cheap dry erase board.
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I never thought to do that before. This sounds like something I might start using. I have reused foil before when I'm cooking.
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that is a cool idea. thanks
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I'll have to try that to. Thanks. Here is one for you if you use dryer sheets. Put a sheet in your register vents just make sure it stays attatched. It helps freshening up the room.
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i put dryer sheets in my sock drawer to keep them smelling nice.
i also make my own laundry soap to wash towels and blankets etc in, but use the store bought soap for the more "smelly" laundry lol
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Wow thats really great! I will start doing that! Thats great.
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I know we're coming up on winter and out of ant season, but this is my favorite trick I learned this year. Use Vaseline (or even better, store brand petroleum jelly) to keep ants out. We have cats and couldn't keep ants out of their food. Just a quick swipe of Vaseline around the bowl, and no more ants in their food bowls. It worked so well, I put Vaseline in any of the holes or cracks I found them coming in, so no more ants in our pantry either.
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:thumbsup: wow, it works with the dry erase markers? never tried that.
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i tear off a large piece of tinfoil use magnets to hold it in place on my fridge. It is the perfect cheap dry erase board.
That's an excellent idea! I never knew about that and will have to try it someday.
To the other poster about the Vaseline keeping ants out I like that idea as well and will tell my mom about it.
As for me all I could think of to do was to reuse the packaging that my mail comes in. IE Bubble mailers, boxes etc. I peel off or cover the lables and have reused the packaging (with a note in my description telling the buyer that I do reuse packaging for enviromental and financial reasons) with my ebay sales. I once had a priority mail flat rate box and used it for ebay and just scheduled a pickup as you can with those boxes to avoid getting more supplies in bulk and to save money on shipping. I have several flat rate boxes available so I can avoid a trip to the post office.
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vaseline for ants thats a wonderful idea so safe for small children i use terro but i worry when the grandkids are over but now i will definiterly try vaselline thanks
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8) wow those are all some really neat ideas. I can't think of any neat cheap ideas right now but my son's and I have started taking our tin cans to the local recycle yard and we get the money now instead of them going into the trash, its not like its a lot but every little bit helps :dontknow:
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thats a great idea...i might have to try it soon
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Great ideas, thanks for sharing.
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Ilove the Vaseline idea for ants. I'll give it a try . Thanks for sharing! :wave: :peace:
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To completely eliminate bugs, use powdered boric acid ( the kind you use for eyewash) around cabinet top corners or anywhere you suspect they are entering. Within two weeks any room, apartment or home will be completely bug free. Boric acid is cheap and can be purchased at drugstores. It is safe, harmless to humans. Don't believe it is harmful to pets either but if you have pets you can just place it in higher up locations like countertop corners or shelves. This works excellently on crawling bugs like roaches etc.
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i'll use the plastic bags you get from stores for garbage bags
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I use the boric acid also. It is the best ant repellent ever, it also works on spiders which we have here. No commercial bug spray works on those spiders they are like mutant or something they just shake the spray of and keep spinning, so glad I saw the tip on boric acid, cheap and safe.
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I soak an old piece of scrap flannel in fabric softener, let it air dry and use as a dryer sheet. It works for about twenty loads. Cheap easy was to make the fabric softener last forever.
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I have always used the dryer sheets for my window units air conditioners and throwing some under the seats in the car leaves a great smell too. I think I will try soaking flannel in fabric softener and see how that works. You can also save your small bar soaps and melt them and remold them with an old pringle's can have more soap. Lotion can be watered down too, when you buy a new bottle save the old bottle and divide them in half, add warm water and mix. I usually buy the thickest lotion I can find and this works real well. :peace:
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When I clean up after dinner and have just a few vegetables left over, not enough for the next day. I have a zip lock bag in the freezer, I toss in the leftovers and when I make a vegetable soup or need vegetables around a roast or other meat I take out the bag and use. I also throw the extra vegetables in there when I am chopping up for something and I have a few to many. OK I know I am a cheapskate, but we are really broke.....I do the same thing with little pieces of left over meat, so a lot of the soups I make are really free! They are delicious and really quick to make, since everything for the most part has already been cooked and you use things that probably would have been thrown out. If bread is getting a little stale, I cut it into cubes and saute in butter and spices ......Croutons. Sometimes when I don't have time for that I throw in the blender and make breadcrumbs.
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I'm not sure that I have any use for that but it sounds like a great idea. I love the tip about Vaseline keeping ants out!
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I'll have to try that to. Thanks. Here is one for you if you use dryer sheets. Put a sheet in your register vents just make sure it stays attatched. It helps freshening up the room.
dryer sheets are also great for cleaning eye glasses (after they've been used of course)... once they have been run through the drying they're soft and wont leave lint or scratches on the lenses
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I use baking soda for so many things. It is so cheap. It can be used to deodorize anything. Garbage disposals, refrigerators, even in place of anti perspirant, in a pinch. Mixed with warm water and an aspirin it works just like alka seltzer and just a pinch of soda followed by some warm water works just like Rollaids or Tums. Soda is also excellent when used as a scouring powder for cleaning because it is natural and does not scratch even the most delicate surfaces. It is great for cleaning white atheletic shoes. And if you are one of those people who takes aspirin daily for circulation issues, taking a pinch of soda with the aspirin as a buffer, cuts down your chances of the aspirin irritating your stomach. I have also used a solution of soda and vinegar to do some spot cleaning on carpets.
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We have a lot of yellow jackets in our part of the country. Usually never gets cold enough in the winter to kill them. So we mix boric acid in small cans of catfood. Hang it when the cats can't get to it and no more yellow jeckets.
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I buy the electric insect repellent. You buy it once and it keeps out all the bugs.
Also I use crystal light powder to make our drinks, it's low in calories and you get more for the money.
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I love all these Ideas and have used quite a few of them has anyone heard of moth *bleep* in your flower beds to keep the molse from stealing your flowering bulbs of most kinds works every year for me we also throw the moth *bleep* all around our camp when we close up in the fall keeps the rodents from trying to get under the camp
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If you have mice coming into your house or apartment when the weather outside starts to get cold, cheap steel wool will solve your problem. Just look for the places mice enter. This is usually around any opening where pipes come in; gas stove pipes, plumbing pipes, heating pipes. Usually over time these openings can become wide enough for them to enter and you may suddenly find yourself with a rodent problem where you have never had one before. Simply fill openings around the pipes with the steel wool and mice will not come near it because it cuts them. Much cheaper than an exterminator.
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when my kids lived at home they kept ruining my bulliten board i kept their chore list and events listed on it so i took three sheets of cardboard placed them together used duct tape around the edges poked a hole in the back stuck it on a nail they never tore it up its still hanging up right where i put it .
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I would also get anything that would work to get ride of bugs. I hate bugs.
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Ill definitely be trying this, great idea!
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Great tips! Both the foil and the vaseline. Here's a fun tip...the most inexpensive and irresistable cat toy in the world is.....(drum roll please)...used dental floss!
They can't resist it! You can run their little buts all over the place with it until they're to tired to play anymore (which is a great way to insure that they will allow you to sleep thru the night).
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Some really great ideas here. Thanks for the tips!
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So many awesome tips here ... can't wait to try them. Thank you to everyone for your contribution.
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Definately a good idea. I also have reused tinfoil but not like that. Got to try it
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Thank you for the tips. I love to hear of lower cost solutions/free ways to take care of things.
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i haven't done it but my mother would wash out ziploc bags turn them inside out to dry.Use cloth towels instead of paper towels just be sure you have a ton of towels can get them at the 99cent store. I found that bathroom mirrows only need to be wet to clean don't really need windex and dust with kleenex can get into hard to reach places.
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I save all of my dryer sheets from the laundry. I put them in the laundry bag along with the dry cloths that I bring home and put them in the dresser drawers with the cloths when I put the cloths away.
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i put dryer sheets in my sock drawer to keep them smelling nice.
Wow! I never thought of that but that is such a great idea, I love it! I'm going to have to start doing it ;D
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i'll use the plastic bags you get from stores for garbage bags
That's a good one short. We do that too. My mother has done that for years. She just saves the bags and puts them into the trash bin for this. She found that Meijers and Walmart bags work better for the Kitchen bin which is larger and gets a lot more trash, since their a little longer. Any other grocery bag will work for the smaller bathroom trash bins as long as the bag isn't a mini.
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And one from us that we did today. We had a sink that absolutely would not drain. Well, my husband had the bright idea to run the garden hose into the house and stick it down the drain. Seal around the drain with an old rag and turn the water on full blast.
It didn't take but running the hose for a minute and then pulling everything out. Our sink drains better than it has ever drained since we've owned our house and we didn't have to spend hundreds of dollars for a service call from a plumber.
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We make our own foaming soap, both for dish and hand washing. If you fill the pump bottle 3/4 - 1 inch from the bottom with liquid hand soap or dish soap, then fill the rest of the bottle with warm water and gently shake. You may need a little more or less depending on the size of your pump dispenser.
We use cloth napkins in place of paper napkins, we have cloths we use instead of paper towels and rarely use paper plates.
Also, we have cut back and rarely use the dryer, but hand all our clothes up to dry.
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To completely eliminate bugs, use powdered boric acid ( the kind you use for eyewash) around cabinet top corners or anywhere you suspect they are entering. Within two weeks any room, apartment or home will be completely bug free. Boric acid is cheap and can be purchased at drugstores. It is safe, harmless to humans. Don't believe it is harmful to pets either but if you have pets you can just place it in higher up locations like countertop corners or shelves. This works excellently on crawling bugs like roaches etc.
Allot of people put it in the walls when they build a house. You can also cut a hole and put some in the walls and then just patch the holes.
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I do recycle all our aluminum cans. Not a lot of money, but every few dollars adds up. I cook almost every day from scratch. Cheaper than eating out or frozen dinners. If I'm short on time, I use the slow cooker. I buy generic foods a lot instead of name brands and use coupons as much as possible. We grow a garden in the summer. We change the oil in the cars at home. Just a few ideas.
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thats a good idea!
Thank you :)
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I'm so glad someone started this thread. There are some great tips on here. I would like to add a couple of my own. We recently moved further out into the country. Now we're on well water and our laundromat's are that much further and the prices are a little higher compared to where we used to live. So we bought a wonder washer. It works great on so much of our laundry we save about $20 per week...can't do jeans or sweatshirts in it but that's ok. If you don't mind you're clothes being a little crunchy from line drying it get's the job done...less gas in trips to the laundromat, less use of electricity and even less detergent is required.
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a lot of good tips in this thread will definitely have to come back to it thanks everyone :thumbsup:
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when my sink gets clogged i pour baking soda down the drain and then dump vinegar down the drain on top of the baking soda and most of the time it will "bubble" the clog out... I recently tried this on my tub it was just draining really slow but i noticed that eact time i done it it drained a little faster i done it once a day for 3 days then it drained just fine YAAY
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I think that's a cool idea! :thumbsup: Sometime's when you use a dry erase board they don't come clean every time. I like the idea Thanks! :)
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I soak an old piece of scrap flannel in fabric softener, let it air dry and use as a dryer sheet. It works for about twenty loads. Cheap easy was to make the fabric softener last forever.
I am the queen of innovative uses for things, but this is a new one for me! I love it!
My parents use the liquid Coffeemate Creamer. I run them on the bottom rack of the dishwasher to get them super clean, take off the plastic label and have a great food grade water bottle! The top stays on and snaps shut, so it never gets lost and doesn't spill. i also use them for all of my craft supplies like googly eyes and pom poms. You can see through them and they look nice- they are super clear with a bright red top.
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We have a wonder washer too. I also found a commercial size salad spinner that I can fit what ever was in the wonder washer and get much of the water out. Also is hand crank so no electricity used for that either. Good old fashioned elbow grease. ;D
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I moved out of a FEMA camper and left a dryer sheet in the refrigerator. It's a nice deodorizer.