Fingers protector
Did you know that you can slit an old piece of garden hose along one side and slip it over the blade of a hoe or an axe to prevent damage to little and big fingers? This works really well if they are freshly sharpened.
Homemade produce wash
I have used this recipe for years. It’s so much cheaper than the packaged and bottled version and works just as well. It will wash the dirt and bacteria off of your freshly purchased apples or any other fruit and even works on all sorts of vegetables such as carrots, green beans, etc.
- 2 cups of water;
- 1 teaspoon baking soda;
- 1 teaspoon citric acid, found in powder form in any supermarket, in the canning section where the lids and rings are located;
- 1 teaspoon lemon extract, find it along with the vanilla and others. The alcohol in the extract kills the germs; and
- Few drops of grapefruit oil, it’s mostly for the smell, it doesn’t cost much and it works.
With all the bugs going around all the time any more, the first thing I do when I bring anything fresh into the house is to take it out of the packaging, sack or whatever and give it a good bath and then a rinse. I’ve never had anyone get sick from anything we’ve used it on, so I know this works.
Big rubber bands for free
When those rubber gloves you wear for dishwashing or floor scrubbing or wall washing get holes in them, don’t just toss them. Cut the cuff part into big stretchy rubber bands of various widths to hold all sorts of big bags shut. I fill a big garbage bag with our freshly washed sleeping bags every fall when we quit camping and use a couple of the big bands to hold the top shut tight and no dirt or dust can get in to them even though they are stored in the garage.
Bug juice remover
One of the not so much fun things about traveling during the warmer months is the bugs and the gunk they leave behind after you run into them. It gets all over the front of the vehicle and even on the front of the camper trailer if you pull one of them. It’s sticky and hard to remove!
A friend of mine worked at a gas station and one of the customers shared a really good idea with her. Get some cooking spray at the grocery store and spray the bumper, grill and any overhead area without windows with the spray. The bugs do stick to it when they hit, but cleanup is much easier because you can just take an old rag or a paper towel and wipe away most of the bug juice and body parts. You do not want to get the spray on any of the rubber seals around windshields or windows of a camper because it may damage that but it’s a really easy way to keep the metal parts much cleaner.
Window cleaning tools
One of the best ideas that’s been shared with me was to simply use some of those orange sticks used in manicure places to dig out the tightest of corners without resorting to a kitchen paring knife. I set my daughters to work one day digging out and they just loved it. They would dig out the dirt and then vacuum up the yuck and then Mom got to wash the windows. The work was shared a bit and we had some fun. We live in a very old house and it’s not real tight around the edges so we get dust most of the year as we are in a small town surrounded by farms.
