Handy Household Tips to Save You Time and Money

With all the chores us housewives have to accomplish everyday, we're always looking for short cuts to assist us in getting things done faster and more efficiently. From cleaning the bathroom to hanging a clothesline, from buying groceries to caring for our kitchen cutlery, as women with a million things to do every single day, we're constantly on the lookout for seemingly great ideas to assist us in our daily lives. Here are a few tips I've found throughout my life that have helped me in my home and everyday life, tips that help me get things done much faster, which gives me much more time to concentrate on the important things in life.

When it comes to cleaning, it seems as if with 5 teenagers in the house, I'm constantly scrubbing or mopping something. But with these simple and easy cleaning tips my household chores are a breeze and get done much faster. My family and I do a lot of outdoor entertaining, and I find that my metal patio table gets rusted after a few months of sitting in the rain. To remove the rust stains and get it looking good as new, I clean it with lemon juice using a soft linen cloth, this restores it to looking good as new. A great use for those lemon halves after using the juice to clean rust, would be to use them to clean the bottoms of your copper pots. Just dip the lemon halves in salt and rub on the bottom of the pan for a few minutes, this removes the rust and restores copper to its shiny, new condition. Have you ever washed walls and windows and found the disgusting, dirty water running down your arms? To prevent this wrap absorbent cotton around your wrists and hold in place with rubber bands. This prevents those uncomfortable trickles from running down your arms. When putting up new clothesline, attach each end to a short length of lightweight chain, then when the line must be shortened, move the chain up notch or two. Tired of those pesky little ants crawling around all over your house? Use some cinnamon and sprinkle around their entrance point, they can't cross over the hot spice so this will keep them out of your home. To absorb those damp, musty odors in the bathroom, place an unopened box of active charcoil behind the toilet, this works wonderful and costs literally pennies. use hydrogen peroxide to remove blood stains from clothing. to keep your chimney clean, throw a handfull of salt into the fire. This works great to clean out the chimney and saves you on the price of paying an old fashioned chimney sweep to do the job for you. To keep your coffee grinder in tip top shape, throw in a cup of rice and run it through the grinder, this works to help keep the grinder clean and the blades sharp. And to polish copper pots and pans use a 1/2 cup of catsup to clean them. Let stand for 5 minutes and rinse off with hot water. This produces a great shine on your pots and pans, it also keeps them looking newer for a longer period of time. For more handy tips to use around the house visit www.bhg.com or www.housekeepingtips.com.