Static on TVs and computer screens
You can keep the dust away for longer by diluting a measure of fabric conditioner in a water spray (from the garden centre) and using it to clean the screens.
Stock Cubes
If you need to use a cube, try this neat trick. Pull out the folded sides of the packet, you can crumble the cube before tearing the foil. Then just rip off the corner and pour the powder out. No lumps, no fuss.
Onion & Garlic Smell
If your hands smell after preparing onions or garlic, rub them over your stainless steel tap. Works the same as one of those odour bar thingys and it's free! Plus you don't have to find the darn thing.
Steamed-Up Mirrors
If you want to stop your bathroom mirrors steaming up, rub a small amount of squirty soap over them - keep polishing until it disappears. Sounds weird, but it works. Submitted by Lily Ffrangeg, via Facebook
Cashback
Sign up (or better still, get your bloke to sign up - men seem to love this sort of thing) to Greasy Palm. You can earn cashback on shopping you were doing anyway, plus get extra just for looking at people websites and stuff. I'm far too lazy for all of that, but I do use it when I'm shopping and it does make us some money. Hubby is now a total cashback slut...
Toys
If you have small children, find a nice-looking 'toybox' for the sitting room. Allow your kids to keep only the toys that fit inside it downstairs; everything else must be tidied away properly. Don't spend your evenings sitting in a sea of garish plastic, it'll drive you crazy!
Stains
Buy a 'Dr Beckmann Stain Roller' roll-on (from the supermarket). They get just about anything out - including red wine from our cream sofa and axle grease from my husband's white work shirt (don't ask)
Addresses
If all your friends keep moving house (and thus filling your address book with crossings-out, how rude), buy an index card box and keep addresses on index card, filed alphabetically by surname. When someone moves, simply replace the card.
Teapots
If your beautiful old teapot is too cracked and crazed to use, but you can't bear to part with it, don't. Use it as a vase instead. Spring daffodils look great on the table in my old Whittard leopard-spot teapot.
Rubber Bands
Hope & pray that your postman is careless. Those red rubber bands they drop everywhere are soooo useful. I use them for holding flowers together while I arrange them, for keeping wrapped food from becoming unwrapped in the freezer, for keeping the camembert box airtight and even used to use them for stopping the pram hood from slipping on windy days. I still pick them up whenever I see them.
Displaying Photographs
A number of different-sized photos in mismatched frames grouped together on the wall looks really good.
Labels
A Dymo LetraTag is worth every penny. You can label anything; it will look tidy and make you feel like a super-organised luminary. The labels don't come off if you use them in the freezer, which helps when you want to choose what soup to have for your lunch tomorrow
Clingfilm
Keep it in the freezer. Sounds totally nuts, but you can always find the end and it doesn't go mad and cling, irritatingly, to everything but the thing which you actually would like it to, er, cling to.
Strawberries & Bananas
Use an egg slicer to slice strawberries and bananas (cut these into chunks first, natch!) evenly for puddings or breakfast.
Cutting Dough
The easiest way to slice a roll of biscuit dough, or pastry rolls for palmiers, etc., is to take a piece of dental floss (NOT mint-flavoured, please!) and put it under the end of the roll. Bring up the sides, cross the ends over above the roll and bring them down to cut. Nice neat slices every time!
