the ask@AAR: What’s your favorite household hack?
I can barely believe I’m asking this because my interest in cooking/cleaning/sewing–things I think of as household tasks–is minimal. And yet….
During the past year as we have been constrained and limited to, mostly, spending time in our home, we’ve become very focused on the small stuff that make our world run and look better. I’ve found myself seriously shopping for the best shower curtain rather than just grabbing the plain white one on the shelf at Target. I’ve never given this much thought to the balance between comfort and aesthetics for our sheets. It’s a little alarming. That said, our domestic lives are better. I love my microfiber sheets and I’ve never enjoyed preparing dinner more.
As the year yawned on, I began improving all sorts of tiny things I’d never cared much about. I researched and found more ecologically friendly poop bags. My chicken has never been more tender and I’ve learned to make decent tasting cocktails.
Occasionally, this year has inspired me to–incoming cliche!–think outside the box.
We moved, last summer, from our house to a much smaller condo on a high floor. This meant walking Sophie now required getting on the elevator and leaving the building which is much more work than just letting her out in our previous home which had an electric fence. Sophie, like me, is getting on in years and sometimes she’s not up for a stroll. I bought a length of year round sod and my husband built a shallow platform for it. Now, several times a day when Sophie’s aging bladder wants a break, we let her out on our patio and she uses her “tiny yard.” It’s a win for all of us.
I suspect masks will be around in some form or another for a while but we’re moving a place where one doesn’t need to wear them all the time. So, I made mask chains–I’m a beader–and they’ve been a game changer. They’re easy to make and, whoa, do they make taking your mask off and on again and again so much easier.
How about you? What household hacks have you discovered?
Oh! Can’t believe I didn’t think of this earlier: you can polish silver with aluminum, baking soda, salt, and hot water. It’s one of the few useful things I learned in high school chemistry class, and it works like magic. The coolest thing is, the chemical reaction converts silver oxide back into silver, so unlike regular polishing, you don’t lose any of the silver. One caveat: you have to do this in a well-ventilated area, preferably outside. The sulfur it gives off during the process stinks to high heaven.
Here’s Martha Stewart’s simple recipe for this trick, although I’ve seen plenty of others: DIY Silver Polish & Video | Martha Stewart.
This is so cool! I need to try this with some silver earrings that have tarnished so badly even polish doesn’t work. The Martha Stewart link does say (way down at the bottom) that pitting can occur with this technique, but in the case of my earrings, they are already unwearable as is. It’s worth a try.
You’re welcome! My family and I tried this with some heirloom napkin rings that were so black with tarnish that regular polish wouldn’t touch it. They would have been ruined if we kept scrubbing, but this aluminum trick (we used foil instead of an aluminum pot) worked great. We just did a little bit of regular polishing at the end to take care of some of the tarnish that got stuck in the grooves.
Love your “condo sod” Dabney!! and, as a quilter, your beaded mask lanyards.
My hacks are much more mundane: I discovered Bar Keeper’s Friend in the last year. My husband is an excellent cook, has always done most of the cooking for us, and has done a lot more of it in the last year. So the least I can do is keep the pans clean. Bar Keeper’s Friend and a wet wash cloth beats a Dobie pad, steel wool, and brushes and scrapers of all types (e.g. on the roasting pan he uses to cook bacon at high heat).
Also baking soda. Especially baking soda and vinegar on the plastic floor of the shower. How many $$ have I spent on specialty cleaning products only to return, time and again, to baking soda? E.g. rice steamed in an InstaPot can leave the pot cloudy. Baking soda will keep your stainless steel pot looking like new.
The other hack I found when down-sizing: not every “first” or “favorite” (pair of shoes, toy, jeans, trophy) needs to be or can be kept forever. But taking pictures and/or scanning (letters, art projects, school assignments, clothing, memorabilia, ephemera, etc.) is pretty quick, cheap, and easy to do these days. Lots of time at home in the last year to work on getting rid of stuff we don’t want to store long-term.
I really don’t have any household hacks. :-) Until lockdown, I was getting up at 5:45 to make a 75-90 min. commute to downtown LA; didn’t get home till 6:30-7:00 most nights. It was all I could do to keep myself clean and (relatively) well-groomed, keep my plants from dying of dehydration, and buy groceries.
Since lockdown I’m not even doing that. Two people out in the world more than doubles the risk, and L.A. is still a high-risk zone. The husband has to go out because he’s a self-employed physical therapist assistant/trainer; he’s been Chief Hunter & Gatherer ever since. I have not been inside a grocery store since March 15, 2020.
To the extent any cooking gets done, he usually does it, because I’m still (now remotely) working a full week and the job has been busy/stressful. He is not working full-time. My garden looks better, but my house is full of dust. Since nobody else ever sees it, I don’t really care. To the extent I have a ‘hack’ it boils down to read when I want to, write when I want to, sleep at least 6 hours a night, and never skip yoga.
Are you back in the same condo you lived in several years ago? Because that was an amazing space. And I love your mask chains! That’s a great idea. Much better than hanging it off one ear! LOL!
When the pandemic first started and masks were difficult to find, I bought an inexpensive sewing machine and started making them for my family. They were ugly, but did the job at the time. I got better and found ways to put wires in the nose, but even so, when decent reusable masks became readily available, I wasn’t unhappy to abandon mask making. Now I have a perfectly nice sewing machine staring at me, and it produces all kinds of guilt. sigh.
We also love our Instant Pot. I have never enjoyed cooking and this hasn’t changed that. In fact it’s my husband who uses it. I don’t even know how yet and we’ve had it over a year.
I had tons of life hacks when I was raising and homeschooling 5 children in a small house with limited closet space and no wall space for dressers (only wall space for book shelves). But we’re past those days and I haven’t developed any adult life hacks! :-)
This is the same building but a different condo.
Denture cleaning tablets will get tea or coffee stains out of your favorite mug!
They also make for very good and safe jewelry cleaners. Drop your rings into a mug of boiling water with denture cleaner and, minutes later, you’ll get a sparkler!
Don’t do that with emeralds!!! They are far more fragile than diamonds.
Yes. Also, not with pearls.
Or probably opals . . .
The Instapot! We purchased one last year and I love, love, love it. I’ve always enjoyed cooking, but with both me and my husband working full-time (only one child still living at home—but she works full-time too), evening meals were either leftovers, takeout, or something very quickly thrown together. Because the Instapot cooks most things in less than an hour, we can have a nice home-cooked meal, even on weeknights. I love it for stews and soups, but it also makes great chicken adobo, carnitas, brisket, and pasta (six minutes from start-to-finish—and you don’t have to wait for water to boil). I recommend it to anyone who likes to cook but is often pressed for time.
/And now you must tell us about the painting of the woman in the red robe in your photo. She’s very intriguing!
I am so down about the Instapot.
Best hard boiled eggs–my husband eats them every day with pickles #weirdo–on the planet!
The painting is by an phenomenal painter named Rich Nelson who has a gallery in Asheville, NC, a city I adore. My husband and I saw the woman in red about 15 years ago and just fell in love with it. We’ve had it in every front hallway we’ve lived in since. We also purchased the woman in recline from him. There’s so much compassion for his subjects in his paintings. They don’t seem to me to be objects but rather characters you wonder about.
I certainly wondered about the woman in red and I only saw her for a moment in the background of a photo! Coincidentally, we’re in the process of planning a trip to Asheville next summer. I will have to add a trip to Rich Nelson’s gallery to our itinerary. After all, we can’t spend all our time at the Biltmore—lol.
He has a gallery down in the river arts District that he shares with several other artists. I adore Asheville and spend several weeks there a year. If the airport were a better one, we would’ve considered retiring there rather than in the triangle.
Absolutely gorgeous, on first glance I was sure it was a reprint of a famous painting but I couldn’t quite place it. Now I know why.
And I’m in love with Sophie
We got her from the pound when she was six months old and now she’s 10.5. Our one and only dog.