Home & Garden: Helpful Household Hints
Our collection of helpful hints, timely tips and money-saving ideas

Does spring cleaning fever have you in its grip? Wondering where to begin? Tacky Living is here to help with the news you can use.

Getting Started
You'll want to collect essential supplies before getting to work:

1. A dog - In addition to providing a friendly ear and companionship, Fido/Roverette can be unbelievably helpful in the domestic arena, including:
   • Ecologically sound disposal of non-compostable leftovers
     
   • Cleanup of spilled food
     
   • Pre-cleaning of dirty dishes
   • Disguising bouts of intestinal gas
   • Locating things which are rotten
2. Dirt - You really can't clean a house without dirt. After all, what would be the point? If your house is already spotless but the spring cleaning urge is inescapable, try the old door-to-door vacuum salesman's trick of pouring some soil right out into your carpeting. Or come over to our place, we've got plenty for you to do here.
3. Some of those cleany-uppy thingies - We think you can get them at the supermarket, in one of the aisles near the alcohol.
   

Throw It Away

Underwear with stains - You don't want to be caught wearing dirty underwear if you're in an accident! Please, people, don't sell them to perverts on eBay. Keep a few shreds of your dignity.

Keep It Forever

• Air-filled packing pillows from Amazon boxes - We're not going to tell you what to do with these, but if you combine a lawn chair and about fifty of these, you've got yourself a rockin' pool thingy.
• All cardboard boxes which come to your house - Use these to make a funky addition to your house, à la the Winchester Mystery House.
• Dryer lint - Lint is the poor man's bronze, great for sculptures. Wash and dry similarly-colored clothes together so you can collect different colors!
• Bacon fat - Boil up a little fat and a little lye, and you've got yourself soap. You'll be glad you know how when the apocalypse comes and the soap factories shut down.
• Those little bags of silica gel - The bags always say to throw them away, but they don't mean it.
• Old tires - These have lots of uses, but the best is probably making tire swans.
• Old washing machines - Need to mix up a giant cake for a party or maybe a batch of cement? You're set.
• Hair clippings - Like scrapbooking? Glue real hair and beards on the photos for extra authenticity.
• Sanitary napkins, tampons - Even if you're past the "pause", stash a few of these away, especially if they're in an unopened box. They'll be worth a bundle on eBay someday!
  
• Old TV Guides - Ditto.
  

Don't Waste Your Time

• Cleaning before guests arrive - Don't bother. Guests like to gossip about you after they've gone home. That's why they came to visit. Why not give them something to talk about? Besides, the house will be dirty an hour after they arrive anyhow.
• "Mildew" - Look in your shower. See the black stuff between the tiles? Yeah. Despite what they say on TV commercials, it isn't a result of poor cleaning. During an early genetic engineering back in the 70s, some grad student thought it would be funny to modify a microbe so it would poop out chocolate. Biological controls weren't all they could have been then, and the bacterium escaped. Of course, the cleaning and chocolate industries don't want word to get out. Don't say that we told you, though, and for heaven's sakes don't get caught licking the grout!
• Washing towels - Everybody goes nuts washing their towels once, maybe twice a week. Why? When you get out of a shower or bath, you're the cleanest thing around! You're not gonna make a towel dirty by drying yourself on it. Really, you don't ever need to wash your bath towels, but if you just gotta, limit it to every six months or so.

Household beauty secrets:

• Callus removal - Our favorite beauty tool does double duty in the garage, the humble palm sander! Of course, there's probably some safety reason one shouldn't do this, so we didn't tell you to do it. Remember: lower grit numbers equal larger particle sizes and rougher sandpaper. We like to start with 100 grit and work our way down to 400.
• Moisturizer - The next time you're frying up a turkey, wipe any spilled oil droplets on your hands to moisturize them.
• Lip gloss - Blend up your own from petroleum jelly and food coloring. It won't work worth a flip without an emulsifier, but you can try it.
• Lipstick - Does your kid have one of those discontinued Crayola crayon makers? Dig out your old lipsticks and use a bobby pin to scrape the last quarter inch or so out of the bottoms of the tubes. Melt them down in the crayon maker, and you have your own custom lipstick colors! Of course, the crayon maker isn't exactly certified as food-safe and the resulting lipsticks will be shaped like little crayons, but who said that being frugal was always safe or easy?