Household maintenance
Sep. 17th, 2014 10:16 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
nouMy Sugru arrived today, which put me in a mind to think about small household repairs.
The absolute best way I've found to not procrastinate about sewing repairs is to keep a threaded needle next to the place where I sit to get dressed in the morning. If I see a small hole, I can fix it straight away in less than 30 seconds, which stops it becoming a big hole.
(I wondered if this was too obvious to be worth mentioning, but I only figured it out a couple of years ago, and I'm nearly 40 and have been sewing since I was small, so.)
Have you got any handy hints for household maintenance?
no subject
Date: 2014-09-17 10:27 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-09-17 10:34 am (UTC)If you're taking down dusty curtains for washing (or similar), especially if they're large and/or you have a household member with dust allergies, then cover them from the bottom up in a bin bag, tie it over the rail, undo whatever fastenings are holding the curtains up, then undo the bin bag and carry the curtains down or tie the top and drop them (yes, you can reuse the bin bag in the bin). I've suggested this to so many people who never seem to have encountered it before.
Those mostly burned down candles-in-pots people throw away because they can't light them without burning their fingers? Dried spaghetti generally makes an ideal spill for lighting awkward to reach wicks &c.
Oh, and putting a rubber band around your paint pot so it bisects the mouth of the pot and can be used to wipe excess paint off your brush rly is a great idea.
::goes to hang up washing::
no subject
Date: 2014-09-17 11:06 am (UTC)On the tangent of bin bags, I gave up my large kitchen bin before Plastic-Free July because I had vague thoughts of moving to wrapping my trash in newspaper instead of plastic. This didn't happen, but I've stuck to my new small open bin lined with a carrier bag since it's so much more pleasant than a large smelly one. Because the bin and bag are so small, if I do have to put something smelly in (e.g. meat wrappings) then I can just empty it the same day (i.e. tie off the bag, put it in the outside landfill bin) rather than feeling I have to keep storing it in my house until the bag is full. And because I'm not storing smelly things in the bin, I don't have to have a lid on it, which makes cleaning a lot easier (I used to hate hate hate cleaning the bin lid because it was always icky and had lots of little corners because of the swing top).
no subject
Date: 2014-09-17 11:53 am (UTC)Don't get me started about bin strategies. I used to need these when I lived with other people (a compost heap, recycling boxes x2, and plas carriers lined at the bottom with a piece of paper nicked from the recycling). Now I use free bin bags distributed by the council and put out one recycling and one (nearly empty - srsly, it blows around if it's windy and I don't put something else on top of it) landfill/incinerator bag every two weeks (with glass and aluminium and non-resaleable shoes going to the nearest recycling banks).
no subject
Date: 2014-09-17 06:10 pm (UTC)Yeah, I have very little landfill waste — we also have fortnightly collections for that, and most collections our massive wheely bin just has one or two lightly filled carrier bags in it. The collectors don't bother putting it on the tip-into-the-lorry thing any more, they just reach in and get the bag out. (I work from home in the living room and hence can see them do it.)
DON'T mix bleach and vinegar!
Date: 2014-09-17 10:55 am (UTC)If you use white vinegar and chlorine bleach (i.e uk household bleach) as cleaners then DON'T allow them to mix as they react chemically and become a deadly toxic nerve gas. Women around the world die every year because they don't know this.
Re: DON'T mix bleach and vinegar!
Date: 2014-09-17 11:07 am (UTC)