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Homemade Leather Cleaner & Conditioner

I recently bought a used leather chair. It needed cleaned where there were a few stains on the leather. Nothing serious, just a few marks and a spill I needed to clean off the leather. But I didn’t have any leather cleaner in my cleaning supplies so I set out to find a homemade leather cleaner.

As you may know, I think vinegar is an amazing fix-all product. I checked and several home remedies for leather cleaning and stain removal call for using vinegar. Was I surprised, no not at all. In fact, I figured if I didn’t find this suggestion about using vinegar to clean the leather chair, I was going to try it anyway.

Homemade Leather Cleaning and Conditioning

Materials Needed:
White vinegar
Water
Clean soft rag or towel
Olive Oil

To clean a stain or spill off leather, dribble a bit of vinegar on a clean towel. Continue Reading →

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Toilet Paper Roll Firestarters

Today’s tip is how to recycle your toilet paper rolls and repurpose your dryer lint. Recycled toilet paper rolls make excellent firestarters. Just save your toilet paper rolls and stuff them with lint from your dryer lint trap.

I find it useful to keep a few empty rolls by the dryer and then each time I empty the lint trap, I just stuff the lint into the paper roll. After a few drying cycles, the roll is full and I keep it near my woodstove along with kindling for firestarting.

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Re-Seal your Packages

This useful idea has been shared on many tip sites and I just love it. You use a lid and ring to re-seal a package. A recycled bottle top or small jug is used for re-sealing packages. Cut the top of the package open and insert it into the cut lid sleeve. Fold over the package and screw the lid on.

Resealing your Packages

What a fantastic way to recycle a plastic bottle and keep your packages sealed for freshness and storage.

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Baking Potatoes in a Woodstove

I want to share my experience of using a woodstove to bake potatoes. We use a woodstove to heat our home and I wondered about using the woodstove for baking potatoes. It’s already hot and has room inside for baking so why start up the oven for baking potatoes when I could use the woodstove. So I set out to try out my idea, first you want a hot woodstove that has burned down a bit and has hot ashes that you can use as a bed for baking the potatoes.

Next double wrap the potatoes in foil. Move the fire over to one side of the stove as you want to place the potatoes in hot coals and ash but not directly against any burning wood.

Here is a photo showing my two potatoes wrapped in foil and placed inside the woodstove. As you can see, the potatoes are on the ash bed with the burning wood moved over to the side.

After placing the potatoes inside the woodstove, cover up the potatoes with some hot ashes on the side of the firebox as shown in the picture below. I use my small stove shovel to scoop some ashes cover the potatoes to help them bake evenly.

In about 20 minutes, turn potatoes over and cover again with ashes. My large bakers were done after about 45 minutes in the woodstove. Using a potholder, squeeze the taters to make sure they are done and then remove them carefully using a thick potholder or heavy leather gloves as the potatoes are very hot.

The results are some wonderful baked potatoes that are very tasty. This useful idea produces great tasting baked potatoes but also is very useful should you have a power outage. Plus it saves energy by reducing the use of a traditional oven for baking.

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Toothpaste Tube Recycled into a Funnel

Ever need a small funnel to fill a salt or pepper shaker? Don’t you just hate it when you try and fill those small containers and half your ingredients end up not going into the shaker? Well here is a useful idea for recycling a toothpaste tube into a funnel.

Take any regular toothpaste tube and rinse out any remaining bits of toothpaste. I rinse my tubes out in hot water and leave it to soak upright in the sink. Then you want to cut off the end just above the end seam of the tube with a sharp pair of scissors. Rinse the tube out again and let it air dry. If it has a lingering toothpaste smell, you can rinse it out again with some white vinegar to help get rid of the toothpaste odor but it really doesn’t hurt anything if it still smells of toothpaste a bit.

Once dry, you can now use your recycled toothpaste tube for a small funnel to fill salt, pepper, or other small-mouthed containers. The small screw end of the toothpaste tube fits nicely inside salt or pepper shakers making for a easy fill now for your kitchen cooking needs.

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Homemade Manly Soap

My husband loves to work on trucks, cars, tractors, and other greasy things. I have been making our own soaps but he needed something more stronger and thus I created what I call manly soap. I used a Lava soap bar to make this homemade recipe. Lava soap contains pumice which is the important ingredient in this soap that can really cut the grease on your hands.

For those who have been making your own soap, this is just a little more aggressive soap to fight the grease and grim on your hands when you have been working on vehicles and farm equipment.

The ingredients:
1/2 cup grated Lava soap bar
1 cup boiling water
1 tsp honey
1 tsp glycerin
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