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Cleaning your Woodstove Glass

Here is a frugal tip that I found works great to clean the glass on a woodstove. This is a natural and free way to clean your woodstove door glass.

First make sure the glass is cold or at least just warm. Wet some newspaper and add some ash from your woodstove to the paper. Use the damp newspaper with the ash to wipe off the inside of the glass. The wood ash acts as effective paste to clean off the glass. If you have some stubborn soot buildup just continue to scrub with the paste until it comes off. It does make a bit of a mess on the glass and a lot of elbow grease if you have a hard soot buildup to clean off.

Once you have the glass cleared of soot, let it dry. Then use a dry paper towel or rag to wipe off the glass for a final clean up of the woodstove door.

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Baking Soda in your Vacuum Bag

Baking soda has so many different uses but I wanted to share one useful idea that I recently tried. I put baking soda in my vacuum cleaner bag with wonderful results.

Sometimes when I vacuum, the room ends up with that stale, musty odor. So I added about a 1/4 cup of baking soda inside my vacuum bag. I just sprinkled it inside the round opening of my bag and reattached the bag to my vacuum cleaner. And off I went vacuuming.

The result was a pleasant, odor-less smell after I finished vacuuming. Baking soda has long been known for its odor absorbing abilities and it works well in a vacuum cleaner bag too. Oh and one more tip, buy your baking soda in a 4 pound box as shown. It is much more reasonably priced that way than buying the smaller, more expensive little boxes.

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Homemade Liquid Laundry Soap

Here is my recipe for making homemade liquid laundry soap. I have tested and used this soap for nearly a year now with great results. It cleans clothes well and is also a great stain remover.

 

Supplies Needed:

  • 6 quart stove top cooking pot
  • 2 gallon plastic bucket for final soap container
  • 1/2 bar of Fels-Naptha laundry soap
  • 1/2 cup Arm & Hammer washing soda
  • 1/2 cup 20 Mule Team borax powder
  • 8-10 drops of essential oil (Optional)

Directions:

Grate 1/2 of the bar of Fels-Naptha soap and place in cooking pot. Add 6 cups water and heat gently over low to medium-low heat stirring occasionally until the soap melts. Keep the heat low as not to allow the soap cooking to bolt while the soap flakes are melting.

 

Once the soap flakes have melted, add the washing soda and the borax stirring until all ingredients are dissolved.

Add 4 cups of  hot water into the cooking pot and stir well. I added 8-10 drops of lavender essential oil to the soap mix at this point. This is an optional ingredient but the oil gave my final soap just a pleasant hint of fragrance. Now add 1 gallon of hot water to the plastic bucket mix, add soap mixture from the cooking pot, and stir well again.

Let the soap mixture sit at least 24 hours to gel.

The soap has an egg look to it. Here is a photo taken after I used a few scoops from the bucket. As you can see from the picture below, it has a crust on the top and that runny egg look underneath. But you just scoop out a glob and it works great for washing.

I use 1/3 cup of soap in my top-loading large washer. For best results I place the soap in the washer and use a little hot water to dissolve the soap before placing my clothes into the washer. Also this laundry soap is a low sudsing soap so don’t be alarmed when you don’t see many suds while your clothes are washing. Additionally this soap can be used for stain treatments by either pre-soaking or spot treat the stain directly with a small amount of soap before washing.

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Salt as a Stain Remover

Salt has many good uses and is an excellent stain remover. I found out first hand just how effective it was when I had an injury to my finger. Unfortunately the wound bled and got blood on my white down comforter. I was upset about the stain and did some research to find a stain removal that I could try.

I read one home remedy for removing blood using salt that I thought I would try. The bloodstain had dried and I read that salt can lift the blood from fabrics so I thought it was worth a try. I dampened a small area of a washcloth and poured some salt on the wet spot of the cloth. I then gently rubbed the salt over the bloodstain. The salt seemed to absorb the blood from the comforter. I continued to rubbed across the stain and tried not to press down so the stain wouldn’t go deeper into the comforter. It was working and the salt granules pulled the blood from fabric. Once I got the stain out, I used a little cold water to dampen the area for a final clean up.

I am happy to report that the stain is completely gone. If you have a blood stain to remove, I would highly recommend that you try out this home remedy.

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Vintage Useful Ideas

Promoting useful ideas has been around for years. Here is a vintage magazine cover that featured many different useful ideas. If you look closely you will see most of the items being used are very old or even obsolete. But like many useful ideas, some are timeless and still are very effective for saving you money or solving a problem.

As I move forward with My Useful Ideas.com, I hope to bring you helpful tips and ideas that you will find handy, frugal, and most of all useful for everyday living and beyond.

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Water Jug Storage

We drink a lot of apple juice and I reuse the jugs for water storage. The jugs are nice and sturdy for storing water in. Unlike some of the lighter weight plastics, it is Polypropylene (PP) which has a plastic code of 5 and is not known to leach chemicals into your drinking water. Polypropylene is the same plastic that yogurt cups are made from and they are safe to reuse. You need to be aware of this as some plastics breakdown over time and can cause serious health problems even cancer so beware of what you may be using to store water in.

You may be saying, yeah recycling those apple juice jugs is great but the water smells like apples. Well, I found a cure for that problem. First rinse out the jug thoroughly and then add about a half cup of white vinegar. Put the cap on and shake it well. Leave the jug to soak in the vinegar with the cap on overnight. Shake it a few more times if you get the chance to. The next day rinse it thoroughly again with water to get all the vinegar and odors out. Let the jug dry upside down on a towel until completely dry.

Now for the smell test. There shouldn’t be any apple odor at all. If there is, it will be ever so slight that it shouldn’t prevent you from using the jug for water storage. Fill your jugs right up to the top. Leaving little area in the jug does help prevent bacteria from growing. Also some people recommend adding 8 drops or 1/4 teaspoon of bleach to the jug if your water isn’t already chlorinated to ensure long-term clean water.

So if you have water stored in milk jugs that is wonderful. Use that water to flush the toilet or wash your clothes but just don’t drink it.

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