Quick Tip Archives - Somewhat Awry

Rolled towels

Published on June 30, 2020June 30, 2020 by TracieLeave a comment

Note: This post may contain affiliate links. Check out what that means to you here.

If you like this post, please share it. Thank you!

I usually have to live with something new for a while to see if it’s actually going to work for me and my family. Then, by the time I’ve figured out that it’s a fantastic idea I forget to tell you about it!

Here is one that has been working very well for me.

Rolling my towels. I have struggled for years to find a system that works for our towels in the linen closet. If I stacked them neatly – no matter which method of folding and stacking – they inevitably always end up a total mess.

Rolling them and then stacking them seems to work for us. When we reach in to take one, even if someone is reaching for a favorite on the bottom, the whole lot of them doesn’t come tumbling down.

Will it work for the next forty years? Maybe. Or maybe not. I’ll let you know!

P.S. Yes, we love beach towels in our bathroom. I find that “normal” towels are very bulky and don’t dry as well as beach towels. I’ve been reading a lot about linen towels like these, but I can’t bite the bullet and spend that much money on a towel that no one will ever see but my family when a beach towel works and I already have them. 😀

You can find my other Quick Tips here.

Quick Tip: Keeping Your Hands Clean at the Grocery Store

Published on April 9, 2019 by Tracie2 Comments

A few weeks ago at my local Food Lion, I was picking up meat of some sort in the meat department when I hear “Bless Your Heart”. Now this could be construed as an insult, or a compliment. Depending on how the person blessing your heart is using it.

I turned to the ancient, little lady behind me and she said “I will forever think of you every time I grocery shop. Thank you so, so much!! It has never occurred to me to try that but I will from now on!” Ahh, a compliment then. She was watching me as I picked up the meat out of the cooler.

It never EVER fails. If you pick up any of the meat packages at the grocery store, you are going to get meat juices on your hands. Or at least this is the case with my life. Every.single.time.

An easy way to prevent it:

When you pull off one of those thin plastic bags, slide it over your hand……

Use your covered hand to pick up the meat…..

With your other hand, slide the plastic up and over the meat. You’ll never have to touch the actual meat container while you are in the store. You are very welcome!

P.S. Don’t mind my lovely manicure. I test colors on my thumbnails to see which one I want to use on my toes, hahaha.

P.S.S. Also, do not be alarmed because there is a hair on this package of chicken wings. It’s mine. I know it’s mine, because Denton bemoans the fact that my hair is everywhere. All the time. It’s a wonder I’m not bald, but as he says, I have enough hair for at least seven people. Which is why I’m not bald and why I don’t cook with my hair down. You’re welcome again.

You can find my other Quick Tips here.

Quick Tip: Freezing Bananas

Published on January 16, 2019 by Tracie2 Comments

I always have bananas on hand. Denton and Liva love them. Hayden and I both hate them with a passion, unless they are baked into my delicious Banana Nut Bread, and then they are divine. If they sit on my counter for more than 47 seconds though, they turn black and die. This is why I freeze them.

When they are just about perfect, like the ones above, just peel them…..

Yay!

Put one into a freezer bag with three of their friends…..

I always store them four to a bag because that’s how many I use to make banana bread.

Squash them relatively flat…..

And put all of those bags into a large gallon sized freezer bag to store for up to six months.

You can store as few or as many as will fit into your bags and use them for smoothies, ice cream, milkshakes, pancakes, etc. The list is endless. The key is to get them into the freezer before they turn into a science project. Once you have your stash, you will be ready to create whatever your stomach desires at a moments notice.

If you are using them in a smoothie or milkshake just stick them into your machine frozen. Banana bread? Let them thaw slightly in your mixing bowl before beginning your recipe.

Let me know what yummy goodness you turn your frozen bananas into!

You can find my other Quick Tips here.

Note: This post may contain affiliate links. Check out what that means to you here.

Quick Tip: Gift Card Balance

Published on October 9, 2018October 9, 2018 by TracieLeave a comment

Do you use gift cards? I’ve had several in my wallet for the past year, but I hesitate to use them because I never know what the remaining balance is. I mean, do you know how embarrassing it is to try to use a gift card when you don’t know what the actual balance is – you know that there IS a balance – but they decline your transaction? Yeah, that happened to me at Wal-Mart last week.

I wanted to insist that I wasn’t a scammer trying to hijack the items on the conveyor belt, since the pitying look the cashier was giving me made me feel that way. GAH! This is why I stay home in my yoga pants and order things from Amazon, people!

One of the solutions I came up with was to write in permanent marker directly on the card, but you can see above that even that will rub off and then I’m back to square one.

I’ve seen other people stick tape or blank labels directly onto the cards to write the balance on, but that can sometimes interfere with the cashier swiping the card. So this is my solution:

A post it note. It will stick to the card, and I can write directly onto it, but I can whip it off and hand the card to the cashier or swipe it myself and stick the updated post it right back onto the card. Easy-peasy.

How do you keep up with your balances?

P. S. Gift cards make excellent gifts!

You can find my other Quick Tips here.

Note: This post may contain affiliate links. Check out what that means to you here.

Quick Tip: Fingernail Polish Remover

Published on September 18, 2018 by TracieLeave a comment

Of course everyone knows that fingernail polish remover removes fingernail polish. But did you know you can use it to remove other things too? My Mama taught me this. Shopping at yard sales will teach you to find ways to circumvent problems that cause other people toss out perfectly excellent items over.

Case in point:

Don’t mind the part where I forgot to take a proper BEFORE photo. I had already started to clean it off when my brain kicked in. You can see the residue that the dry erase markers have left over time.

You can use any type of remover.

Just dampen a cotton round, or cotton ball, or even an old t-shirt you’ve cut up for rags.

Rub it over the entire surface of the white board…..

Until the surface is clean.

I also use this method on my giant whiteboard that I keep my running grocery list on. It should work on any whiteboard.

P.S. Use at your own discretion! Please do not sue me because you ruined a priceless whiteboard (is there such a thing?). Test in a small, inconspicuous area if you are concerned!

Quick Tip: Cereal Bags

Published on August 21, 2018August 16, 2018 by TracieLeave a comment

Last week I told you guys what I do with just a handful of leftover cereal, and this week I wanted to show you what I do with the leftover cereal bags. About ten years ago, I found a brand new box of wax paper sheets at a yard sale for a $0.25. A quarter, you guys! It had over 1,000 sheets in the box. I just ran out of them this year. It was a sad, sad day at my house.

The main reason that I used those sheets, was to separate my hamburger patties when I put them into freezer bags each time I had extras. They won’t stick together and create a huge clump of raw hamburger meat this way. Otherwise, what was the point of spending all that time patty-ing them out?

Every time I empty one of our cereal boxes, I save the liner.

I just open the entire thing up….

Like so.

Cut it in half……

Again, and again, and again, until I get the size I want.

They make perfect separators for my hamburger patties. And they are FREE. Which is one of my favorite words.

Quick Tip: Hand Soap

Published on August 16, 2018September 4, 2018 by TracieLeave a comment

Have you ever been in a public bathroom, you get ready to wash your hands and you find that there is NO soap? Or paper towels? This happens to me more than it should in my opinion.

I always keep a small bottle of hand sanitizer in my purse, because hello, thrift store and yard sale freak here. But, I don’t want to count on that to kill any of the germs I come into contact with. I want to WASH my hands for pity’s sake! And be able to dry them, too.

Here’s my tip:

I reused one of my small hand sanitizer bottles and filled it with hand soap. Then I wrapped it with a handkerchief and tucked it into my purse. It’s small, doesn’t take up much room and now I can actually wash and DRY my hands no matter where I end up.

And yes. I know I could probably buy a small bottle of hand soap to keep in my purse, but I already had this tiny hand sanitizer bottle that was empty and I am big believer in using what you have.

Quick Tip: Cereal

Published on August 14, 2018August 13, 2018 by TracieLeave a comment

At our house I buy cereal for snacks. We don’t eat it as a breakfast food, because it just doesn’t sustain anyone at my house. But a sweet snack? Yep.

Inevitably there is always just a handful of cereal left at the bottom of the box. Every.Single.Time.

Instead of putting that last handful of cereal down the garbage disposal – because NO ONE wants to eat just a handful of cereal with milk, that would just make everyone grumpy – I stick it into a baggy and put it in someones lunchbox for a sweet treat.

Now there is nothing thrown away, and someone will get a sweet surprise at lunch time.

Quick Tip: Hotel Soap

Published on August 6, 2018August 10, 2018 by TracieLeave a comment

Denton and I returned my niece and nephew to my brother this past Friday after a two-week stay with us – two weeks for the nephew and 1 week for the niece since she was at camp the first week – does anyone else have this compulsion to be exact with your words or is it just me?

We took the opportunity to spend the night in a lovely hotel in a gorgeous little town about an hour and a half from where I grew up. Do you ever do that? Spend vacation time in a place very near you, but not near enough that you actually explore it? We normally don’t, but have decided that we are definitely going to start. I’m already planning out next trip. That’s another story altogether.

What I wanted to talk about today is hotel soap. The small soaps that they provide for you in your hotel that are designed for your overnight stay. That are always left over, because who uses the entire thing in one night? There are a couple of reasons that I bring this up. Firstly, I can NOT throw them away. I am the girl who takes the sliver of soap that’s left in my shower and sticks it to the new bar so that it doesn’t get wasted. It drives Denton bonkers, but I just can’t do it. I have a problem. I know it, Denton knows it and now you know it. And I’m okay with that.

Second, do you know how many hotel rooms there are in the world? When I asked Siri, this is the article from 2012 that she sent me to. Taking that into consideration, you know that the number of hotels has grown exponentially. The article estimated that in 2012 there were 17.5 MILLION guest rooms around the world. That is a lot of little soaps, people.

All of that is to say that I never leave them, or throw them away. I always bring them home with me. But, that can be problematic. I never remember until I’m in the hotel that I plan to do this, so what do you do with a small, wet, soapy thing? I don’t want it in my makeup bag, or thrown in with my clothes. This trip I had an epiphany. The bag they provide you with for your ice machine bucket is the perfect carrier for wet, tiny soaps. Or the plastic sleeve that’s going to be tossed from the coffee cup next to the Keurig.

Or the sleeve from the water glasses. Even the fancy hotel we stayed in when we went to Washington D.C. to buy my Honda Pilot had plastic over their glass water goblets in the bathroom. I understand that they want you to know that those things are sterile, but seriously. And yes, I drive hundreds of miles to purchase my new to me cars. You can read all about how I ~~forced~~ sweetly asked Denton to drive two states over to buy Hayden’s car a few years ago.

Barring all of those options – hahaha – I believe that I’ll go slip a normal Ziploc baggie into our luggage so I’ll have it for next time.

In case you’ve stuck around through all of my squirrel moments this time, here is an interesting article that I found while I was trying to discover how many hotels exist in our world. I can’t emphasize enough that individuals change the world. One tiny bar of hotel soap at a time. It’s disheartening to look around at everything that’s wrong with our little planet. I tell Hayden and Olivia all the time, you can’t fix ALL of the world’s problems, but if you can do one thing, do it, because that could be the catalyst to actually change the world. You never know what people are dealing with in their lives, so smile at everyone and be kind. That’s my two cents for the day.

So. Are you kooky like me and bring your hotel soap home with you or do you leave them at the hotel to be trashed? Actually, don’t tell me. My frugal self may not be able to take it if you guys are normal people and just leave them.