I have a lot of rules and tricks that I employ to make life easier. I am sure we all do. Many are common, others are weird. Some are in the form of advice, others are more like Yelp reviews. For some reason they are very hard to think of on the spot. They are little tidbits that help you out maybe once every day or two, and then you stop thinking about them. Anyway, here are a few in no particular order:
Using your food scraps. You should compost, or course, but have you ever thought about using the carrot top to wipe the extra butter off that knife? Or an orange peel to make the initial pass at a small spill before using a kitchen towel? Recently I had to butter philo dough with butter and a pastry brush, but we avoid such rarely used utensils. What worked fantastically? The spinach stems still connected at the base.
Airplane seat pocket bag. I travel a lot. A lotta lot. And mostly long flights. One of the most helpful things I have found for a long flight is to immediately take that pile of worthless magazines in the seat pocket and put it in the overhead bin. And have everything you might need, book, pen, ear plugs, head phones, snack, etc. in a small cinch bag. Tom’s shoe bags are perfect.
Post-it dust catcher. I recently had to buy a drill and drill a hole in the wall. I saw a post about using a Post-it stuck on the wall and folded up to catch the concrete dust that falls. It worked PERFECTLY. Not a single bit of dust was on the floor.
Cereal box dust pan. When I was a poor starving student and immigrant, I never saw the point of buying a dustpan. A bit of cereal box cardboard works perfectly. It’s not exactly adult looking though.
Kowloon Tong shortcut. This one should be really, “Pay attention to wear you are.” On my subway commute I noticed that there was this really, really long barrier that simply served to make people walk a longer distance before getting to a stairwell and thereby dispersing traffic. I noticed I can just walk around the front of it, but 95 percent of the travelers have no idea.
Sit down to pee. This one is really for the men. You can laugh about it not being manly, I don’t care. Trust me, it’s so much cleaner. And your lady will appreciate it. Women... uh... don’t stand up to pee.
Burt’s Bees. Or another equivalent. You don’t notice it until you try something else, but petroleum based products make your lips peel off in stringy bits. It’s true!
Ear-cleaner. I hope this isn’t too gross, and the doctors may lecture me about the size of my elbow, but these things are amazing. It’s just a little scoop that you use and reuse instead of a cotton swab. It actually cleans your ear rather than shoving everything around. They are probably impossible to find, but if you want one, let me know. I’ll send you one. I love them that much.
Honey. Honey is the best sweetener. Don’t buy sweetened yogurt or cereal! Buy something healthy and make it slightly less healthy with honey. And if you put it on pancakes instead of natural maple syrup, it doesn’t soak up and disappear like syrup! I LOVE maple syrup, but it just ends up getting absorbed and you can’t taste it. Try a good honey.
Reading light clip. Mine is from Ikea, but there are a number of other brands. These are really great if you want to read and not bother someone with the light (someone who hates light when sleeping like me), and they are a fantastic thing to travel with. When you are staying in cheap hotels and couches you never know when you will have a reading lamp available.
Handkerchief. They feel better than tissues, and it’s good for the Earth.
Repurposing in the kitchen. Why buy a whisk when a fork or chopstick work just as well? Or a pizza roller when kitchen shears work even better? And save those jars for rice, spices, and left over soup for lunch.
Laser pointer defense system. When living in Shanghai, you constantly had to put up with loud, obnoxious... “problems”. This may be on the shady side of ethics, but more than once did I chase someone away from their idling parked car and bumping music at midnight with a laser pointer shining in their car. I don’t know why they’d always scurry out like it was a gun sight, that would be impossible in China, but it worked! (please don’t hate me)
Sundry pill bottle. The longer I live the more occasional pill I need. I try not to take medication, but who wants diarrhea while backpacking in Thailand? Also, I will occasionally get hay-fever that is maddening. I have to be ready! I keep one small bill bottle with about 4 different pills for emergency use. Yes, I realize this makes me an old lady.
Earplugs. Pack them. You never know when a barking dog will decide to compose a sonnet when you desperately need some beauty sleep.
I hope some of those are helpful!
