HOUSEHOLD TIPS NOT FOUND IN WOMAN'S WEEKLY

[Stanley]

I suspect you're right Wendy but then so many problems in life come down to issues of control in the end... Easier to address these things when you live on your own but thinking of you sitting there and getting relaxed while Colin cooks sounds about right!
If the bread maker light is flashing when you come down in the morning it means you have forgotten to switch off at the mains and it is giving you a reminder....

[Tizer]

I'm a bit like Stanley, I prefer things to be ordered and routine, whereas Mrs Tiz is more `free style'. You can easily distinguish my corner of the house from hers. On the other hand she knows where to find everything but I can't find things I've carefully filed away!

[Stanley]

My tidiness syndrome sometimes bites me as well Tiz. The present offering in Mystery Objects has been in hiding for about five years! I found it when I was rearranging the museum! At the moment I can't find the destructions for the network connecting plugs as I have forgotten what the button on the front does. Can you remember?

[PanBiker]

The button will normally trigger a search for other units on the same network, or ring.

[Stanley]

Thanks for that Ian.... I had an idea that it was some form of reset but had forgotten.
I don't know how other people run their lives but my drawers are a wonderland of odd items stowed away for tidiness' sake. I pull the kids legs that they'll have a whale of a time when I die going through them. Not a bad idea to occasionally do this yourself, you might find things that you have completely forgotten you have.
That brings to mind the time when my mother announced at the breakfast table that she was fed up; her drawers were full of onions! We knew what she meant.... my dad stored onions in odd drawers round the house to keep them dry.....

[Tizer]

It's a good idea to show the kids what you decide to keep and explain what all the stuff is if it's not going to be obvious to them. I say this from recent personal experience of sorting Mrs Tiz's parents and my Dad's stuff. It can be very frustrating to find so much that is either unidentifiable or for which you don't know the significance. The worst thing is probably photos of people you can't recognise and nothing written on the back. My father-in-law was interested in industrial archaeology and that led him to accumulate specimens of rocks and minerals. We have these now but he didn't label them. Some, like a lump of kidney ore (haematite) almost the size of a football are easy to identify and we suspect it came from the Forest of Dean were he spent a lot of time...but we don't know for sure and his dementia means he's unable to tell us now.

[Stanley]

I've discussed this with my daughters and we agree that the only thing that matters when they are sorting out is what significance items have for them or another interested party. There is so much in my house it would be a massive task cataloguing everything! In any case, I have better things to do, what did posterity ever do for me?
Today's tip is keep an eye on the small drain at the back of the fridge that allows water to drain away when the fridge goes into its defrost cycle for the cooling element. I realised this morning I had a puddle in the bottom of the fridge compartment caused by the drain being blocked....
Another good tip is to keep the rubber door seals clean and occasionally give them a rub with furniture polish. It stops them sticking if they are too efficient.

[Stanley]

When cooking soup in a pressure cooker avoid high heats, bring it up to pressure very slowly..... It may save redecorating the ceiling!

[Stanley]

As I get older I find one of my most useful allies is the Post-it Note stuck to the table next to my rocking chair. I use them as an aide memoir to remind me of appointments and other matters. I tend to forget things like this!

[Julie in Norfolk]

When cooking soup in a pressure cooker avoid high heats, bring it up to pressure very slowly..... It may save redecorating the ceiling!

This sounds like you speak from experience, I would advise the same with Christmas pudding. I would also advise removing the said pudding from the cellophane wrapper, it saves wrecking a Pyrex bowl and subsequent purchase of another.

[Stanley]

Have a look at What Attracted Your Attention Julie, I had a bit of an adventure! And yes, I've had Pyrex bowls explode on me as well. I was told once that this often happens with very old bowls, they seem to get fed up of resisting the expansion and contraction.

[Tizer]

That's right, he was talking from very recent experience Julie. Quite amusing really, the man who once tended giant boilers blew up his pressure cooker! (We can all make mistakes and I often do, so I'm in no position to criticise!)

When Mrs Tiz is away I use notes around the house to remind me of things like getting food out of the freezer, putting the rubbish out, switching things one and off etc. I remember one of Lynne Truss's humorous books had a character who left himself post-it note reminders all over his house and even one on the cat saying `Feed the cat'.

[Stanley]

One of my favourite ploys is to use my house keys. They normally live in my left hand trouser pocket (Shepherd's whistle in the right!) and if there is a letter to post or a prescription to be dropped in at the surgery I leave it on the draining board next to the back door with my keys on top. All I have to do now is leave my keys on the drainer, when I get round to going out it triggers me into asking "Why did I leave them there?"

[Cathy]

I often use a bright pink clothes peg to remind me of something that I have to do.
I place it on lounge coffee table. It reminds me to that I have bring in the washing, check the mailbox, bring the bin back etc.

[Bodger]

A good reminder if you wear a watch, is to transfer it to the other arm

[Stanley]

All good ploys! In older times you tied a knot in the corner of your handkerchief....
I have a post it note sat in front of me now to remind me to ring the phone people after 9AM..... There's another to remind me of an idea I have for the next BET article.... if I don't do this I tend to forget....

[Stanley]

If you are baffled by the acronyms used by your kids on the internet have a look at THIS useful article in the Scotsman... The website they point you to, parent Info is a very useful site.

[Cathy]

I'm still getting used to 'lol' (lots of laughs or lots of love), haha

[Stanley]

If you are not completely au fait with how mobiles work, don't use them!

[Stanley]

The fewer telephone sockets you have in a house connected to the master socket, the more reliable your IP connection is.....

[PanBiker]

The fewer telephone sockets you have in a house connected to the master socket, the more reliable your IP connection is.....

The number of extension sockets you have on your line has absolutely no bearing on the protocol used to connect you to the network. Physical integrity of the same is a different matter of course.

[Stanley]

Which, if you read it again, is covered by my post. Now we have cordless phones which actually work the most reliable connection is to have your computer connected directly to the line coming into the house and one phone plugged into the master socket via the filter. The simpler the better, always the best principle if you want reliability.

[Stanley]

Put some salt and vinegar in a shallow dish and after cutting a slice off an onion leave the onion face down in the dish. The next slice you cut will be a lovely vinegared slice of onion....

[Stanley]

Being a good maintenance engineer I look after my waste pipes.... I had a look inside my U bend under the sink and the waste pipe outside in the yard. My regular morning strategy of bleaching my pot out and giving the boiling mixture time to have its effect in the trap is working fine, you could eat your dinner off the insides of the pipes.
I can remember the problems we used to have with the old fashioned lead waste pipes. Lead has an affinity for fat and it was amazing how fast a 1" pipe could clog up. One good way of doing a quick check on the condition of the drain is to fill the sink with cold water, pull the plug and note how fast it empties. If it drains fast and there is a gulping noise as the last water flows out you have a clean pipe. The gulping is the suction created by the full pipe of water as it drops out producing a partial vacuum in the pipe. Bathroom waste pipes can be troublesome, hairs plus the natural fats in soap can build up in the trap.....

[Stanley]

I know I bang on about the advantages of plain food, based largely on the way I was brought up during food rationing but reinforced by all the reading I have done on nutrition through history. This doesn't mean I am averse to trying out new flavours and exotic spices! I was looking at my shopping reminder for this morning, it reads Oregano, Cumin, Garlic and black treacle.... I also have a reasonably sized container in the cupboard filled with a mixture of spices including ginger, cinnamon and garlic powder with other Indian spices. In case you're wondering my target at the moment is the perfect marinade for home cured bacon ribs.
So my tip today is to experiment in the kitchen. Don't be frightened of trying new things. I love seeing Marilyn and Liz cooking things I have never heard of. There will be failures but there will also be successes....