How to.... time-saving and other tips

Some new tips I learnt over the holidays:

• Placing a dry towel into a dryer with wet laundry (somehow) make is try faster
• Remove burning chilli from hands with oil and salt
• If you've a sore throat, rub sage on your glands
• Another one to avoid crying when chopping onions, place a piece of bread under your tongue. (I go with chewing gum and washing onion first)
• Sleep on a silk pillow case to reduce hair friction
• Clean make-up brushes with an alcohol-based hand sanitiser
• Hold the nail with a clothes peg so you avoided hammering your fingers
• Rub a slice of lemon over nails to remove stains
• Keep lemon halves in a pool of water in the fridge so they'll last for weeks
• Use Pepto-Bismol as a mask on spot-prone skin. Apply with a foundation makes for 20 minutes
• Open cans of beans from the bottom end so they all fall out in one go
• A slightly damp tumble dryer sheet will rub away stubborn lime scale
• Waterproof canvas shoes by rubbing with beeswax and drying with hot hair dryer
• Put jeans in a freezer to clean them without them being shrunk in a wash. Handy for travels too.
• To cure travel sickness, crumple newspaper onto your chest under your top. This one from Man Booker Prize winner Marlon James I've got to try. It has to be newspaper apparently, not 'normal' paper.
• Stop a pot boiling over by putting a wooden spoon over it
• To stretch shoes, pop a zip lock bag in, fill it with water, close it and put the shoe in the freezer.
• Pop a bulldog clip onto the end of your toothpaste to end the squeezing struggle

Most of these are from Stylist magazine. A few of my own tried & tested tips:

• Use Elizabeth Arden 8 Hour Cream (or the Arden as it's known in our house) for everything, from taming runaway hair strands, smoothing eyebrows that really need grooming, putting on a burn or any blotch you skin throws up and for dry skin. I won't travel with out it.
• You know about the ironing a newspaper onto candle wax zone a carpet right?
• And wrapping sellotape around your fingers to remove fluff if you're without a clothes brush. Or use wet hands. (I always have a little sellotape in my overnight toiletries kit too, good to tape up lids of liquid containers too).
• Stick cling film down on one side of the dish before cutting it.
• From my school days, soak ink stains in milk overnight then wash as usual
• Roll up fitted sheets to store rather than trying to fold them flat, although Queen Martha has a great way of doing that too.

Also learnt via @HannahJBlogs to fold and place all sheets inside a pillowcase so the set remains together. I currently use vacpac bags which save some space too.Finally, I'm keeping hold of this article that explains 10 uses for those silica bags we normally chuck out with the packaging. You can use them for saving phones dropped in the bath, drying wet umbrellas and keeping damp towels and summer shoes fresh. I've collected three bags since Christmas!Let me know your best tips and I'll add them here too: @RickieWrites