My mother-in-law sent me an email with a bunch of tips. The type of tips that seem to get passed on from one generation to another. Let me know if you try any of them and how they worked out.


Peel a banana from the bottom and you won't have to pick the little 'stringy things' off of it.


Take your bananas apart when you get home from the store. If you leave them connected at the stem, they ripen faster.


Store your opened chunks of cheese in aluminum foil. It will stay fresh much longer and not mold.


Peppers with 3 bumps on the bottom are sweeter and better for eating.

Peppers with 4 bumps on the bottom are firmer and better for cooking.


Add a teaspoon of water when frying ground beef. It will help pull the grease away from the meat while cooking.


Add garlic immediately to a recipe if you want a light taste of garlic and at the end of the recipe if you want a stronger taste of garlic.


Leftover snickers bars from Halloween (is there such a thing as leftover snickers?) make a delicious dessert. Simply chop them up with the food chopper. Peel, core and slice a few apples. Place them in a baking dish and sprinkle the chopped candy bars over the apples. Bake at 350 for 15 minutes. Serve alone or with vanilla ice cream.


Heat up leftover pizza in a nonstick skillet on top of the stove, set heat to med-low and heat till warm. This keeps the crust crispy. No soggy micro pizza.

To warm biscuits, pancakes, or muffins that were refrigerated, place them in a microwave with a cup of water. The increased moisture will keep the food moist and help it reheat faster.

Newspaper weeds away: Start putting in your plants, work the nutrients in your soil. Wet newspapers, put layers around the plants overlapping as you go. Cover with mulch and forget about weeds. Weeds will get through some gardening plastic but should not gt through the newspapers.

Use a wet cotton ball or Q-tip to pick up the small shards of glass you can't see easily.

Place dryer sheet in your pocket. It will keep the mosquitoes away.

To keep squirrels from eating your plants, sprinkle your plants with cayenne pepper. The cayenne pepper doesn't hurt the plant and the squirrels won't come near it.

Before you pour sticky substances into a measuring cup, fill with hot water. Dump out the hot water, but don't dry the cup. Next, add your ingredient, such as peanut butter, and watch how easily it comes right out.

Hate foggy windshields? Buy a chalkboard eraser and keep it in the glove box of your car. When the windows fog, rub with the eraser! Works better than a cloth.

If you seal an envelope and then realize you forgot to include something inside, just place your sealed envelope in the freezer for an hour or two. It unseals easily.

Use your hair conditioner to shave your legs. It's cheaper than shaving cream and leaves your legs really smooth. It's also a great way to use up the conditioner you bought but didn't like when you tried it in your hair.

To get rid of pesky fruit flies, take a small glass, fill it 1/2' with Apple cider Vinegar and 2 drops of dish washing liquid; mix well. You will find those flies drawn to the cup and gone forever!

Put small piles of cornmeal where you see ants. They eat it, take it 'home', can't digest it so they die. It works and you don't have the worry about pets or small children being harmed.

The Heating unit went out on my dryer. The repair man told us he wanted to show us something and he went over to the dryer and pulled out the lint filter. It was clean (I always clean the lint from the filter after every load of clothes). The repair man took the filter over to the sink and ran hot water over it. The lint filter is made of a mesh material... I'm sure you know what your dryer's lint filter looks like. Well... the hot water just sat on top of the mesh! it didn't go through it at all!

He told us that the dryer sheets cause a film over that mesh and that's what burns out the heating unit. You can't see the film, but it's there. It's what is in the dryer sheets to make your clothes soft and static free... that nice fragrance too. you know how they can feel waxy when you take them out of the box... well this stuff builds up on your clothes and on your lint screen. This is also what causes dryer units to potentially burn your house down with it.

The repair man said the best way to keep your dryer working for a very long time (and to keep your electric bill a little lower) is to take that filter out and wash it with hot soapy water and an old toothbrush (or other brush) at least every six months. He said that makes the life of the dryer at least twice as long!

My mother-in-law actually tried this. She put water on the screen and it ran through a little bit but mostly collected all the water in the mesh screen. Then she washed it with warm soapy water and a brush and in 30 seconds rinsed it and the water ran right through the screen.