The same thing works with tampons when they're really heavily "painted over" and just can't be removed. Focus: My mom's a trained chef, and she always told me to never wash a non-stick pan with soap because it takes the non-stick right out of the pan. Apparently soaping up a nonstick pan warrants quite an ass kicking in culinary school. I haven't really looked that much into it, and Wikipedia is surprisingly silent on the subject, but based on my knowledge of chemistry I'd have to assume that Teflon is a nonpolar compound that can be bound to metal, and the act of adding soap to it will cause the soap to strongly bind to the surface and be pulled, hard, off the pan when water is rinsed over and scrubbing occurs. That's my shot-from-the-hip-it'd-make-sense-if-that-was-how-it-is-but-i-don't-actually-know-because-wikipedia-is-a-fridgid-bitch-so-fuck-her-with-a-hairbrush analysis. Anyway, as you can, I'm sure, imagine that makes cleaning grease off my pots and pans somewhat tricky without soap. Just wiping with cloth gets most of it, but obviously the effectiveness is limited at best and quite time consuming. However, here is where the focus comes in, and I've worked out a very tidy solution. Instead of soap I use Isopropyl alcohol. This is perfect because while it doesn't bind to anything, so my nonstick is safe, it's also soluble in both polar and nonpolar liquids so it cleans up grease like plain water cleans up a sticky floor. Then afterwards I just have to rinse it under the sink to get off all the residual alcohol, and bam, clean as a whistle and no ugly side effect of going blind through accidental ingestion. I've been cooking on the same frying pan for two years and I've never once needed oil or butter to coat it.
I keep remembering stuff. I can't vouch for the safety of this next tip, so use it at your own risk. If you burn the shit out of the bottom of a pan - you know, you were cooking rice and forgot about it and the water boiled off and then the rice turned black and fused to the pan, that kind of burnt - take about a cup of bleach, put it in the pot and bring it to a boil. Once it's boiling all that stuff will be easily removed. But bleach fumes might be toxic, so who knows. Use caution.
Tip: fruit flies are entirely a philosophical problem. You see, if you think of fruit as food you'll never have fruit flies. However, if you think of fruit as a possession you own purely because the act of owning something "healthy" is all you need to justify yourself eating three big macs, a large fries, a 32 oz coke, a McFlurry and half a newborn cow...then you'll have fruit flies.
Clothing: If you get deodorant on your clothes, no matter what the fabric, rub it against itself and poof... it's gone. Hairspray also removes ink from clothes. Saturate, rub and wash in cold water. Spit works really well on blood too... the enzymes in your spit break down the proteins in blood. Obviously for small areas, spit on it, rub and wash in cold water. Skin Care: Baking soda and water make a great acne scrub. Mix into a paste and either scrub (body or face) or use as a mask (face). It will sting like crazy for a minute but it does work. Sugar and olive oil make a great scrub that's exfoliating and moisturizing. Works great on chapped lips too. Random: If you have candle wax stuck in the bottom of a candle holder, run hot water over the outside of the container (to warm it up, not to melt the wax) and wipe the inside clean with a paper towel. If you drop a raw egg, cover it with salt to make it easy to get up. (a dust pan makes this easier too) When cleaning glass, never use paper towels or cloth... newspaper works fantastic and doesn't leave lint or streaks. Put chunks of any citrus fruits through your disposal to keep it from stinking.
If I don't have an ice scraper in my car, what are the odds I'll have a dust pan? Focus: If you buy a camouflage coloured toilet, you only have to clean it once per year.
It also makes great lube. Focus: If you get a sprain scramble some egg whites, soak some cotton balls with it and make a cast. The cold from the eggs keeps the swelling down and it dries hard and keeps the area relatively immobile. My grandmother did that for me a couple of times. Works great.
You beat me to credit card. If you ever wake up in a strange country full of scary people who don't speak your language and you have no recollection where you are or how you got there just find the biggest surliest man nearby, grab him by the scruff of the neck, and bite down hard on his ear. This establishes dominance among the pack, and all his females will come to you for protection and hardy babies.
I actually went back to my apartment to find the dustpan cause I had to try to get to class ... but good point
Whenever I get a fly in the house, I'll spray him with hairspray. they're a lot easier to smack with a newspaper when they're on the floor with their wings stuck together.
Easy way to clean your grout to a sparkly white: Bleach and ammonia. Just mix the two together and start scrubbing. OK, really, really don't do this. It creates chlorine gas which can kill you.
Brake cleaner is an excellent degreaser/parts cleaner and it's far less expensive than parts cleaner labeled as such. Peeling garlic for chopping is much easier if you smash it first. Paintballs look like bubble gum.
Your mom must be dyslexic, because washing a pan that isn't non-stick with soap causes the built-up non stick "seasoning" of the pan to wash off. When you use stuff like cast iron cookware, you're supposed to "season" it by adding whatever kind of oil you cook with and heating the pan to an obscene temperature to create a layer of super-slick graphite on the cooking surface. Well, I mean, perhaps your mom is right, and supposedly teflon does leech off of the pan and into food and so forth, but I just happened to have read about cast iron cookware and seasoning because I own a cast iron frying pan (mostly because I want to poison my friends with hemochromatosis). To my knowledge, that's an old wives tale; soap used to be bear lard and lye, very caustic chemicals indeed; modern day soap is gentle, and merely a wetting agent to help get water to penetrate that stuck-on grime. The preferred method is to use blistering hot water and a bristle scrub brush rather than soap, though. Or, y'know, fucking ibuprofen, ice, and some rest. God forbid home remedies conform to medical sense. Benzoyl peroxide. Nevermind this crap you hear on the radio about "magical acne cure that turns skeptics into believers!" Generic benzoyl peroxide. Go. Thank me later with sexual favours. Also: duct tape is actually a good wart treatment because it macerates the wart and exposes the virus to your immune system. What you want to do is apply the duct tape and every couple of days, take it off and rub the wart with a pumice stone (do not re-use that pumice stone). Then put a fresh piece of duct tape on and repeat the process.
I repped this but had to share as well. I'm a licensed esthetician and I can promise you that nothing you buy OTC will work better than plain baking soda for acne. (And please, remember to moisturize! Oily skin too... acne treatment of any kind is very drying and if you don't moisturize it can cause an overproduction of sebum) An important thing to remember... OTC skin care is made to be as non-reactive as possible (because of it's mass distribution) so if it says it has the latest and greatest ingredient, it probably only has a tiny fraction of a percentage. For example, Neutrogena Oil Free Acne Wash has Salicylic Acid (2%) in it and you might as well be using Ivory soap. My professional equivalent is 10%... and that's not even for acne. As for the "magical acne cures" on radio, tv, internet... they ARE all crap. A lot people have no idea of skin care basics and even more don't even cleanse their face on a daily basis.
If you are trying to clean up stubborn auto parts and have tried everything take a crock pot (make sure it's one you use to cook in), fill with antifreeze and cook it on low overnight. Works wonders on pot roast flavor too.
I did say it was from my grandmother, dipshit, you know BEFORE fucking ibuprofen. I didn't know this thread was only for medically proven home remedies, you know like mixing bleach and ammonia.
While this is not a 'home remedy' per say it is pretty handy if you start any sort of fires. Take cotton balls, swipe them in Vaseline, put them in a zip-lock bag and work the vaseline into the cotton balls until they are saturated. Next time you need to start a fire simply take a cotton ball out of the bag and light it. It will burn a nice 5-6 inch flame for around one minute. If you do any outdoor activities you can store them in a waterproof container(film container, pill bottle) and have a nice simple fire starter.
If you wanna smoke crack and your lighter is dead, fear not. Take a cotton ball, put it at the end of a clothes hanger, dip the cotton in rubbing alcohol and shoot a couple sparks off the dead lighter... You can't make this shit up.