Convenient (and Genius!) Helpful Household Hacks
Who doesn’t love a good household hack? When we hear a new one, we add it to our collection — whether it’s a new use for rubber bands, coffee filters, dryer sheets, or pool noodles (now on sale at Walmart —five for $15!). So, share our delight in these helpful, practical, inventive hacks that can simplify your life and help you troubleshoot ways to provide protection, convenience and comfort for you and your family!
Coffee Filter Hacks and Helps
If you haven’t yet tried dusting with a coffee filter, it’s high time. Upon reading this hack, we reached into the work cabinet where a stash of leftover basket-type coffee filters sat – (BK — before Keurig!). These filters a good little dust magnets, and work better with a little something spritzed on them – Bona® wood cleaner, glass cleaner, even a drop of water. They worked especially well on the bottom sliding door track, with a little 409®.
These filters also make great disposable snack holders for kids, filters for hard water, strainers for fruit when you’re making sorbet ,and to line the bottom of a planter while you fill it with dirt. It covers the drainage holes so the dirt stays in, but allows water to seep out. 
Coffee filters can be popsicle drip catchers, and they can work as an “apron” on a bottle of olive (or any) oil, to catch the inevitable drips that don’t make it back into the bottle. Coffee filters are lint-free making them perfect for cleaning screens – TV, smart phone, tablets – as well as windows, glass table tops and mirrors.
Coffee filters are one way to clean a cast iron skillet, too, by the way, with a little bit of salt, and if you spritz a filter with a little white vinegar and essential oil, you can use it as a dryer sheet! For more coffee filter uses, check out The Secret Yumiverse.
New Uses for Dryer Sheets
Dryer sheets work even better as dust cloths than coffee filters because dust clings to them. You can pop one in your Swiffer® and test it yourself, AFTER it’s been used once in the dryer. Who hasn’t used a leftover dryer sheet to help remove lint from the dryer screen? And to get dried bugs off your windshield or grill, just wet one of these and it’ll remove those baked-on, crispy insects! It also works wonders to pick up pet hair, polish water-spotted chrome, and remove sap from your fingertips! Remember that last one, when you go cut down your next Christmas tree.
And of course, fresh dryer sheets can freshen everything from old, stuffy-smelling books, to gym bags, tennis shoes, linens and your bathroom – just tuck one in the toilet paper roll and every time it spins, it’ll freshen the air!
Pool Noodle Life Hacks
Make a squeegee for your garage floor with part of a pool noodle and a garden rake. Or fashion a car seat foot rest, a bumper for sharp furniture edges or to prevent a door from closing, a bed “rail” to keep a little from falling out — all by modifying a pool noodle (usually with a lengthwise cut). Check out the 50 ways to hack your way out of a thorny life situation with a pool noodle at Home Hacks Co. Or watch and imitate one dad’s tutorials in this YouTube video from Specific Love Creations for kids and adults.
New Uses For Rubber Bands
Rubber bands can be used as erasers (who knew?!), as well as to keep things corralled and organized, like spools of ribbon and rolls of wrapping paper. Rubber bands help you get a grip on things like food jar lids, nail polish bottles and wood-handled hammers. Wrap a couple of rubber bands around the ends of a plastic hanger to keep clothes from slipping off, or wrap them around a paint can to remove excess paint from a paintbrush.
Rubber bands can keep a sliced apple together, and simultaneously prevent it from turning brown before lunch or snack time. And a rubber band wrapped around the top of a pump soap dispenser (or hand sanitizer!) keeps kids (and adults) from pumping (and wasting) too much liquid soap. The rubber band acts like a stopper, allowing only the desired amount to be dispensed.
A rubber band placed invisibly behind a photo will keep it in place in the frame, and if you’re confronted with a stripped screw, simply place a rubber band across the top of the screw, stick your screwdriver into the indent, and twist. Remember, righty-tighty, and lefty-loosey. For more hacks using rubber bands click here.
Hack-Happy in Colliers Hill
As we reopen amenities in the master-planned community of Colliers Hill, we all acknowledge it’s been a long road to near-normalcy. We’re getting back to life as we know it – full of fun summer days and home hacks for residents! For house hunters looking for their next digs, check out the beautiful model homes from Richmond American Homes and Century Communities – and coming this fall – K B Home offerings (paired homes). It’s a great time to buy with rates so low and lots of possibilities from the high $300s.
