LIST OF THE MONTH: CHEAP BUT GOOD
My wife and I share an interest in making things work and figuring out why they don’t and exploring what might make them work again. We knew we were headed for marriage when we realized we not only both had a workbench packed with hardware, we both had the same screw size chart on the wall.
So I didn’t roll my eyes when she presented me with a list she had gleaned from This Old House magazine about household uses for baking soda. Scanning it, my eyes leaped to the phrase “Banish book odors.”
If you’ve ever been to a library book sale, you know the smell. Musty, dusty and moldy, it isn’t all that bad, but you hesitate, wondering if it would make all your other books smell that way, at least if you never got around to reading them. A lot of worthwhile books perish that way, euthanized as unadoptable.
So here’s bicarbonate of soda, once again riding to the rescue: “Seal musty-smelling books for a few weeks in a plastic bag with baking soda sprinkled inside to eliminate mildew and odors.”
This Old House observes that the reader may very well have some baking soda in their refrigerator to fight odors. (What do you do with it afterward? I’ll bet it has garden uses, too; or you could give it to your kid for his or her birthday together with a bottle of vinegar if they promise never, ever to log onto http://www.eepybird.com.) But there are other useful uses, they say. Here they are:
1. Remove tape residue by putting on a thick paste of baking soda and water.
2. Put out small fires by sprinkling baking soda (so have a box at your workplace as well as the kitchen).
3. Exterminate roaches, by leaving out a mixture that is half sugar (which they greedily eat) and baking soda (which makes their digestive systems burst; see www.eepybird.com)
4. Spot clean a rug by putting it on a greasy spot, leaving for an hour, scrubbing gently with a damp sponge or brush, then vacuum.
5. Dehumidify the work room by leaving a box open to absorb water (which probably won’t hurt if you have to toss the contents on a fire—see no.2)
6. Keep the kitchen sink drain from clogging by pouring in a cup of baking soda and a cup of vinegar, once a week. This will also keep housecleaning days from getting boring; if the results are particularly effective and you videotape them, it will also work to clog You Tube.)
7. Clean a shower door by putting baking soda on a damp sponge, wiping, and washing with warm water.
8. Rehabilitate your grill by sprinkling baking soda on directly, leaving overnight, then removing (along with the grime) with a wire brush and warm water.
9. Get odors off your hands, with a palmful of the stuff and warm water.
10. –book odors.
I almost wrote for no. 10 “This is where I came in.” If you ever hear an older person say that, it means they date from the days when local movie theaters showed double features. If you arrived a little bit late for one movie, of course you stayed after the second movie to see how it began. Then you would start to recognize footage, and you might say to the person whose feet you had to walk over to reach the aisle, “This is where I came in,” meaning that was where you were getting out. Life makes such sense sometimes.
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