Life Tips Daily

Home renovators know this well: if you have ever sought help to paint your house, do your floors or some other house-related maintenance work, there are some things that are important to be aware of. For these things, you can be as formal or informal as you like: you may think it’s unnecessary to draw up a formal contract with a lawyer, but don’t hesitate to draw up a handwritten one, with signatures covering the following items:

Description of what is to be done
Simple enough, this can be a short list of what you are expecting the person you have hired to do. If you use list form, make sure it has sufficient details such as:

• paint all bathroom walls with two coats of paint + primer
• paint baseboards and all trimming

to avoid being surprised when your painter only paints with one coat of paint and expects to receive the payment agreed to.

Which brings me to what is easily the thorniest issue in informal contracts…
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Yesterday’s focus was on reusing and using up things you find in the kitchen. Today, we’ll focus on the bathroom.

Shampoo, conditioner, shower gels and anything in a bottle
You know when you get to the end of the bottle and smacking the bottom of it just doesn’t dislodge the last glob of liquid? Add more liquid-in the form of water-to mix with the shampoo, conditioner or shower gel. Sure, the result will be more dilute that what you usually use but you’ll know you got almost every drop.

Toothpaste
Those tubes can be hard to squeeze at the end. Why hurt your fingers when you can grab a pair of scissors and cut the tube open? Once open, you can run your toothbrush along the inside of the tube, and scoop up as much paste as you need. Note: this is not for mess freaks!
Toilet paper tubes
If you have children, this is an item that can be added to the craft pile. Let your child use his or her imagination and use these tubes to make a telescope or a pair of binoculars…or something completely different (cut them up to make wheels for a 3-D car perhaps?). Older people may want to use the tube to keep cords neat (wrap up any extra cord and stuff it in the tube). If these ideas fail, toss the tubes in the recycling box!

And my personal favourite…
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It’s time to look at the things in your kitchen that you dispose of, perhaps prematurely. Recycle what you can but then look again: could their use be extended or could they be reused? Let’s have a look.

Dishwashing soap
Add some extra water to your dish soap container and squeeze out those last few drops of concentrated soap.

Grocery bags
If you’re not using cloth bags at the grocery store, make good use of the plastic bags that you do bring in to the house. You can use them to line smaller garbage containers in the home or office, or even use it as a lunch bag.

Food containers
From margarine and yogurt containers to the tray that your frozen lasagna comes in, you can use these containers to transport food (lunch, perhaps?), or send leftovers home with friends or family. If the container is metal, you can use it to warm up food in the oven. Artistic children may find these containers useful: a larger yogurt container can be a dirty water bucket for the budding painter and a metal pan can be used to hold and/or mix paints. You can also turn that tin can that used to hold tomatoes into a pencil or paintbrush holder.

Egg cartons
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