With all the kitchen sink debris that goes down the drain, it should be no surprise that your garbage disposal sometimes gets a little smelly and needs some extra cleaning. Using common household items from your kitchen or medicine cabinet, you can easily clean your garbage disposal in ten minutes or less using one of the following six DIY methods listed below.
Feet sore after a long day? Treat your feet to a DIY massage by rolling tennis balls under the soles of your feet for about ten to twenty minutes. If your feet are still feeling beat (and smell a little bad), you can also indulge your feet in a foot soak using common household ingredients such as tea bags, Epsom salt, and apple cider vinegar.
In addition to unclogging your toilet using common household items, you can also clean and disinfect your toilet for cheap without ever having to use expensive and chemically-toxic toilet cleaners ever again.
Unless you're a bartender or a hardcore drink aficionado, understanding the different types of carbonated water and their best uses can get confusing. This is especially true since most people use the terms "club soda," "sparkling water," and "seltzer water" interchangeably when ordering drinks.
Contrary to its name, a permanent marker is not completely permanent if you really need to get it off a non-paper surface.
Do you use disposable wipes for cleaning dusty tables, dirty windows or removing make-up? Ditch the chemically-loaded store brands and make your own cheaper, non-toxic and super-easy DIY wipes at home.
Too much leftover red wine after a big party? Rather than forcing yourself to drink everything before the flavor goes bad or pouring it down the drain, save some for non-drinking household and beauty uses, such as trapping fruit flies, marinating steak, and conditioning your skin.
Need to keep your beloved houseplant alive while you're on vacation? Repot the plant with a disposable diaper at the bottom of the flowerpot before covering with soil; the diaper will help retain soil moisture at the bottom, which will keep your plant properly hydrated for a good window of time while you're gone.
If you ever find yourself with a ring that won't come off your swollen fingers, grab some Windex, lubricate the area around your ring below your knuckle, and slowly wiggle your ring around until it slides past your knuckle.
Toothpicks can be surprisingly handy when it comes to woodworking and fixing small household problems like stripped screw holes and scratched furniture. They can also be used as a quick fix for a hard-to-close door that has to be forced or slammed shut.
Back in the '80s, NASA and the Associated Landscape Contractors of America did a study where they discovered which houseplants were the most effective in purifying the air in space facilities. Though you may not be living in a rocket ship, you can definitely benefit from having one or more of these plants in your home.
Cayenne peppers are great for spicing up your bland cooking, but did you know that they can also prevent frostbite? If you ever need to keep your feet warm during a long snow hike or skiing adventure, add a little bit of cayenne pepper powder to the bottom of your socks.
Sooner or later you're going to have to deal with a stuck zipper, whether it's on your favorite jacket, backpack, or pair of pants. Simply tugging hard on the zipper tab hardly ever works, but a few things lying around your house might do the trick.
If you've had wooden furniture in your living space for a while, chances are that you've accumulated at least a couple of nicks and scratches on the surface. Before you spend money on a professional wood refinisher to restore the surface, try out some of the DIY techniques below using common household items to minimize the visibility of the scratch.
We all know that distilled white vinegar is great as a general non-toxic cleaning solution and for deodorizing funky smelling rooms, but did you know that vinegar is also great for curing hiccups, deterring ants from invading your home, relieving jellyfish stings, and testing the alkalinity of your garden soil?
Whether or not you have a feline companion at home, a bag of cat litter makes for a handy household staple that can help prevent grease fires, add traction to slippery icy steps, remove grease spots, preserve your fresh flowers, and clear algae from your backyard koi pond.
Mayonnaise is not exactly the healthiest thing in the world, but it makes for a great household and self-care item, from whitening your yellowing piano keys to adding shine and luster to your dry and brittle hair.
There are so many ways to modify your camera using common household items, like clothes hangers, an umbrella, or even a jar of peanut butter. Here's a new, unexpected addition to the list—a shower head. Maciej Pietuszynski came up with this brilliant camera mod, which uses a shower head to turn an old 50mm lens into a DIY tilt lens. This trick works by using the part from the shower head that allows you to adjust the angle. You'll have to take apart the lens and cut the shower head in half. T...
When it comes to common household items with a million practical uses, baking soda reigns supreme. We all know that baking soda is great for deodorizing stinky things, whitening your teeth, and helping with clean-up around the house, but did you know about the other weirdly unexpected and esoteric uses for baking soda?
Bleach is a great product for getting rid of tough stains and disinfecting areas around the house, but the amount of harmful chemicals these products have inside of them is extremely high, as you can probably tell by reading the MSDS for the Clorox brand.
Believe it or not, it is absolutely possible to get by without a big refrigerator in your kitchen. After all, before refrigerators became a household staple in the last century, people somehow managed to store their perishable fruits, vegetables, legumes and meats for an extended period of time with ice boxes, root cellars, evaporative cooling pots, preserving, canning and more.
Are you in dire need of some visual eye candy? Dazzle your eyes by building your own kaleidoscope with a sheet of foldable plastic, common household items and whatever small and sparkly things you can get your hands on.
Tom Friedman. One of my very favorite contemporary artists. Friedman injects the wonder into the humdrum. He creates magic from the unsuspected with his incredible sculptures assembled from simple, everyday materials. His materials have included: toilet paper, drinking straws, construction paper, masking tape, toothpicks, bubblegum, spaghetti, toothpaste, soap powder, sugar cubes.
The only thing better than successfully pulling off a new experiment is doing it with household materials. You get to laugh in conceit as professional scientists everywhere spend all their grant money on the same project you just accomplished with some under-the-sink chemicals! However, there are times when DIY gets dangerous. Some household chemicals are not pure enough to use and some are just pure dangerous. Let's take a look at two problems I have encountered in the course of mad sciencing.
This video shows you how to work with independent timelines, specifically the main timeline and movie clip timelines. You learn about how multiple timelines can interact, and how to navigate using the edit bar when you have multiple timelines. You nest movie clips and learn how they interact, and nest instances to create effective animations. Use multiple timelines in Flash CS3 Professional.
In this video tutorial you will learn to edit symbols in Macromedia Flash. Please note that if you modify a symbol stored in your library, all the instances of that symbol will be changed too. An example of changes you could perform is to modifiy a fill color and stroke appearance. Edit symbols in Flash.
The multi-talented Amy Sedaris (creator and star of TV show Strangers With Candy) has a new gut-busting venture, now available in bookstores near you. Simple Times: Crafts For Poor People is a tongue-in-cheek DIY guide to projects like seashell toilet seat covers and ringworm pompons. In a recent interview with NPR, a couple statements rubbed some DIYers the wrong way (ahem, ugly people are doing crafts; pretty people are having sex). Or perhaps this didn't sit well:
In this video tutorial, Creative Cow leader Michael Park shows you how to create a realistic 3d earth, complete with clouds and atmosphere, using only After Effects' built in effects. Special attention will be given to combining multiple instances of the CC Sphere effect to create unique layers with different specular properties for the land and water masses, as well as creating lights from urban centers on the night side of the earth.
A diamond ring is probably one of your most prized possessions. Like most possessions, it requires care to keep it as good as new. Learn how to clean a diamond ring with the folks from Martha Stewart's REAL SIMPLE. Diamonds are made to shine! But daily wearing can result in a less-than-sparkling stone. There's no need for a professional cleaning: Polish your gem at home using common household products.
Learn how to polish silver with the folks from Martha Stewart's REAL SIMPLE. Beautiful silver pieces shouldn't languish at the back of a shelf. Removing tarnish might seem like a time-consuming task, but some simple household products make for an easy clean? no backbreaking scrubbing required. Watch this how to video for tips on polishing your silver. Take care of your silver, so you can pass it down for generations to come.
If you're a musician in need of some lessons, there's no better way to learn than with MusicRadar's so-called "Tuition" instructions. Although the title tuition is misleading, this video class is anything but costly, because it's free, right here. Whether you're looking for help with your voice, bass, electric guitar, drums, guitar effects, piano, Logic Pro or production techniques, Music Radar is here to show you the way.
When Floyd Landis accused competitor Lance Armstrong of doping last May, I dismissed it as just an instance of Landis' lashing out.
In the instance of all shots being blocked, you can place the cue ball near an object ball, as is shown in this video. This is a safe shot that can potentially make your opponent's next turn very difficult. Freeze a cue ball on an object ball for safety.
Miley Cyrus is a polarizing figure. You either love her or you hate her, and she's always doing something to reaffirm your particular bias (like pole dancing on an ice cream stand, for instance). But there's little debate that she knows how to belt out a good ballad.
One of the most simple and cost effective ways to liven up your landscaping is through subtle illumination. Low voltage lighting is simple to install and offers many benefits including ambiance, safety and security. They can be used to illuminate a walkway or to lighten up your home's street address at night. Today's manufacturers are making low-voltage lighting products geared for the do-it-yourselfer, which makes purchasing and installation easier. These low-voltage kits come with a transfo...
One of the most simple and cost effective ways to liven up your landscaping is through subtle illumination. Low voltage lighting is simple to install and offers many benefits including ambiance, safety and security. They can be used to illuminate a walkway or to lighten up your home's street address at night. Today's manufacturers are making low-voltage lighting products geared for the do-it-yourselfer, which makes purchasing and installation easier. These low-voltage kits come with a transfo...
What if your fridge knew your food and expiration dates? What if your fridge could tell you which ingredients are missing and where you can get them the cheapest?
Almost every human being on the planet uses toothpaste daily, but typically for just one task—oral hygiene. Keeping your teeth clean is undoubtedly important, but this magical mixture of abrasives, fluoride, and detergents must be useful for more than just scrubbing your chops, right? For instance, it's great at removing scuff marks from shoes!
Most likely you have planned one or two flights of stairs from your deck to the surrounding yard. Steps can be built a number of different ways depending on your aesthetic preference, however most municipalities have specific codes that must be taken into consideration when you design and build your steps. For instance, many cities require a minimum width of 3 feet for the stairs.
Deck railings are important to both the safety and the aesthetic appearance of your deck. In other words, a railing is the perfect blend of "strength and beauty."
