Tips/hacks that just dont work for you

[Sidebeforeself]

Another failure has inspired me to start this thread! Just tried heating dinner plates by keeping them in hot water..just got a slightly warm plate for the first few seconds, yet I always read this tip around Christmas time.

White vinegar and dish soap to attract and kill little black flies - nope

Bicarb of soda in boiling water to give extra crisp roasties - no discernible difference!

Getting a bit of eggshell out using a bigger piece - nope!

Using a bottle of Cola to remove limescale in the bottom of the toilet. They lied!

Coca Cola is supposed to be able to do all sorts of things!

It's apple cider vinegar with dish soap for the fruit flies, that works. At least it does round here.

Washing a double coverless duvet. I take it the laundrette but so many on here tell me to put it in the washing machine ( same 8kg as mine) but I physically can't fit it in.

I'm generally quite incompetent but even I can manage to fish eggshell out with a larger piece (the trick is to use as large a piece as possible!)

Never heard of the water tip?

Nor the bicarb / roasters?

We just have cold plates here although my roast spuds are always crispy.

Spot cleaning carpets with anything - branded cleaners, home made concoctions, cold water, soda water, biological washing up powder - after the cat has thrown up again. It just spreads the stain out further.

It is disgusting, but the only way I have found to deal with it is to pick up as much of the solids as possible, leave it to dry and then vacuum clean vigorously. It still leaves a bit of a stain but it is much less noticable.

Note to self - don't buy pale carpets.

Rubbing butter into a watermark , my fil points out the watermark every time he comes round and recommends doing this. IT DOESN'T WORK!!!!!!!

The vinegar one only works on a particular type of little fly - the fruit flies that emerge from your fruitbowl when something is going over ripe.

I tend to bang my plates into the microwave for a few seconds to warm them.

Most of the 'hacks' people swear by are complete bollocks. And if I see another cleaning hack that involves mixing vinegar and bicarb/baking soda I may spontaneously combust. Mixing the two creates a chemical reaction that results in - water. Save yourself the middlemen. Just get some out of the tap.

I do have a good one for spilt wine or other liquids in a carpet (obvs not sick). Get a big towel. Fold it up as much as physically possible. Put it over the stain and stand on it. You want as much weight on it as possible. It will draw up the liquid. Keep refolding the towel to get a clean patch and just keep repeating the process until the liquid has all gone. I've had success with this with red wine and tea on a cream carpet several times. Then put the towel in the washing machine as you will obviously now have a towel covered in red wine or whatever.

Use a teaspoon dipped in cold water for the egg shell, the spoon acts like a magnet so just place it beside the shell then move to the side of the bowl and the shell will follow,

Buy a limescale remover called TD10. If using it on taps make sure the tap as been allows to go cold.

Using a dishwasher tab to clean an oven glass door, nope didn't work, neither does pouring bicarb and vinegar down a blocked plug hole

Cleaning an iron with a paracetamol tablet

What?! I have never heard that one! They are useless for headaches too!

Not a hack but the Dr Beckmann carpet cleaner works really well on my pale carpets.

Bicarbonate and vinegar down a plug hole doesn’t clear the eggy smell either Ive discovered

Oh just remembered - holding your breath and pinching your nose to get rid of hiccups doesn’t work

I just stick my plates inside the hot oven for a minute or so to take the chill off them - we used to keep them in a cupboard on an outside wall, so they would be freezing cold and it would drive me mad because it makes your food cold, which is more a problem with some foods than others. Pasta, eggs and vegetables tend to be the issue. TBH room temperature plates are generally fine if you're sticking hot meat, potatoes, and gravy on them.

Surely if you put them in hot water, they will be... wet

Hold your breath and jam fingers in your ears - works a treat

It's not really a hack but the way I've always got rid of hiccups is to tell myself "I do not have hiccups" and REALLY believe it. It works instantly.

That works like a dream. As does a piece of chalk.

We were in a caravan (sorry lodge) and wanted some music but only had our phones, I had read that if you put your phone in a cup and play music, it will radiate out as though coming out of a speaker. We sat there for a while before we had to admit that it just sounded like we were listening to music that was really muffled because some twat had put the phone in a cup!

Just as a counter to that here’s one that really works, walk around in dignified and sorrowful silence with a white sheet draped over your outstretched arms and people will think you have found a dead ghost!

Not quite in the same vein but I've never got on with anything along the lines of: make sandwiches and lay out school uniform the night before, or batch cook at the weekends.

These things just eat into spare time I want to use to lay about staring into the middle distance, and I honestly think having less down time is worse than a more hectic morning or making dinner every night (but then I'm not above thinking fish fingers, chips and peas is an adequate dinner).

Cream bleach and a screwed up ball of aluminium foil worked for me for oven doors!

The putting a duvet into a cover the inside out way just ends in total disaster for me, every time. I’ve stopped trying. Also weighing my eggs to get quantities of butter flour and sugar a sponge cake mixture doesn’t work for me, it ends up too dry and I have to keep adding milk.

Using baking powder to clean my thermos flask - does absolutely bugger all.

I feel exactly the same. It didn't take me long to work out that the thing I hated about being back at work the most was making the sandwiches the night before. So I don't.