What hack has blown your mind?

[MindblownMia]

On the weekend I burnt some black felt onto my iron and it was impossible to get off. I tried spraying it with cleaner, scrubbing it with a sponge and scraping it when hot but nothing worked.

I was about to give up when I learnt that if you pick up a piece of paracetamol or ibuprofen with some tweezers and then wipe it all over the hot iron, the marks literally disappear.

My mind has been blown.

My mind was also blown when I learnt on Mumsnet that the stripes on a super king duvet go horizontally not vertically 🤣 I just thought none of my duvet covers fit 💀

What other things like this have blown peoples minds? I can’t keep living without all these amazing hacks 😂

@Bloozie tried your method tonight on the fire, it worked well (though my middle log fell down, more kindling base required!)

My sausage box! Any leftover cooked sausages go in a box in the freezer - then when it's full, I defrost and slice them and add them to a portion of batch-cooked tomato sauce and pasta with some grated cheese on top.

My DH and I have single duvets as I get hot and cold and fidget mine on and off and he's a duvet hog. Works great.

I learned the candle one from my late DM who used to help with church cleaning.

We need someone to put these in ChatGPT so we can search whenever we need a hack!

They will already be on there. LLM are trained on the internet.

If you need a hack, just ask it.

Key broken off in a lock?

You need a plastic raw plug and a lighter.

Use the lighter to heat the end/nose of the raw plug and then gently push the raw plug over the broken piece of the key in the lock and leave to cool down.

When you pull the raw plug towards you the broken key will be attached and will slide out.

Not sure I understand this one.
Boil water in two separate places and then combine it in one. Hey presto, boiled water!?

Using the kettle is quicker than boiling in the pan, but having a small amount of water in pan means that you can safely heat the pan quickly too.

I've tried it - it's definitely quicker than bringing the water to the boil in the pan on the hob.

If you have an old electric stove, like my dad has, the kettle heats the water so much faster than the stove.
I have a gas stove at home, so no need to use the kettle.

I don’t understand this either. When making pasta, I boil the water in the kettle then put in the pan to cook the pasta…

Biological washing powder is great for cleaning old tea stains out of teapots, particularly from the spout. Put in a good tablespoonful of powder, then fill the teapot to the brim with warm water from the tap. Leave overnight. Works a treat.

Sorry, tree isn't up yet.

With my old hob, if I poured boiling water into a cold pan & then turned the hob on it could take several minutes to come back up to boiling. PP's method saves this time by preheating the pan and hob so the water reboils, and is ready for your pasta, almost instantly. If your hob is more responsive then it's reboiling quick enough anyway and you won t need the need to do this.

We have an induction hob now which boils water quicker than the kettle does, so we've stopped using the kettle too.

I have a couple more:

Gardeners - when you need new secateurs, buy some with bright orange handles. Much easier to find when you inevitably put them down somewhere.

Cat staff - use wooden toast tongs to squeeze down the last bit out of a Lik-e-lix.

“Put them down somewhere” usually means in the garden waste bin for me! Very grateful for the orange grips on them.

Hooray - I've finally found someone who does it the same way I do

I'm guessing from the word doona you are Australian? I'm in NZ, maybe it's a downunder method.

You guessed correctly 😃

i have to use more than kettle so do follow this hack

Good tip, going to try this on my stair & hall carpets as apart fro m it being awkward to do, I'm fed up with hairs wrapped around the vacuum, which brings me to my top tip; if your vacuum cleaner doesn't have one of those hair snipping gizmos on it, remove it with stitch ripper. It's easy to get under the hair tangled round the brush.

Ha! Yes, you do need a good base. But I've never had to fanny around trying to coax a sulky fire, or opened the stove door to billowing smoke because the chimney isn't hot and drawing, since lighting fires this way.

Glad it worked out ok for you.

I do it this way too! I am NE England

Yep- I know exactly what you mean and it makes sense! We've had that a lot on travels in Europe!
When we came home and changed OUR system we found we had

• A John Lewis duvet that wasn't 13 tog but actually a separate 9 tog duvet and a 4 tog duvet buttoned together
• Loads of duvet covers, some fancy, some plain white

So we now use the separate duvets but we think it looks prettier/nicer to "make" the bed with one white duvet (bottom) and one fancy duvet (top), just layered on top of each other for "day". Then at night: select duvet according to heating needs.

I think what's confusing everyone is the "boil 2 inches of water in the saucepan AND ALSO boil the kettle and add more water".
Yes, the water will boil faster in the electric kettle. So why not just boil the kettle and add ALL the water to the saucepan?
Not to be snarky (this is Mumsnet after all so being disingenuous) but it isn't a "hack" if everyone has to argue about it for fourteen quote posts. It's a "hack" if everyone goes "OMG I NEVER THOUGHT OF THAT".

But why would you remove tannin from the pot? It adds to the flavour.