Being a work from home, stay at home, barely leaves the house kind of mom, email plays a pretty important part in my day. Talking on the phone is rarely a possibility with the amount of background noise and that instant phone radar my children have. While I love my email inbox, there are also those times when I dread opening it and part of that dread is from those obnoxious forwarded emails that seem to come on a daily basis from family and friends who apparently love email even more than me.
Usually, as soon as I see that an email is not from a client or a traditionally non-forwarded email friend and it has the FW at the beginning, I just put it in my delete pile and away it goes, but every once in a while (and especially when it is from my Mom…cause I love her) I will open one and check it out. Not too bright, I know, but hey, it’s my Mom!
Recently I received one that actually had some decent tips in it and I immediately said, “Hey, I want to let people know about these”. At the same time I thought, “but I don’t want to forward this email to cause the next person may have to go through this viscous cycle again”. So for all our loyal readers, I present the ideas of a forwarded email that was actually worth opening!
These are probably tips and tricks most of you already know and use, but consider your reading of this non-forwarded email and end to a cycle!
Hull Strawberries with a Straw
Mind you it must be a pretty sturdy straw and the best of luck comes with using a straw that is not too narrow. This image uses a disposable straw, but we have a small stock of reusable straws and while the little ones got clogged, the wider straws were easy to clear and did a great job. In the past we either picked off our greens resulting in pink fingers or we trimmed the top of the berry, losing a portion of this delightful treasure. This approach is kind of fun and pretty easy!
Use a Walnut to hide scratches in Furniture
Sounds pretty simple doesn’t it. I totally didn’t believe this one until I tried it. I have some OLD kitchen chairs and it just so happened we had some walnuts, so I went to work. Blown away at how well the walnut eliminates the appearance of scratches. Obviously it isn’t a permanent fix, but on furniture that isn’t cleaned rigorously, regularly, it is a way to make things look much nicer!
Stop Browning Apples without Using all your Lemon
Personally, I kind of like the flavor a spritz of lemon juice has on an apple, but this is a good trick that I had not tried or thought of. I know putting an apple in what you may believe to be an air tight container isn’t always enough and my kids particularly associate the discoloration of the apple with there being something WRONG with the apple. So I will be trying this very soon.
Bread Tags for Cord Labels & More
It is so easy to reuse the bag, but not quite as simple to r-use the tag…or isn’t it. I like this idea for the cord labels (as seen in the photo), but we don’t have a ton of cords at our house as we try to keep things to a minimum. What we do have though are a LOT of rechargeable items that come with various cords and I was able to organize our collection nicely with these cord tags. I have also used them on various bags and plant stalks and other things. The kids like to glue a longer paper tag over the bread tag and use them as gift labels for bags and a variety of other things.
Gutter Gardening
I think this was my favorite in the group. We actually took a ton of wooden gutter down off our house when we bought it because most of it was cracked and not holding up to the elements anymore. I have already repurposed those, but there was also some metal gutter that is still unused that I plan to put on the side of the chicken house for growing in. It gets great sun over there! Love this and you can probably easily come across tons of used gutter for free.