Heat the knife with hot water before cutting the bread.

Roll the cork underfoot or with a rolling pin. This reduces the size of the cork without destroying its smooth surface.

A little bit of daily maintenance will keep your glasses from steaming up. Wash your glasses daily with soap and polish the lenses thoroughly. The soap will leave an invisible film which will stop condensation.

Handling certain foods can leave behind stains or odors on your hands. Remove stains and odors by rubbing tomato juice or tomato sauce on your hands! You can also rub your hands together with table salt for the same effect.

There’s an easy way to remove stuck-on food that doesn’t require hours of soaking. Bring a pot of water to a boil on your stovetop, then hold the messy dish over the pot for a few seconds. The steam treatment will loosen up the stuck-on stuff and you’ll be able to scrape it off easily.

Apply a little bit of car wax to the air vents around your house to prevent dust from building up on them. Anything that reduces the amount of dusting I have to do is a thing worth doing, in my book! 🙂

You can save yourself quite a bit of money by switching from paper towels to flour sack towels. They’re great for drying dishes because they don’t leave any lint behind. Flour sack towels also hold up well to repeated launderings and they dry really fast. (Just make sure you don’t use fabric softener when you wash them or it will affect their absorbency.)

Flip the pillowcase inside out and put your arms inside. Then grab the corners of one end of the pillow and pull it towards you while sliding the pillowcase down onto it. How easy is that?

If you’ve spilled grease onto a wood floor, pour cold water on it right away. The cold water will make the grease congeal before it has a chance to penetrate into the wood and leave a stain.

Our grandmothers always knew how to make things last and the easiest way to do that is to divide things up. If you cut a new kitchen sponge in half, you’ll get twice the use of it than you normally would! And a smaller sponge dries much faster than a larger one so it can help prevent bacterial growth too.

To remove candle wax from wood floors or furniture, hold a bag of ice cubes against the wax for a few minutes. Once the wax has hardened, it will be easy to scrape off or chip away.

All the salt in the winter can do a number on your boots. Cut a lemon in half and press it to the stain while squeezing just a bit. Wipe down with a damp cloth and repeat a few times until the stain is gone.

All those socks that have lost their partners? This age-old solution gives them a whole new life. Before you throw them away, use them as rags to dust your home instead of spending more on towels.

Before you go to bed, put a small piece of uncooked bacon fat on a deep splinter and keep it in place with a Band-Aid. In the morning, it will have risen to the surface, or even transferred to the fat. No need for fancy solvents or ointments when your grandma’s there to hand you a piece of bacon fat  🙂

Layer a cooler with rock salt, then coat the eggs in shortening or other grease and bury them in the salt. Create as many layers as needed and store in a cool, dry place like a basement. This was crucial when modern refrigeration wasn’t a thing and when folks were trying to store the massive amounts of perfectly good eggs their own hens hatched.

While you’re away, set up a tall bucket of water next to your plants and place threads of yarn from the bucket to the plants. This way, your plants will get the water they need for a few days without having to over water them before you leave. This is how the grandparents did it before all of those fancy, expensive irrigation systems you can get online and this works just as well for much less.

Use a disposable razor to carefully shave the pills of your favorite sweater. With just a few scrapes, your sweater will be as good as new!

Writing a message on a cake? Write it with a toothpick first to make sure all the letters fit. If you make a mistake, just smooth it out and try again.

Placing plastic wrap around the top stem of a bunch of bananas will keep them from turning brown before you can use them. You can also separate them and wrap each one individually. Also, be sure not to store them near onions!

Maybe you forgot to wash the brushes when you finished a project or maybe you were just lazy but don’t toss them yet. Instead mix some fabric softener with warm water and swish the brush in the mixture to remove the dried paint.

Put the bulb in to nuke for about 20 seconds, after which the cloves will slide right out of their skins. You can peel a whole bunch at once and then freeze the extra cloves for later.

The next time a child gets gum stuck in his or her hair, pull out this sandwich spread. The oil in peanut butter makes gum harden and become less sticky so you can remove it without scissors.

We’re talking temporary tattoos, tar on your shoes, you name it. Just put a little olive oil on a soft cloth, rub on the mess and it’ll come right off.

Don’t worry: Your pot isn’t ruined. Just fill it with hot water and a few squirts of dish soap, bring it to a simmer, then use a spatula to carefully coax the burnt bits off as they soften. That’s it!

Anybody who eats boiled eggs knows the frustration of having one crack. Throwing a little vinegar into the boiling water will keep the egg whites from seeping out. The vinegar also eases the peeling process when you’re ready to eat.