Strange uses for familiar objects

I have actually searched and searched, and found them perched on the top of my head .... where they belong. :-|

Beverly

I use my dog's slicker brush to clean up the floor around my sewing machine. The metal tines do a great job of capturing all the thread and fabric scraps so I don't have to drag out the vacuum.

Pat in NJ

I almost forgot my most favorite item.I have several sets of honeycomb dividers that are meant to be used in a dresser for small items such as socks and stocking. Tried them and hated them. They took up far too much room and I could never get anything else in the drawer. Took them down to the sewing room and put them on the top shelf of a rolling cart I use to hold small things, Each space hold 2 large cones of serger thread and a woolly nylon cone or 3 small cones. So I put the threads in with colors matching and roll the cart to my work table when using my serger. Juno

ANd where were you hiding that you saw my driving???

Larisa

PS - researching business vs. hobby...hobby you don't have to charge taxes on according to what I read online..phone calls will verify tomorrow

The trunk on our three year old Impala is HUGE, it goes back for miles! About two weeks after we bought it I also bought half a dozen of those nesting "milk crate" storage boxes and put them in there. One contains all the odds and ends dh insists on keeping in there - windshield washer, jumper cables, bungee cords etc. etc., another contains assorted junk, and the other four are available to hold shopping bags of any kind. Even so, there is still room to push them all back a little way and put more stuff in front of them. OTOH, if we need to carry something large and the crates are empty, we just nest them one inside the other and, if necessary, stick them on the back seat.

Olwyn Mary in New Orleans.

Okay, Cea. That beats the coffee cups I have found at random places around my house. Definitely. Mine turn up most often on laundry room shelves but occassionally in the garage or in some odd nook on the computer desk that can't be seen in the normal line of vision. Which reminds me, I bought some birthday cards recently and I'm not sure where they are. I think I will check my freezer since it worked for you. You just never know when the randomly generated safe place to store something will strike along with the forties fog. And how often has anyone stared at that important note that doesn't belong on the kitchen table but has been there for days, only to move it to a "safe place" and lose the darn thing!? The item generally turns up several months later in some location that doesn't seem either safe or likely. Thanks for the image of the chilly (but safe) Easter cards!

Marilyn in MN

One that everyone knows, I'm sure, is Matchbox Car boxes - the ones that hold 48 Matchbox cars - which you can buy for $5+, or used to, anyway - to hold cones of thread. I bought some at WalMart, then found an off-brand in a thrift store with cars in them for $5 a box. Gave the cars to the grandsons, kept the boxes for my thread.

I have a couple of dental tools I got from the dentist - too worn for his use, just right for cleaning out little places on old sewing machines. They were mine for asking. He saves them for hobbyists.

Disposable suture scissors, great for catching a single thread to cut.

Telescoping magnet from the hardware store for picking up things I drop

- as long as they're ferrous metal. Also picked up a mirror on a stick, like the kind the dentist uses, but it was in the hardware store.

Butler floss threaders for my serger.

Cross-locking tweezers - never know when they'll come in handy. Same with those wooden skewers. Or a medical clamp some people may know as a "roach holder."

Candy containers - I have bobbins in M&M tubes, hand-sewing needles in Tic-Tac boxes.

Tin containers -- Sucrets, Altoids, etc. I save those advertising magnets or buy sticky-back magnets, line the lid of the tin (be sure to leave room around the edge so the tin will close. I find them very handy for a thread clip or small scissors, thimble, needles, pins, a small tape measure, some thread, for a portable sewing kit. When I sew in another room, everything is in the box and I don't have to jump up and down five times. The magnet in the lid is insurance against getting a needle or pin in the chair or on the floor.

I'm sure there are more - I just can't think of them right now.

How about a pound block of cheddar cheese under the bed. Kids teeth marks complementary... Fluff optional. We washed the fluff off and cooked the rest of the cheese. No-one knew, and we didn't tell them for

Stop it! Too funny!

Pora

(Not mentioning the dead silverfish we found at the bottom of the flour sifter *after* the brownies were all cooked and eaten.)

You get a prize for using "spork" in a sentence. And for finding an old wooden Coke case!

Pora

What's my prize? Chocolate I hope. Juno

I *still* tap spaghetti sharply on the work surface before cooking it, to get the weevils out. Hang-over from living in Malta as a child, and we came back 38 years ago...

Would **anyone** here give out any other kind of prize??? Ok, well maybe they'd dig in the stash and give you that too. lol

Sharon

That works for me!!

Last sunday I was walking to the store to buy the weekend paper for the sale ads. On the low stone wall around a flower bed alongside the main drag in town, I saw a familiar looking coffee mug. As it had the name of the dealership AND salesman where we bought a used car just before moving to our current town, I was certain it was our mug. Later wlaked into the house and asked the DH if he was missing a mug. He looked confused, I held up the mug, he hollared, "oh yeah! I set it on the wall to pick up on my way back."

Me, "when was that?"

"last Thursday----"

Another great use for that gray foam tubing that insulates pipes is to put it over the cross bar of a coat hanger. Doesn't matter if it's a wooden or wire hanger. It's great for preventing those ugly creases in the side of the legs of pants and it prevents those pants from 'crawling' off the hanger, too.

When I take corners on two wheels, I bungee the groceries into my wire panniers.

A trick I've learned for carrying tomatoes on the bike: put two bungees side-by-side across the top of the pannier, put the tomatoes in a "T-shirt" grocery bag, pass the top of the bag to the right of the left bungee and to the left of the right bungee, so as to force them to twist, pull up until the leash on the tomato is so short that it can't touch either side of the basket, tie the handles of the plastic bag to the pannier.

Joy Beeson