Household tips and tricks! - Are you having trouble getting the wine stains out of your carpet? Do you clean your cookware with something extraordinary? Come share!

Any tips for getting rid of mosquitos that have found their way indoors? We don't get many here at all so it's kinda a new experience, but for the last couple of days there's been one in the bedroom that eats me up overnight. I hear the fucker while trying to get to sleep but when I get up to slap it, it hides. I got a device that's like a light with a fan underneath -- the mos is supposed to be attracted by the light and then the fan sucks them in and they can't escape. Set it up bedside last night but could still hear the fucker buzzing around and didn't go to the trap.
 
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soulless guarantee said:
Any tips for getting rid of mosquitos that have found their way indoors? We don't get many here at all so it's kinda a new experience, but for the last couple of days there's been one in the bedroom that eats me up overnight. I hear the fucker while trying to get to sleep but when I get up to slap it, it hides. I got a device that's like a light with a fan underneath -- the mos is supposed to be attracted by the light and then the fan sucks them in and they can't escape. Set it up bedside last night but could still hear the fucker buzzing around and didn't go to the trap.
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All I know about mosquitos is that I hate 'em.

And that they aren't attracted to light; that would make it easy to kill them. They're attracted to carbon dioxide. There are some big-deal traps that generate/use carbon dioxide cartridges to lure mosquitos, but they're expensive.

I don't have any good advice, just hoping you get to kill the thing. Fly strip, maybe? It won't be attracted to it, but there's still a good chance it'll land on it and get stuck.
 
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Zachary_Quack said:
instead of kitchen towels, buy those fuck-off huge rolls of multipurpose towels you get in the diy/tools section (the ones for like cleaning oilspills and shit). looks basically the same, slightly smaller and slightly thinner -- but lasts for fucking ever
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I have a basket of washcloths for drying clean hands instead of using paper towels, a box of rags for cleaning-cleaning, and then disposable paper things for things like cat barf. The disposable things end up barely being used.
 
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Hoi Polloi said:
Sugar soap runs rings around most normal household cleaners for getting rid of grease. It's sold in hardware shops near the paint section and it comes as a concentrate so a small bottle will last for ages.
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I just spent a while in the Google mines and have come back to tell: in North America, "sugar soap" is "TSP."

(I was interested and then I was trying to figure out why all the "sugar soap" had huge amounts of shipping attached.)
 
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glass_houses said:
My part of the world flooded again.

Third time in three months.

The mould. The mould is growing on everything. There's even clumps of it on the polished wooden floors of the kitchen. My tablecloth has gone mouldy. There's mould on the side of the leatherette lounge. The toilet room walls are covered in mould. All the walls are covered in mould. I'm going to ask our landlord if there's some kind of treatment he can put on the walls to try and stop it from coming back, but I don't like the chances he'll say yes, because the stingy old bastard says no to everything.

Give me your best mould killing tips and tricks, I beg you.


* The one thing that could really help us, a humidifier, isn't practical in this house. It's an extremely old wooden house, none of the windows or doors seal properly, and the floors aren't sealed either.
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You need to get the professionals in. Mould at that level can be extremely hazardous to your health.
PandaChai said:
May be only tangentially related, but any good home remedies for soothing a chapped nose after a cold or allergies hit? Or how to prevent or minimise it when the nose drip attacks?

Is there a home remedies or wives tales thread?
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Lanolin. Nipple cream for breastfeeding mums. Sold in small tubes in the baby aisle at the supermarket. Plus the nicest softest tissues you can buy
 
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Oh man. I got a lot of good ones!

To get your sinks and tubs spotless, buy one of those mothers foam brushes used for polishing rims. You know the ones you put in the end of a power drill? I was amazed that it's even capable of polishing chrome things not on a car.

If you have any stubborn stumps in your yard that using charcoal briquettes or tannerite would be too much of a fire hazard. Drill small holes in the top. Alternate daily between Pepsi and Hydrogen peroxide. The daily switch between Pepsin enzymes and oxidizers will break down the wood in about 2 weeks.
Major labor saver.

If you have a rusty bolt/nut that won't come loose. Use a 50/50 mix of acetone and automatic transmission fluid. You can buy a gallon of 100% pure acetone at most beauty supply stores for pretty cheap. The super low vapor pressure of the acetone mixed with the low viscosity of transmission fluid will not only penetrate the rusted threads, but a small amount of the lubricant will actually seep into the metal like a sponge.

Give it a couple light taps on all sides with a tack hammer... wait 5 minutes. Tighten half a degree with a breaker bar to free up the rust and THEN loosen.
 
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Aunt Carol said:
All I know about mosquitos is that I hate 'em.

And that they aren't attracted to light; that would make it easy to kill them. They're attracted to carbon dioxide. There are some big-deal traps that generate/use carbon dioxide cartridges to lure mosquitos, but they're expensive.

I don't have any good advice, just hoping you get to kill the thing. Fly strip, maybe? It won't be attracted to it, but there's still a good chance it'll land on it and get stuck.
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Reporting back, the trap did successfully trap (and kill) the mosquito, but from what you said it sounds like the light wasn't really an impact on luring it in, it was just luck that it flew into the fan suction. So by having it set up next to the bed, the mos was in the right area by being attracted to my CO2 exhaling, but it's a lot neater than sticking fly paper up above the bed, successful for the same chance of it randomly flying into the right place. Thank god.
 
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Registration said:
I did my first fish yesterday and used the knife to remove the scales of a mullet. It was my first time doing it, but even as it went easily, I bet there are better tools to do it.
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Dug my old gear out and here’s a picture of the tool. Can be found cheaply as it’s just stamped sheet metal and they come in molded plastic too. No worries about getting cut by a knife with it.
4606EC96-7983-4EEE-AA31-D0A150FF49C0.jpeg1A57294B-BE42-4178-B155-5AE19B10B34E.jpeg
 
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Jesus Quintana said:
I think you can't clean electronics with alcohol, it may ruin them.
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You can clean electronics even in water if there's no charge in them, at that point it's just fiberglass, plastic and metal, similar to cheap greasy street food in china.

PandaChai said:
May be only tangentially related, but any good home remedies for soothing a chapped nose after a cold or allergies hit? Or how to prevent or minimise it when the nose drip attacks?

Is there a home remedies or wives tales thread?
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Vaseline and/or oil(I like olive oil, smells nice). But mostly vaseline.

What you should do is apply it BEFORE you blow your nose a billion times, that way you won't end up with a chapped and hurty nose. If you ever worked with lots of paper or cardboard you know it leeches the oils out of your fingers until they start to crack, bleed and hurt, same thing happen when using napkins/toilet paper to blow your nose often and repeatedly. The vaseline makes it so the paper never really comes in contact with your skin(nose, upper lip, just remember to reapply) and if you have a mustasche smear some on there as well, like boxers do, to avoid tugging the hairs.

Another cold/flu tip is to cough into a pillow, it doesn't hurt that way. It allows you to cough harder than you otherwise would so be aware that all kinds of stuff will get launched out of your airways and stick to the pillow. It will only hurt 20% as much as a regular cough and clear out a lot of mucus, it's really good.
 
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Against my better judgement, I read the last few pages of the Chantal thread, and she was wet mopping her carpet. Much to my bafflement, no one remarked that this is odd or insane, which suggests that this is actually a thing. Is this a thing that has managed to escape my notice so I could be duly horrified? And then it just... air dries? There's no shop vac involved or anything to suck the filthy water out?

Please to inform.
 
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Any advice/similar experiences in getting stinkbugs to get out and stay out?

My husband, tired of chucking stinkbugs out the window all day, decided to try using catnip to force them outside. Our area is overrun with them for a couple weeks each year. As others here have mentioned, catnip is great at keeping a variety of bugs away, but we weren't sure if a singular potted plant would work for a whole room.

Unfortunately, the results were inconclusive. We put the pot in the kitchen, left for an hour, and came back to find our neighbor's cat high off his little gremlin ass in the sink. I'm still trying to figure out how he got in. Anyway, the little man was in BLISS. He was communing with the universe on a level that humans will never reach. I half expected him to start echoing my teenage self and saying shit like "it's not addictive bro, it's all natural" and "it's good for your brain dude!!"

Sooo the results are inconclusive at the moment. The cat (he's fine now, for the record) ripped up most of the catnip in hedonistic glee, but he also likes to chase stinkbugs (and presumably eat them, although we've never seen him do it). But I'm not complaining. The room is 100% free of bugs either way.
 
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