In the Kitchen : Easily Clean Up Egg Yolks

You were trying to crack the egg into the pan, but you ended up with egg all over the floor.

Take some salt and sprinkle it over the mess. After about ten minutes you will be able to sweep up the mess with your broom.

Egg yolk is full of lipoproteins, when you add salt these dissolve leaving the egg less gooey and easier to clean.

Tackling the Great Outdoors : Find Your Direction Without a Compass

You've been hiking all day in Colorado and you thought you were on the right trail, but for some reason it's longer than you expected. You can go any direction you want from the trail and you just want to get back to the car, but how do you tell with way is south?

All you need is your analog wristwatch. Point the hour hand of the watch at the sun. The point in the middle of the hour hand and the number twelve is due south. This works regardless of the time of day.

When you are in the northern hemisphere of the world the sun is usually to the south of you. The relationship between the placement of the sun and the time of day correlates so that an noon it is most accurate. It is accurate to within 20 degrees of true south.

Around the House : Clean Up Candle Wax

The power went out last night and you had to light candles. Daylight the next day reveals a floor covered in candle wax.

Sometimes dry wax can be picked off a surface, but when that doesn't work a piece of paper towel and an iron will. Place the paper towel over the wax and iron over it smoothly with a hot iron.

Paper towel is made to soak up liquids. When heat is applied to the wax it melts and is soaked up by the towel from the other side.

Around the House : The Key to Streak less Windows

Between finger prints on the inside and water marks on the outside how are you ever going to get your windows clean and free of streaks?

Newspaper is the key. Use newspaper with water or glass cleaner and you will find that your windows are clean and streak free.

Newspapers are made of newsprint which is full of lignin, a super absorbent substance. Lignin is usually removed from paper because it discolors it. Newsprint is made to be cheap and so the lignin is left in it.

Tackling the Great Outdoors : Keep Wind From Blowing out Your Candle

You want to have a romantic dinner on your balcony, but the wind is making it impossible to light the candles.

Wrap your candles in paper. Newspaper, loose leaf, or magazine paper, it all works. Just wrap it tightly and make sure that the edge of the paper rises above the wick.

If the wind is allowed to blow directly across the flame it doesn't have a chance of staying lit, regardless of how big the wax is. The paper shields the wick and saves the candle from blowing out and the wax from getting all over the place, shortening your candles life.

In the Kitchen : Clean Tea Stains From A Mug

You enjoy drinking tea, but if you don't wash that mug soon after you finish your drink, it gets stained. What do you do with all those stained mugs?

Take an orange or lemon peel and put some salt on it. Rub the peel over the stains and watch them disappear.

Oranges and lemons are acidic and oily. This acts as a stain remover and the abrasive salt scours the mug clear of stains.

Around the House : Remove Carpet Lint

Regardless of what type of carpet you have, you are bound to have it covered in lint, dog hair, or even human hair from time to time. How do you clean it without having to pull out the vacuum cleaner, or worse yet, what if you don't have one?

Take an empty roll of paper towel and wrap eight rubber bands around it spreading them out across the face of the tube. Roll the tube across your carpet and watch as it grabs onto the lint and hair on your rug or carpet.

The elastic bands stick and grab the lint and hair and keep it attached to the cardboard tube. There is also static build up generated which attracts the hair.