Time and Money Saving Tips and Ideas
Here is an odd collection of tips that you might find useful:
This morning I went to buy eggs. I usually try to get them on sale but couldn’t find any. Since I needed the eggs right then, I had no choice but to pay full price, so I bought a carton of medium eggs.
Sometimes we automatically buy the large eggs (we do that with so many things) thinking that they are the best but for my purpose (baking), the medium eggs worked just fine and they were cheaper.
If you are having trouble with a recipe being extra sticky or not quite right in some other way, you might change your egg size and see if that helps.
Another thing I did this morning was hang my clothes out. After writing an e-book about laundry and how to hang clothes on the line I didn’t think I had missed anything. As I was hanging some T-shirts on the clothesline, I noticed that one of them was sagging in the middle, so I pinned it on the line and I re did it. You need to hang the items taut on the line, not stretched too tight but not sagging. This helps get rid of much of the wrinkling that some of us experience. Sometimes we tend to let our clothes sag in the middle to give us more clothesline space but don’t do this. It’ll only make more work for you.
Here are some more useful miscellaneous ideas:
- If you lose the plug for your bathtub, use a golf ball. If it happens to get dislodged, it just rolls right back into place.
- Rub hair conditioner on your shower curtain rod to make your shower curtain slide more smoothly.
- Wipe up those spills. I know I sound like a parrot but if you spill something on your stove top, clean it right away. If you turn on a burner or your oven, the mess bakes and hardens on the stove. I recently heard about a new way of doing finger nail polish and guess what they use to make it harden and stick more firmly? -Heat. The same principle works with your stove, so don’t wait to wipe up the mess.
I hope some of these ideas help make your day go more “smoothly”. : ) Have a super day everyone!
-Jill
Photo By: Brenda Gottsabend
When I hang out my T-shirts I always hang them so that they do not sag in the middle. I take care to fold them as soon as I take them off the line and as a consequence they look like they have been ironed – without all the work!
WOW love the golf ball tip! Brilliant!
Interesting about the eggs. I’d always heard that recipes were tested using large eggs so that’s all I ever buy.
Blessings–
Dana
Hi, Jill! Thanks for the great tips. I especially love the golf ball trick~~very clever! Isn’t it amazing how many ‘snags’ in our days can be smoothed over with a little ‘thinking outside the box’? Hope you, Tawra and the family are all well and happy. Have a great day!
We hang the t shirts a couple inches up the sides…no stretched out bottoms this way ;-)
Egg Size Equivalents
The following information is from the American Egg Board.
Although any size egg may be used for frying, scrambling, cooking in the shell, and poaching, most recipes for baked dishes, such as custards and cakes, are based on the use of large eggs.
The correct egg size can be important in recipes with exacting measurement requirements, such as cakes. At other times it doesn’t matter.
Egg Conversions:
These approximations are based on a large (2-oz) egg.
Other egg sizes may be more or less than the amounts listed below.
Whole Eggs
3 whole eggs = 1/2 cup
1 whole egg = 3 tablespoons
1/2 whole egg = 4 teaspoons
Yolks
6 to 7 egg yolks = 1/2 cup
1 egg yolk = 1 tablespoon
Whites
4 to 6 egg whites = 1/2 cup
1 egg white = 2 tablespoons
Dried or Powdered Eggs
1 egg = 2 tablespoons egg powder + 2 tablespoons warm water
when baking you do not really need the egg at all.
simply add 1/4 cup more of the liquid called for for every egg called for.
my mother in law gave me that tip from when she was growing up in the depression and eggs were expensive or non existent in the city. Then one day I was looking through an old recipe book and the tip was there as well.
I use it a lot and have never had a failure.
That tip on leaving out the egg and using water instead sounds helpful. I will have to try it.
I always put my shirts on the hanger and just hang
on the line. When dry to the closet they go.
Was glad to know about the shower curtain hint
You can also use soy flour as an egg substitute. Use 1 Tablespoon of flour and a little extra liquid per egg.
I am really curious to try the no egg trick. I have always thought eggs were needed for volume, or to help things rise-like a cake. I’m guessing scrambled eggs with all water instead of eggs would NOT be a big hit with my family!:)
I’ve used the recipe where you use a cake mix and a can of soda and that’s all and the cake turns out great so I can believe that the egg might not always be that necessary. Of course in things like salmon patties and such it is what holds the patty together but maybe it mostly works in baked goods.
kathy it does not work except in baking.
don’t know why.
eggs in meatballs and salmon cakes are the binder so you do need them but for some reason eggs are not needed for baking.
I think pioneers started experimenting when there were not a lot of chickens until you were more established also hauling a half dozen chickens in the wagons while moving would really be more hassle than eggs were worth and the chickens probably ended up in the soup pot as the noise drove everyone mad.
When I used to buy eggs, I would get the cheapest per ounce, not the cheapest per each egg, because mediums and larges are different sizes. I would look on the carton, it says right in the nutritional facts table the weight of each egg. So if the medium eggs are 20% smaller they should cost at least 20% less, if not, then the large is the better deal.
Now I get eggs of all sizes from my chickens. I try to use small ones for baking and the larger ones for everything else.
Great tips. Your website makes my morning coffee time useful.
Thanks for the egg tip!! I just bought eggs @1.58 for the dozen…last week they were $1.18. I do lots of baking so I’m going to be trying this tip. Another great tip I learned this week for powdered sugar substitute is to blend sugar and cornstarch. Works great!!!! I used it for my cinnamon roll icing. Also vinegar in milk when you need buttermilk.
Thanks for the tips. I was talking to my son in law today. We are getting ready for a big sale next week and I said I wish we had a way of explaining to people how many good tips we have in Dining on a Dime. We have a couple of pages alone of substitutions in there that tells how to make the powdered sugar and a thing on the buttermilk. We have so many different things like that that would help people so much but don’t quite know how to show them everything there is. Oh well will have to think on it sum. Your comment just reinforced that.
About buttermilk. I buy the smallest carton in the store. Then I pour about 1/10 in a glass container with a lid, add milk, and leave it on the counter for about 24 hrs. It will turn into buttermilk. So now you have more buttermilk for the price of milk. Then you can put it into the fridge and store for about a month. I do that all the time and I only buy buttermilk about once every 2-3 months.
If you guys need more info here are two articles we have on homemade buttermilkand buttermilk recipes.
If you substitute water for milk in scrambeled eggs, it turns to steam, making your scramble moister.
I rarely use buttermilk. So when its called for I pour a tablespoon of vinegar in a 1 cup measure and add milk. By the time I need it in the recipe, it is acid enough.
You can also freeze milk. Pour out a drinking glass full so there is room for it to expand in the freezer.
Great about the eggs! If you have an Aldi’s nearby. Eggs are .89 a carton :) talk about a great/frugal deal! And I go through eggs really fast so this helps out.
I usually use Trader Joe’s microfiber towels to wipe up spills but will use paper towels for grease. So, if I have a spill that I missed on the stove, and I’ve just used a paper towel to catch the bacon drippings after I poured it from the pan into a jar, I’ll get the rest of the paper towel wet and place it on the dried spill to let it soften up for 15 minutes. (yeah, I know, I really should have wiped it up initially but sometimes I’m so busy getting dinner on the plate that I think I’ll take care of it later :-) )