Timely tips or handy hints.

   Many magazines still offer cash or a 'prize' for handy hints.  If you have a little trick which has helped you out over the years, then why not cash in on it? Here's one of mine.  Well, it's two-fer actually.

   Bulk buying saves money.  Especially with dry good which don't easily 'go off'.  But handling the big jar or packet gets to be a pain.  I buy instant coffee in big jars when the price is right, then transfer it to a handy sized everyday jar.

   Spooning it across is tedious and often messy.  But like a lot of other dry goods if you use a funnel it sometimes bridges the gap and stops flowing. So you need a wide-mouthed funnel, and if it fills the mouth of the smaller container so much the better.

   Make your own funnel, as shown below.  This is the neck from a plastic detergent bottle.  I have a smaller one made from a ketchup bottle with a narrower but still free-flowing neck.

   Dry granules like instant coffee suck moisture from the air, so a big jar, only part filled, will tend to clump up and even go mouldy.  Put a couple of layers of aluminium foil over the top before screwing the cap back on.  It will last for months.

   The 170 words above can be cut to about fifty for a magazine tip.

   Left click to enlarge.

Who's a clever boy now?  ;D ;D

Been doing stuff like this since I was a boy ;-)  Since I saw the way Gran 'modified' quite a few of her kitchen tools stuff to suit herself.

But I was in my mid thirties before it dawned on me that ideas could be sold to magazines.  A skilled 'bodger' but  slow learner in some ways.

Having a short wife helped, because I made things which helped her around the house.  Like a stick with a hook so she could pull curtains across from the top, instead of dragging them off the rail.  Just a large cuphook screwed into the end of about three feet of stick from the hedge.  I think one of my girls is the current custodian of the 'curtain oomphlicator stick'.

That was a multi-tool, also used for rescuing toys from under heavy furniture.

Alma bunged up the toilet the other day and she watched in awed horror as Grandad used his 'special tool', The Mk1 Shite-Hook made from a twisted wire coat-hanger to unbung it.  "It's a beastly job, kid.  But it won't unbung itself."  I heard my daughter out in the passageway quietly laughing to herself.

 ;D ;D
I have this image...

She hid behind my legs, watched, then ran off and came back at least three times.

Im still having trouble posting my picture I have tried doing it through photobucket all I get is the address but when you click on it or copy and paste, it doesnt work can you help?  thanks

There are a lot of people who don't know that but people sell their ideas to different magazines. Yes it's true and you can earn a decent amount of money with that and a lot of people are earning from it. And if we talk about the idea, that which type of idea you can sell so here's one thing is clear that you can sell any type of idea. It can be related to a handmade gadget that you created for your help in the garden or a tool to clean your kitchen's washbasin's faucet. The only condition is that your Idea should be unique and have never been published before.