Make a good house a GREAT home » Kitchen

Tidiest Way to Store Plastic Shopping Bags!

James — Tue, 29 Sep 2009 09:42:02 +0000

Picture it.

You come home from shopping and you have 10 plastic bags filled with groceries.

You unpack your bags, pack away the shopping, BUT, you don’t throw away the plastic shopping bags because you’re supposed to USE them again!

So what do you do with them? Where do you pack the bags? How do you pack them so they are neat and tidy?

I’ll show you how, right here. WITH PHOTOS!

I’m pretty sure you’ll say to yourself: “Self, why didn’t I think of that?!”

For all the pictures below, you should be able to click them to see a larger version of the image. I made them smaller so that you didn’t have to scroll as much…

Your plastic Pick n Pay Shopping Bag

First things first, let’s take a look at what kind of plastic shopping bag I’m talking about, JUST in case you had something different in mind:

Pretty little white bag, isn’t it

Step 1 – Begin Sideways Folding

Anyway, the first step is to start folding the bag in strips the length of the “handle”. Here are a few images to show you. (I apologise for the quality of the photos, my HTC Tytn II is not the BEST camera).

Step 2 – Triangle Folding

The next step is to start folding the bags using triangles.

Take a look at these next images to see what I’m talking about:

Step 3 – Final Stage of Folding

Once you get to the top of your bag, you should only have the handles showing (and not even all of the handles, but about half of them…).

Here’s pretty much what you should see:

So, the last step is to just tuck in the handles, and you’re done.

You should now have something small and easy to store, like the following:

Any other useful tips for everyone?

Do YOU have any cool ideas like this that you would like to share with the world?

Let me know, and we can put it up on the site.

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Microwave Safety – Watch the Videos!

James — Sat, 30 May 2009 16:04:01 +0000

There are a few things in life you only do once (I hope).

And, once done, occasionally you’re too embarrassed to share it with people.

I’m not one of those people though. I like sharing things that may be stupid, but have a little humour in it, even if it’s only for the other person.

So, here are 3 things you should NEVER do with a microwave that you may otherwise be tempted to do, with a couple of videos to prove it!

Can I Microwave Cook an Egg?

This one I at least have a video for. (Email subscribers, click here to watch the videos).

My wife and I were in a little bit of a lazy mood the other week and we decided to make boiled eggs in our microwave.

IT’S NOT SAFE!!! DO NOT DO IT!!!

This video might be a LITTLE bit of an exaggeration because they used an ostrich egg, but believe me, the outcome is EXACTLY the same with a normal chicken egg on a smaller scale.

So, what happened? The eggs EXPOLODED! We had 2 eggs in the microwave, and they both blew the microwave door wide open with sharp pieces of egg shell flying EVERYWHERE!

Watch this video to get an idea:

Can I Boil Water in a Microwave?

You may not have heard the “myth” about super-heating water in a microwave and it exploding when you put a spoon or sugar in it.

Well, it’s not really a myth.

You see, if you boil water in a microwave, there’s a chance that the water will heat up to above boiling point without actually boiling. And then, when you add something to it like a spoon, or sugar, it will suddenly release all it’s energy in an “explosion” that could send boiling water over you.

So be careful!

Here is a better explanation from the guys from “Myth Busters” where they prove how this is actually possible:

(Once again, email subscribers, you will need to click here to watch the videos).

Can I Microwave Potatoes?

This one is kind of boring, especially since I don’t have a video for it.

Shortly after we first got our microwave, we decided to cook a couple of potatoes in the microwave. This is not a bad thing normally, except we underestimated the amount of water we would need, so the water evaporated, and we were cooking dry potatoes.

They obviously got SUPER hot, and ended up catching fire and melting the tupperware we were using.

It took MONTHS to get rid of the smell of burnt potatoes.

Some lessons learnt:

Make sure you don’t over-cook your potatoes, or make sure you have enough water in the pot
Make sure you put a couple of shallow slices in your potatoes so that they don’t explode when cooking.

Common sense right? We know now…

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How to ripen avocados and bananas quickly

James — Sun, 18 Nov 2007 22:53:40 +0000

So, you have a few bananas that are a little TOO green, or a bowl of avos a little TOO hard… What do you do?

Some fruit and veg science

Most fruit naturally produces a gas called “ethylene” which causes a fruit to ripen. It’s an invisible gas, but the more of it there is, the quicker your fruit ripens.

And, if some fruit starts producing the gas, other fruit will start producing more of it, and so it goes, increasing the amount of ethylene gas until the fruit is over-ripe and needs to be thrown away.

Certain fruits also produce more than other fruits, and some fruits are also more susceptible to ethylene than others.

For example:

- Avocados and Apples produce a lot of Ethylene and are highly susceptible to the effect of it
- Kiwi fruits don’t produce a lot of ethylene, but they are highly susceptible to the effect of it

Make your fruit ripen rapidly

How do we put this knowledge to good use?

We could speed up the ripening process by putting fruit in an enclosed container (something simple, like a paper bag). For example, placing your bananas and your avocados or apples together in the bag can cause the fruit to ripen rapidly.

Prevent fruit from ripening quickly

Of course, we could always do the opposite.

Ensuring the area where you store your fruit is well ventilated might help the fruit to stay perfectly ripe a little longer, as opposed to over ripening too quickly.

A little piece of useless knowledge that brought all this on is that apparently, in some supermarkets, bananas are kept separate from other fruit (or in sealed bags) to ensure it doesn’t speed up the process of ripening in the other fruit…

Scientific source: http://www.mindfully.org/Plastic/Ethylene-Gas.htm

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Silicon Bakeware

James — Mon, 28 May 2007 15:05:15 +0000

My wife made banana bread last night. That fact probably doesn’t interest you (though the banana bread was EXCELLENT. I’ll get the recipe for you if I can), but what is cool is that she used a silicon loaf tin. I’m not sure if you would call it a tin considering it’s made out of silicon, but anyway. She’s also got a silicon cookie tray.

Silicon cookware is amazing stuff. Here are my reasons for loving it (even though I’m not always the one using it):

Amazing Colors

Silicon cookware comes in a wide range of colors, most of them quite bright, so they look quite funky. And we all need funky kitchen appliances.

Dishwasher Safe

To me, this is the most important thing (though don’t tell my wife). The fact that you can wash the silicon bakeware in the dishwasher is a great feature for us lazy people.

Flexible

We once had to make caramel baskets by melting sugar into the silicon baking tray and cooling it in the fridge. Once the sugar/caramel had solidified, we just popped them out of the trays, without breaking a single one.

Heat resistant

Ok, this is an obvious one, considering you’re using the silicon loaf tin to actually bake bread in the oven. But it amazes me how something like this actually withstands the heat. But I guess I’m no scientist.

So, do yourself a favor this weekend and go out and buy yourself a silicon baking tray and a silicon loaf tin. Then come thank me for it once you’ve used it… I just know you will.

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Glass Jars – Pretty Storage

James — Sun, 02 Jul 2006 23:24:57 +0000

Another great looking idea for storing items is Glass Jars. We’re using glass jars from a place called “Consol Glass”, but there are many other Glass Jar suppliers out there.

In my personal opinion, they are a great way of safely storing your rice, sugar, flour etc… AND, if you have open or glass cupboards in your kitchen, you can make these glass storage jars as part of the display. Here’s a list of benefits for using glass jars similar (though probably bigger) to the one in the picture above:

Can be sealed to prevent moisture
Thanks to the seal, can prevent bugs getting in
No more mess trying to close the sugar packet and stuff it back in the cupboard after a refill
Can make your kitchen storage solution attractive

And, a tip that my wife has used to enhance the appeal of using glass jars to store our sugar: Add some colorful sugar to your plain white sugar, possibly in layers, to take away the blandness of your white sugar. You’ve now made art out of sugar for your kitchen shelves… Any other ideas?

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Conceal your dishwasher

James — Tue, 09 May 2006 14:25:46 +0000

If you have to have your dishwasher or washing machine in the kitchen due to a lack of space, how about concealing them. This obviously doesn’t JUST apply in the kitchen, but it’s a good enough reason to do it.

Anyway, the main way of doing this is to put a cupboard door in front of the dishwasher. As long as it keeps the theme of your kitchen, it might just finish the look off. Some looks that I have seen:

- Barn door effect
- Wood panelling on the dishwasher door (see photo above)
- Curtains

Definitely something of a personal choice.

Of course, you just might have a dishwasher or washing machine that fits in with the look of the kitchen already, like a metallic finish dishwasher. Let me know your ideas.

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Granite Counter Top Template

James — Sun, 30 Apr 2006 23:25:03 +0000

In my last post on Granite Counter Tops I mentioned that you should phone the Granite company and see if they have any left over granite that you could use to make your counter top. What I didn’t mention is that you should create a template of your needed granite counter, cut to size and shape.

BUT, even though this should make life SO much easier, it doesn’t help if the Granite Counter manufaturer doesn’t follow the template. I’ve just received my new counter top, and luckily the granite piece matches the rest of the granite counters in the kitchen, but it’s 40 CENTIMETERS TOO LARGE!!! It looks like you have to double check their measurements as well.

This is probably something that is common knowledge to most people, but make sure you double check things before you leave the granite “factory”. It’s REALLY no use having one granite counter in the kitchen that is out of whack…

This might just be a once-off situation, but be careful anyway…

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Granite Counter Tops

James — Mon, 24 Apr 2006 19:13:33 +0000

I recently had a new counter added into my kitchen. Not a big deal, except I’m “lucky” enough to have granite kitchen counter tops. They came standard with the house we bought.

BUT, there are some downfalls to this. The major one being, if you need to add a new granite counter top to the kitchen, or anywhere else in the house, for that matter, you will have to try and match the granite pattern as closely as possible. This isn’t really a bad thing if you have a granite counter in the kitchen, and want to add a granite counter in the bathroom. Because they are not quite next to each other, the granite pattern , color or texture do not need to match exactly. But if you are adding a granite counter to the kitchen which ALREADY has granite counters, then you might have problems.

Here are some tips I can suggest when adding a new granite counter to your kitchen:

1 – Phone a Granite countertop company and ask if they have any cut-offs you could use:

Depending on the size of your new granite kitchen counter, you might get a really good price on a cut-off. They might also have some left over from when they built houses with the same setup (relevant if you are in a new house, and more so if it is in a complex).

2 – Take a photo of you existing granite counters:

Of course, you will need to take the photos with you so that you can ensure you get as close a match as possible to the existing counters. Remember, the closer to the other counters, the closer the match will need to be.

3 – If possible, take a photo of the piece of granite you will use, and compare it at home:

This way you will get to double check to see if you granite matches. Depending on light, etc., the texture of your granite will differ, so be careful.

So, good luck choosing your granite counter tops. If you have any other tips, suggestions or questions, let me know. Granite counters are a really good addition to any home or kitchen.

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My water filter

James — Wed, 15 Feb 2006 00:42:57 +0000

There are a lot of water filters and water purifiers out there. But I’ve bought a really good product from a company called Stefani. The reason I bought mine is that, as well as managing to clean and filter the water, it looks good.

It is a Terracotta Water Purifier from Brazil. According to wikipedia, Terracotta is Italian for “Baked Earth”, and “is a hard semifired waterproof ceramic clay used in pottery, older wastewater drains, and as surface embellishment in building construction.”

The Terracotta gives my water filter 2 benefits:

Terracotta has a natural cooling effect, so the water, though not ice cold, will be quite cool.
It looks really good, and fits in really well with the theme in my kitchen.

I really recommend getting a water filter (or a water purifier) of some sort. This is because it helps remove a lot of the harmful chemicals, toxins and bacteria from tap water. Though, to be honest, the reason I got one is because I had just moved into a new house, and the water in the taps was tasting quite “sandy” due to the pipes being newly installed.

Remember, take a look around and see what is out there. Water Filters can be put in a lot of places in the house, like the shower, bath, kitchen sink, etc… And, they look different. So you will definitely need to shop around before settling on something.

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Home Decorating Tip #6 – Trash cans are not JUST trash cans

James — Tue, 24 Jan 2006 18:09:32 +0000

You need to think of the little things. Just because a trash can is where your dirt goes, doesn’t mean you can’t have a NICE trash can.

BELIEVE me, from personal experience, you would be amazed at how many people will compliment you on a nice bin.

It was actually a topic of conversation at a dinner party once, and on 2 seperate occasions I’ve had people offer to empty my trash can JUST to see how it works… Now if THAT’s not a good reason to get a cool trash can, I don’t know what is.

Because we don’t have space to hide the bin, it is out in the open in the kitchen, and now a feature. Leave a comment and I’ll tell you what make of trash can I have.

Anyway, it’s not just the trash can. It could be your key rack, or your fruit bowl. or even the coasters on your coffee table in the lounge. Look around you at the little things, and try and think what a difference it would be if you chose something that was nice to look at as well as functional.

:::::::::::::::::::

Click here to view the “Ten Tips�? list.

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