Forgotten Home Hints

By Lorraine Frost

Forgotten Home Hints by the author Lorraine Frost provides easy home hints from cleaning, to cooking and kitchen tips. This book caters for products so often forgotten in your cupboard or just overlooked at the local store as their purpose are either unknown, overlooked or just forgotten. Little can sometimes do more if you just knew how and for what.

The lockdown during Covid-19 has placed the entire world into a new way of thinking and coping without so many luxuries and necessities that are taken for granted in our daily lives. For some this has placed us in the position of finding alternatives making do with what you have at your exposure, for others inspiration and innovation allowing experiments in and around our houses in very difficult times. Searching for what is available and affordable to overcome the situation in and around our living areas. “Forgotten Home Hints” allows the reader to never forget what the old folks used to do way back when there was little money and no luxuries.

The reader will quickly find in this book something that could have assisted during lockdown or a plain and simple hint or tip making life in so many ways easy.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lorraine Frost
• Release date: May 28, 2020
• ISBN: 9780463723500

Book preview

Foreword

A special thanks to Wayne Coetzee for his contribution and helping me put this book together on very short notice.

HOW TO REMOVE SPOTS AND STAINS

HOW TO CLEAN IT (GENERAL)

COOKING AND KITCHEN HINTS

&

A WEALTH OF OTHER INFORMATION

HOW TO REMOVE SPOTS AND STAINS

If there is nothing to treat a stain with, act immediately by soaking in cold water. If cold water doesn’t remove the stain, try using lukewarm water and ordinary soap.

** Never use hot water – this will permanently set the stain in the material.

The Golden Rules of Stain-shifting

Treat stains as fast as possible.

Never use hot water.

Treat from the wrong side of the fabric, so that the dirt needn’t be pushed right through it.

If coloured, check the effect of remover on an unimportant part of the fabric. Test all chemicals first on an inconspicuous area.

After using a chemical, rinse well in lukewarm water.

Use a weak solution several times, rather than one strong solution.

Avoid leaving a ring in place of the stain. When using a chemical always make a ring larger than the stained area, and then gradually work in towards the stain. Treat potential water rings in the same way.

Fabrics which are wool, silk, flameproof, or not colour-fast should not be soaked.

Wash them quickly in a solution of warm water and enzyme detergent.

Many stain removing chemicals are poisonous if swallowed or the fumes inhaled.

Always use cleaning fluids in a well-ventilated room. Store these chemicals and fluids away from of children.

ADHESIVE TAPE (and BALLPOINT PEN INK):

Use juice for hands. For clothes soak with methylated spirits, wash immediately in cold water. If stubborn, soak in salt and tepid water.

ALCOHOL:

Soak if suitable, with biological washing powder. On carpets, blot up as much as possible with clean rags, - sponge with clean warm water and leave to dry.

BALLPOINT PEN STAIN:

Method 1 - Sponge the mark with methylated spirits and then in biological detergent.

Method 2 - Soak the stain in methylated spirit mixed with ½ teaspoon ammonia, then brush with a soft nail brush. Afterwards, sponge off with warm water. This is for ball point ink, not for ordinary stains. (For very stubborn stains, a solution of Dettol is useful in removing ballpoint pen ink.)

BEER:

Often split beer doesn’t leave a stain and just needs mopping up. An obstinate beer stain however can be removed by washing in 500ml of warm, soapy water containing 5ml ammonia and vinegar. On white cottons or linen, bleach the stain with hydrogen peroxide, dry in the sun and finally rinse and re-wash. On un-washable materials, sponge the stain with a cloth dipped in methylated spirits, then rub washing soap into the mark with fingers. Leave to dry, and then brush out with a clean dry brush.

BEET ROOT:

Treat stain while fresh. Rub with salt, then wash or sponge with warm water.

BLOOD:

Wash in warm water, treat stubborn stain with ammonia. For heavy materials, make a paste of raw starch and warm water. Spread on the stain and as fast as the starch discolours, make a new application.

BUTTER:

Rub with a cloth soaked in trichloro-ethylene then wash well in warm biological detergent.

CANDLE WAX, - ON TABLECLOTH:

Scrape off as much of the wax as possible. Place the stain between two sheets of blotting paper and press gently with a warm iron, moving the blotting paper frequently. If a mark remains, - sponge with benzene.

CARBON PAPER: COFFEE – TEA:

Use carbon tetrachloride, - sponge immediately with borax and warm water.

CHOCOLATE:

Scrape away thick chocolate with a blunt knife and wash on hot suds. If a grease mark persists, sponge with benzene or carbon tetrachloride.

COCOA:

Washing will usually remove a cocoa stain unless it’s old. Treat with glycerine, or use a grease solvent for milky cocoa.

COFFEE STAIN – (ON A LIGHT CARPET):

Make paste of borax and water and apply to the dry coffee stain. Leave for