Three Homemaking Tips

   I want to share 3 homemaking tips that save me time, money and energy.  They also make my life a lot easier. ;)

   Tip #1:  I hand wash my sweaters in the bathtub.  I start with the lightest colored one and then proceed with the next lightest, and so on.  I do wash a new sweater last because you never know if the color may bleed.  That is precisely what happened today to the new lacy maroon colored sweater I washed.  After I am done washing and rinsing them, I put them in the washing machine on the spin cycle (I did the new sweater on it's own, just in case) and it gets way more water out that I could by rolling the sweaters up in a towel and then trying to get the water out that way.  I then hang the sweaters on my drying rack that I have placed in the bathtub so that any drips will go down the drain.  The newest sweater, that had some color bleeding issues, is on the bottom so that there is no chance of the color running onto another sweater.  During the warmer months I will either set this drying rack up on my screened in porch or I set it up on top of the hot tub cover in our hot tub enclosure that my husband built.

   Tip #2  When I make homemade soup, I make it in big quantities so that I can freeze some for future meals or to take to someone who is not feeling well.  I like to refrigerate my soups first, before I try to get them ready to freeze.  I find they thicken up this way and it makes it much easier to handle.  I then put a quart sized ziplock type freezer bag in a large clean and empty yogurt container, with the top of the bag sticking out or folded over the edges of the container.  I insert a wide mouthed funnel into the top of the bag and start filling the bag with soup.  I only fill each bag about 1/2 ro 3/4 of the way full so that I can seal the bag and the freeze it flat on it's side.  This allows me to then but the frozen bags standing up into my "soup basket" in my freezer.  I also label my bags before filling them with the kind of soup it is and when I froze it.  This makes it really easy to see what kinds of soups I have on hand.

   Tip #3  Have you ever bought those big bags of chips from Costco?  We find that they will go stale if you keep them in the original bag after opening it.  I repackage the chips into ziplock type gallon bags and that way they stay fresh as we only open 1 of the smaller bags at a time.  I get about 4 gallon sized bags out of each of the huge Mission brand tortilla chips bags from Costco.  And no, we no longer have a membership there, but our children do and they pick them up for us. ;)

   I love hearing tips from other people too about how they save time, money, energy and effort.  It inspires me!  I hope these tips will help inspire someone else.