Summer Hacks For Your Home & Garden
This handy list of summer hacks for your home & garden is a useful guide for some of the more typical things that we tend to encounter each summer season. Let me know what you find most helpful!

⚫Use colored toothpicks in your steaks to identify rare, medium and well done steaks. Want to impress your guests? Use the frilly kind!
⚫Use cooking spray on your grill before cooking (and dear God, before you light that fire). After, when the grill is cool to the touch, scrub the grill with a wire brush. The spray should allow any residue to come off easily.
⚫Sprinkle about a 1” layer of kitty litter around the bottom of your grill to prevent any embers from igniting. I can't guarantee your cat won't dookie in it, but it is a good way to prevent a lawn fire.

⚫Have dirt build up on your outdoor plastic furniture? To clean it, sprinkle baking soda on a damp sponge, wipe clean and let dry. Afterward, spray Armour All on it and wipe clean with a dry cloth. The Armour All gives it a nice shine and will prevent dirt from sticking to it.

⚫To naturally remove stains from clear plastic containers, rub lemon juice over the inside and let sit in the sun for the day. The lemon juice and sun should bleach out the stains.
⚫Clean out your big Thermos bottle by filling with water and dropping in 4-5 Alka-Seltzer tabs. Let sit for about an hour, then rinse.
⚫For a nontoxic way to kill ants, pour 1 teaspoon dish washing liquid into a 16 oz. spray bottle. Fill with water and spray the suckers, then wipe away.

⚫Got trash pandas? Sprinkle a few tablespoons of epsom salt and/or black pepper around your garden and trash cans. Apparently raccoons don’t like to season their garbage before they eat it.

⚫To fill bare patches in the lawn, place moist tea bags on the spot and sprinkle with grass seed. The wet tea provides moisture and nutrients and the tea bag itself will naturally degrade.
⚫Have a cat? Have moles? Pour used kitty litter into mole, gopher or groundhog tunnels. Once they get a whiff of their natural enemy, they are outtie.

⚫To keep ants out of your pets’ food bowls, sprink a little ground cinnamon around them. Much like chalk, ants don’t like cinnamon.

⚫Stinky sneakers? Take clean knee-his and fill the feet with clean kitty litter, tie with a knot, and place inside sneakers. The litter will absorb moisture and odors. Who knew kitty litter could do so much?

⚫If you’re going on vacation and you put your houseplants outside, before you bring them back in do the following: Add a drop of dishwashing liquid to a trigger spray bottle and fill with water; shake well. Spray the leaves and soil of the plants well to kill any insects.

⚫To clean a golf club, rub the shaft and head gently (I said golf club, geez) with a dry steel wool pad. To clean a golf ball, use a pink eraser. Both the steel wool pad and the eraser pack easily in your golf bag, too.
⚫To break in a new baseball mitt, try a little witchcraft: rub the center of the glove with foaming shave cream. Put a baseball in the mitt, fold the glove around it, secure with rubber bands, and tuck the glove under a mattress overnight. You can also use corn oil instead of shaving cream.
⚫No WD40 handy? You can also lubricate a bicycle chain with cooking spray (this also works on squeaky hinges too, btdubs).