Tip of the Day: Less Expensive Laundry Gizmo

The secret, low-cost alternative to one of those balls that releases fabric softener during your laundry load? A clean kitchen sponge dampened with liquid fabric softener. Just put it in the washing machine once it’s filled with water at the beginning of the load. It will slowly release the softener, just like the plastic balls do!

Tip of the Day: Healthy Pepper Patch

This advice definitely sounds like an urban legend, but it’s such an easy way to grow fantastic sweet peppers that you have to try it. A matchbook buried with each pepper plant will transmit sulfur, a great fertilizer for them. To give these nutrient-seeking plants the magnesium they also need, add 2 tablespoons Epsom salts to ½ gallon water and soak the plants with the mixture when you see the first blossoms of the year.

Tip of the Day: A Height-Ordered Wardrobe

Optimize your closet space by arranging clothes by height. Rather than installing one long rod along the entire width of the closet, try this arrangement: Install one rod up high only halfway across the closet. In the other half, install one high rod plus a lower rod beneath it. This way, you’ll be able to hang shorter clothing—shirts, blazers, skirts, and vests—on the two short-length rods, and longer items like dresses, pants, and coats on the full-length rod.

Tip of the Day: Perfect Ribbon Dispenser

Here's a tip for the crafters! A box that used to contain tea bags is the perfect holder and dispenser for all your ribbon.

Tip of the Day: Help Pet Food Stay Put

If your pet’s food dish always ends up three feet from where it started by the he’s done eating, make it skid-proof. With a glue gun, make a thin strip of glue around the bottom rim. The hardened glue will make it much harder for the bowl to slide across the floor.

Tip of the Day: Detox with Lemon

Lemon juice not only smells great, it tastes delicious, too. Mix it with hot water and try it as an alternative to hot tea and coffee. You may find it wakes you up just as well, and your body will thank you.

Tip of the Day: Online Recipe Help

Don’t worry if you’re missing a spice or other ingredient you as prepare tonight’s dinner. Just head over to RecipeTips.com, where you’ll find all sorts of substitutions (and healthier options) so you can keep your meal on schedule!

Tip of the Day: Clean Off Brake Dust

To remove brake dust—that fine, black powder—from your car’s tires, spray on a bit of cooking spray or vegetable oil, then wipe right off.

Tip of the Day: Hiccup Help

Here’s a hiccup cure much yummier than the old “drink pickle juice” remedy: Eat a spoonful of peanut butter. Chewing it slowly interrupts your breathing pattern just enough to get it back on track, stopping your hiccups in seconds.

Tip of the Day: Lipstick Lifter

Lipstick can be one of hardest stains to remove—if you don’t use the right stain remover. The grease in lipstick makes it hard to get out of the fibers in fabric, but rubbing alcohol breaks through it nicely. Just apply rubbing alcohol with a damp cloth to the stain, and dab until the lipstick starts to come off, applying more alcohol as necessary. Then launder as usual.