Cheaper, Better, Faster Mary Hunt - Baker Publishing Group

IntroductionOne rejected tip had to do with bread and wallpaper. No foolin’.The tip was to discard the crust from a piece of bread, wad it upinto a tight dough ball, and use it like an eraser to clean dirt andmarks from wallpaper. I tried it and “erased” with all my might, butthat little dirty spot on my wallpaper would not budge. I threw thebread ball in the trash, grabbed a bottle of laundry stain remover,and took care of the smudge in a flash.Some entries were discovered quite by accident. I think of thewoman who wrote to me so excited because she no longer neededto scrub the toilet on Saturday since her husband had started dumpinghis denture-soaking liquid into the commode each morning.Bingo! A great household tip (page 63).Surely there’s a long story that goes along with the tip thatarrived on a postcard without a return address or signature, simplya postmark from somewhere in Alaska: “Have your head examinedbefore you attempt to build your own home. Unless youare a developer or professional contractor, you are in for a fewsurprises, not the least of which is that it will take twice as longas promised and cost twice as much as estimated.” There you go,for what it’s worth.The criteria for whether a tip made it into this collection werefairly simple: If it didn’t insult my intelligence, included a reasonableexpectation that it saved time or money, and prompted a responseanything close to Wow! What a great idea!—it was in. Thismeans you won’t be reading any tips that tell you to brush and flossyour teeth, because we’re smart and we already know we shoulddo that every day. But floss a turkey? Now that’s a great tip (page125). Or floss that winter coat? You’ll be glad you did (page 69)!You’re about to learn that there are many different ways to accomplishgoals. And that’s good, because if you need to polish thecopper in your kitchen and you don’t have any lemons on handbut you do have a jug of vinegar, you’ll be able to get the job donewithout running to the store to spend money needlessly (page40). When there’s more than one way to achieve the same result,Cheaper, Better, Faster will give you the choices.9Mary Hunt, Cheaper, Better, FasterRevell Books, a division of Baker Publishing Group, © 2013. Used by permission.