LITTLE ROCK — DEAR HELOISE: I stacked two glasses, and now ... help! They are stuck! I don’t want to break them trying to separate them. What can I do?
- Milly A. in New York
DEAR READER: Try filling the top glass with icecubes and cold water. Now take the bottom glass (with the top glass still stuck in it) and place it in warm, almost hot water. With a slighttug, the glasses should come apart. How does it work? The cold water contracts while the hot water expands. Just be careful as you pull the two glasses apart, because too much pressure could cause them to break.
DEAR HELOISE: Restaurant waiters always tell me that their pens have a way of “walking off.” Well, we find ourselves being flooded with free pens from hotels and businesses, and we have too many pens at our house. We leave our excess pens on the table in restaurants, and the wait staff loves it! In essence, we are replacing their pens that “walk off.” - A Reader, via e-mail
DEAR HELOISE: Rather than embarrass my children by writing their names in their clothes to keep laundry straight, I use a “dot” system.Using a laundry-marking pen, the oldest child’s clothes are marked with one dot. The next oldest gets two dots. The third-born gets three dots, etc.
As clothes are handed down, dots can be added to indicate the new owner of the clothes. No more arguing over whose clothes are whose!
- Sue S., Springboro, Ohio
DEAR HELOISE: When I knit with more than one skein of yarn, they always get tangled. Imagine how delighted I was to discover the sectioned cloth bags used to hold bottles of wine. You get them if you buy several bottles of wine at the store. I put each roll of yarn in a section, and there are no tangles.
- Eileen R. in Houston
DEAR HELOISE: I put ankle socks (like the ones given to patients in hospitals or clinics, but any loosely woven socks will do) over the upholstered half-armrests of my swivel office chair. These keep the upholstery clean, and I can easily slip the socks off to wash when needed.
- Lilly in Lytle, Texas Send a money- or time-saving hint to Heloise, P.O. Box 795000, San Antonio, Texas 78279-5000; fax to (210) 435-6473; or e-mail
Weekend, Pages 38 on 11/15/2012