Share Your Life Hacks!

Fixing and making things, what tools to get and what skills to learn, ...
Pedal2Petal
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Joined: Sat Nov 12, 2011 8:01 pm
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Re: Share Your Life Hacks!

Post by Pedal2Petal »

2 things I have done over the past month that have helped bring my daily spending down to 23$/day from 26$/day.

#1, I asked for a hair cutting kit for christmas which my fiance uses to cut my hair. With a buzzer style hair cutter, it is very easy to cut men's hair. She did a perfect job the first time, which was actually quite surprising. She cut it again yesterday and went a little short right around the ears but in a week it will grow out a bit and won't be noticeable.

#2, I have started making small batch wine at home using this very simple 1-minute wine recipe. http://fivegallonideas.com/1-minute-wine-recipe/

BecaS
Posts: 109
Joined: Sat Jul 13, 2013 7:16 pm

Re: Share Your Life Hacks!

Post by BecaS »

Pedal2Petal, good for you on the home haircuts. You will save so much money over time with that. Haircuts haven't gotten any cheaper in the 25 years since we started cutting hair at home.

I was looking at our empty wine bottles today. I'm considering pear wine this year. It's been a few years since we made wine. We make five gallon batches and seriously, it takes us YEARS to drink it. I use synthetic stoppers as opposed to cork stoppers. The synthetic corks hold up better than cork, and if we have to store the bottles upright, the synthetic corks won't dry out and fail.

I made pear wine a few years ago, in the fall. We kept the carboy in a spare room that was cooler than the rest of the house. It sat in the carboy for a good long time, and it looked like it was done fermenting, that it had hit the attenuation point. I will admit that I didn't take specific gravities in that batch- not the best idea, as you will see.

When I thought the wine was done, we bottled it up and put the bottles in the racks. We keep these racks in the cooler room.

In the spring, when the entire house warmed up, guess what happened? The pear wine was NOT done fermenting. The warmer room kicked over fermentation again, and the bottles of pear wine opened fire on the rest of the room. :D

I ended up pouring it *all* out, because I didn't know what else to do at that point.

I'd like to try pear wine again.

jacob
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Re: Share Your Life Hacks!

Post by jacob »

@BecaS - Add potassium sorbate (stabilizer) to the wine to kill the (still) active yeast. In a pinch, Campden tablets will also do the trick.

BecaS
Posts: 109
Joined: Sat Jul 13, 2013 7:16 pm

Re: Share Your Life Hacks!

Post by BecaS »

Thank you, Jacob!

It's been a few years since I've made wine. I'm in the country right now, and the wine supplies and recipe book are back in town.

This is the book I use the most:

https://www.midwestsupplies.com/winemak ... 4AodcnoApQ

IIRC, we used Campden tablets at the beginning of the process, as a sanitizer, in the fruit during the initial stages. I'm trying to remember- it's been a few years- I think we added the Campden tablets to the crushed fruit and sugar and then added the yeast 24 hours later. Is that right? The Campden tablets had to dissolve and disperse so they wouldn't inhibit the yeast.

And we do add potassium sorbate as a stabilizer, but I can't swear that it was part of the pear wine recipe.

We have a specific gravity meter but it's the old school kind, the hydrometer thingy as opposed to a digital kind, and it makes me nuts. I struggle with reading the scale; I don't use it often enough to keep myself familiarized with the scale or with using it in general. I'd made a few batches of wine by the time I tried the pear wine, and I had made myself comfortable with the idea that I could judge when the wine had stopped fermenting by watching the air lock. When it hadn't bubbled for several days, it was done, right? Right? :D

We heat the house primarily with a pellet stove in the winter- and of course, pears come in right around Thanksgiving, maybe a couple of weeks before. So the house was cool when I started the pear wine, but not particularly cold. We usually keep the primary fermenter in the kitchen or in the laundry room just in case the initial fermentation is so exuberant that it blows through the lock. (One of my husband's wee heavies blew up a bedroom ceiling.) Once we move to a secondary fermenter, we move the carboy into another room to free up floor space in the kitchen.

Without even thinking about it, I moved the pear wine into a spare room that we were keeping closed, to keep the pellet stove heat in the portion of the house that we occupy the most. And the weather got cooler, and cooler... and eventually the air lock stopped popping.

I waited another week or so, and decided that the pear wine was done, so I bottled it up. Uh huh. I did that.

A specific gravity reading at the beginning and before bottling would have told the truth. :)

If I try it again, I'm going to leave the secondary in the room with the pellet stove until it stops bubbling in the air lock.

Maybe I'll even take a couple of specific gravity readings. :D (Really need to get over my reluctance to deal with the hydrometer.) (I kept a salt water aquarium successfully for a couple of years without a skimmer. I had a chunk of live rock in there and I changed the water faithfully. I used a hydrometer- different type- every week successfully without garment rending, hair tearing or gnashing of teeth. Go figure.) (I no longer have that hydrometer. Darn it. But IIRC, I don't think the scale was the same.)

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jennypenny
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Joined: Sun Jul 03, 2011 2:20 pm

Re: Share Your Life Hacks!

Post by jennypenny »

I'm enjoying this site...
http://hackaday.com/

More than one new hack pops up in my feed every day. There is a category drop down menu in the right-hand column if you want to browse the site.

7Wannabe5
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Joined: Fri Oct 18, 2013 9:03 am

Re: Share Your Life Hacks!

Post by 7Wannabe5 »

I find that an even cheaper and much prettier alternative to buzz-cutting your own hair (I did try it once) if you are female is to learn how to make a French-braid. Takes just a few minutes each morning to do and just a few minutes each month to maintain with a quick snip trim off the end. Never goes out of style and functions well whether you are mucking about in your veggie patch in overalls or attending free concert in the LBD you scored for $3 at 50% off Ladies Night at the Salvation Army. OTOH, I highly do NOT recommend Dollar Store hair color. One of the few items I choose to buy brand name with double-down coupon deals.

brighteye
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Joined: Tue Jul 23, 2013 4:02 am
Location: Switzerland

Re: Share Your Life Hacks!

Post by brighteye »

I have a feeling that I posted this already but my search revealed nothing, so here we go:
When I needed a new wallet I knew exactly what I wanted. Small, durable, not too many compartments, not bulky (fits in front pocket). Definitely not one of those monster wallets/purses that are marketed to women. But even the simple men's wallets were to big for my liking.
So I made my own wallet out of duct tape and now I have exactly the one I wanted. One compartment for coins and bills, one for cards. DIY with the help of instructables.com (lots of models to choose from). All I needed was duct tape, a cutter knife some of my time. The current model (I am on version 2.0) has lasted me 2.5 years already.

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Ego
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Re: Share Your Life Hacks!

Post by Ego »


Frugalitifree
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Re: Share Your Life Hacks!

Post by Frugalitifree »

I created a separate thread for this post below. Perhaps it would have been best to post here.

Roasting your coffee beans at home using a popcorn maker. saves a pile of money and is quite a lot of fun. Recommended

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