DIY Life

Lately, I've been coming across beautiful vintage TV and stereo cabinetry while making my weekly thrift shop rounds.

Most have beautiful wood finishes, and the designs are unusual and very retro, but I haven't been able to bring myself to buy a heavy cabinet filled with a dead Magnavox just for the cabinet. I continue to rack my brain to come up with a practical purpose for such a behemoth. What could possibly justify the time and trouble to lug this thing home?

Moxie, over on Craftster, came up with a clever and functional use for an old 1950s-style TV cabinet. Read more about it after the break.

For many Americans, Memorial Day is not just a day for getting together with family and friends. It is a day to celebrate the fallen heroes who have served to protect our country, as well as pay tribute to our combat veterans. It is also a day when thousands of people flock to their local cemeteries to embrace the memory of all their loved ones.

It is a great time to decorate the grave with fresh flowers, but even more importantly, to clean and maintain the grave marker.

To preserve a headstone, one must use the proper cleaning supplies, so as not to scratch or tarnish the marker. Maintenance is also very important to the upkeep of the cemetery and how it should look. You certainly don't want your deceased loved ones to have shoddy-looking sites. Although cemeteries have grounds crews to cut the grass, it should still be a communal effort to help keep the cemetery looking nice when the crews aren't working.

Depending on the age of the stone, cleaning can be either a difficult task, or a task that may take you a matter of minutes. Please join me after the break to find out how to clean and maintain a headstone.

Cat litter is a household product to which I have rarely given much, if any, thought. Recently I saw a neighbor sprinkling it under the tire of his car that was deeply embedded in a snowbank. Sure enough, after laying some of the fine gravel under and around his tires, he was free of the embankment and ready to go. As handy as that bag was for him, there are actually a multitude of uses for cat litter. Some of them have a bit of the yuck factor, but others are downright innovative. In no particular order, some of the more interesting uses are as follows:

• Barbecue safety: Keep any and all barbecue flames at bay by layering generous hand fulls over the bottom of your cooking kettle.
• Picture perfect dried flowers: Preserve and dry fresh cut flowers by filling a plastic container with litter and placing flowers among the gravel bits. Cover with an airtight lid until the flowers have dried.
• Deep cleaning mud mask: Mix warm water and a couple of hand fulls of fresh litter into a paste and spread on your face until dry. Follow with a warm water rinse. The mud makes for an amazing deep cleaning facial.
  
• Mole prevention: Moles dislike the smell of used cat litter just as much as humans. Pour some of the foul smelling litter down a mole hole and get ready to have a mole-free yard.
  

The above mentioned uses require a steady supply of cat litter, but if it means your barbecues will be safer, you can have fresh looking flowers all year long and your skin will be toned and fresh, then it is well worth it.

Almost every single thing on this planet has more that one use. Reusing an item is beneficial to our environment, as that item stays out of our landfills the more we decide to reuse it for something that we just may never have thought of before. Milk jugs, aluminum foil, coffee cans, and even pantyhose can be reused many times before we send it off to the recycling bin.

Yes, I did say pantyhose. Once they're no longer fit to wear, due to snags or runs, they can be reused for many things. Don't even think about throwing them in the garbage until you read this article I found on Gomestic; 20 extraordinary uses for old pantyhose, written by Lizzie 2 UK.

A few of my favorites from the article:

1. Use the legs to catch all the soap remnants that never seem to get used up.
2. Excellent for holding mothballs
3. Put the leg of the pantyhose over the end of the vacuum cleaner hose to pick up any small lost item from your carpet or bare floor.

Most of the ideas are new to me, but if you can use them, more power to you. Clean cat litter in old pantyhose truly does seem like an excellent way to eliminate dampness and absorb disgusting odors. Now, if I can just find my old pantyhose, I will have to try these excellent suggestions. What about you?