DIY Life

In my house, ink on skin happens when my teenage kids want to make a "mental" note. With a pen, or sometimes, in a moment of hormonal lunacy, a Sharpie. Perhaps you have a creative toddler in your house, or perhaps you even do it yourself. I've been known to jot down a critically important "must remember" note on the nearest available surface -- even if it is the palm of my right hand!

But once you don't need that note any more, you're stuck with it: ink just doesn't come out so easily. It's one thing to scour your own arm raw trying to remove that black stain, but just try doing that on an outraged toddler! It's a three-man job... unless, that is, you have a teabag.

According to a post by writer Lisa Katayama at Lifehacker, it's a simple matter to steep the teabag, let it cool briefly, then scrub away. Ink should lift right off -- even permanent marker stains.

Katayama's book, Urawaza: Secret Everyday Tips and Tricks from Japan, which features this tip, has been getting a lot of coverage at Lifehacker lately. She refers to urawaza as "life hacks and unmapped shortcuts" that were developed in Japan during the economically lean days that followed World War II. Now that they're available in book form, why not check them out?

I have a bottle of hairspray somewhere in my linen closet, but for the life of me, I couldn't tell you where it is. I used hairspray all the time when I had a full time job and actually fixed my hair, but for the last 3 years I have worked at home, so fixing my hair when I had a toddler on one arm and a screaming baby on the other was the last thing on my mind. The lonely unused bottle of hairspray sadly migrated to the back of the closet, never to be heard from again.

I'll have to find that bottle, because Gomestic shares with us 16 extraordinary uses for hairspray. If you have an unused bottle of hairspray taking up space, and you don't ever plan on using it for your upswept hairdo again, please join me after the jump for a list of hairspray uses and links to past posts here on DIY Life.

My oldest daughter was a great little artist. She loved to draw with markers and crayons, and whenever she could get her little paws on an ink pen, she would get artistic and draw not only on the paper, but all over her body and any clothing she had on.

Ink stains no longer have to be difficult to remove from your precious clothing, thanks to an awesome article that I found on Tipnut.com. The author gives us 10 ink stain remover methods for your laundry. Along with great tips to follow before you remove the stain, such as testing in an inconspicuous place first so that you don't ruin the fabric, there are 10 ink stain removers that should remove any ink stain from your stained laundry.