DIY Life

In this economy, there's no time like the present to look in the pantry and take stock of things, to distinguish between the must-haves and the fluff.

Things like tinned smoked oysters might not need to be replaced. The same goes for gourmet cookies. And that six pack of Coke? Who needs that, when there's perfectly good drinking water free from the tap? Or so I thought... until I began reading about the many wonders of Coke.

It turns out Coke is more than just a sweet drink that gives you a lift: it can be used for everything from creating a better curl to cleaning stubborn toilet stains. After the break, you'll find a few more clever uses for the carbonated drink....

Once in a while, I forgo my great love of coffee for a cup of tea. Tea is soothing to the soul, and leaves me feeling like I just relaxed all my worries away, even if it is just for a few minutes.

If you are a tea lover, and drink the stuff all day long, all those tea bags adding up seems very wasteful. You only use them once or twice and then end up throwing them in the garbage, unless you have used Francesca's tips on reusing tea bags.

Craft Leftovers has an image tutorial that tells us how to make our own cloth teabags that can be used over and over again. You'll need a small piece of muslin cloth, string, an awl to makes the holes, and needle and thread to stitch the thread into the bag.

For those of us that are into reusing an item over and over again, making your own tea bags is a great step in our never ending quest to go green. The homemade tea bag can be washed over and over again, and the tea leaves can be added to our compost.

[via: Craft]

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.

DIY Maven on Curbly has a bunch of great ideas for alternative ways to use nail polish.

Given that the use of nail polish is "to be painted on things" -- it's a low-toxicity enamel paint -- I don't know if these count as "new" uses per se. My mother has been doing a few of them for years, particularly the "polish on the keys" trick, and she's far from alone. But they're all ideas that are useful, and maybe they're new to you!

Read more about them, as well as a few new nail polish tips from us, after the break.