New Book of Days

Assorted lifehacks and oddities. NO KINGS

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    • Edited: It doesn’t work! No-Sew T-Shirt Bag

      Edited: It doesn’t work! No-Sew T-Shirt Bag

      May 1, 2024 by HTV9 in Upcycling

      Here’s a T-shirt that is super worn out. There are a bunch of tutorials online for making sewn T-shirt shopping bags to replace plastic/paper ones, so I initially thought I’d try that. Then I realized due to no sewing machine that would take about five hours per bag, hand sewing. No thanks. Here’s what I came up with instead.

      Step 1: Flip the worn-out T-shirt inside out. Make 8 roughly 6-inch cuts up from the bottom using whatever scissors you have. Start right next to the seam on either side of the t-shirt, so you get 2 flaps on front and back first and have something neat to start with. Then do the middle cuts, then the middle of those. I like to use the scissors with my dominant hand while stretching out the fabric using my other hand, kind of cradling my dominant hand while pulling on the fabric with the other on both sides of the scissors. Makes the fabric easier to cut while keeping the lines kind of straight. Or, use whatever fabric cutting method you’re more comfortable with. Then, cut 6 (note that the picture might not be perfect here but you get the idea) roughly equidistant lines about 6 inches down from the top of the t-shirt, avoiding the sleeves and their seams. Do this on both sides of the collar.

      Step 2: Tie the bottom flaps together in the order shown with square knots. Try to keep it roughly symmetrical.

      Step 3: Tie the flaps in the middle of the collar on each side together as shown with square knots. This step exists because I learned the bag stretches then splits right down the middle easily if you don’t.

      Step 4: Tie the remaining flaps together around the sleeve on each side, keeping the flaps on each side of the collar on that side of the collar. Also with square knots. Flip it inside out and see how much it can carry.

      How well does this work? Not sure yet. Will update this post when I find out.

      Edited on December 20, 2024: It doesn’t work! My husband said it ripped when trying to carry groceries. Darn.

      © http://www.abrandnewbookofdays.com 2024

    • Acorn Starting Site

      Acorn Starting Site

      Apr 15, 2024 by HTV9

      This is my acorn starting site/oak tree seed starting setup, such as it is. It consists of some potting soil I had leftover, acorns spaced out about 3 inches from one another about an inch and a half beneath the surface, and pea gravel from the top. The pea gravel came from a big box store in a fairly small bag, it’s aquarium gravel. The potting soil is my usual favorite, you can use any you like as long as it doesn’t have mulch; seeds generally are hard if not impossible to start in that. The interesting part was collecting the acorns. Thing about my yard: It’s hard to find trees that fit the dimensions of the space and most oak trees get HUGE. So while I was on a trip to enjoy a meal at a favorite chain restaurant guess what I saw just sitting there in the parking lot? A reasonably sized oak tree with plenty of acorns on the ground beneath. Gathered a bunch of them, planted them that day. As I understand it this doesn’t have a great chance of success, but it may take two or even three years (!!!) to see results, just keeping this thing from drying out by watering it during dry spells and keeping it outdoors. So I’ll see what happens. Planted these about a month and a half ago, the acorns were definitely subjected to some cold temperatures this spring and if I’m lucky, next spring I may see some growth. Provided some industrious squirrel doesn’t eat it all first, hence the need for gravel to help hinder that.

      Notes 2025: No sprouts yet. Hmmm. We shall see if next year anything comes up.

      © http://www.abrandnewbookofdays.com 2024

    • No visuals: Sowing Wildflower Seeds With Limited Mobility

      Apr 3, 2024 by HTV9

      Here’s the method I developed to sow wildflower and flower seeds at the edges of the backyard. It’s simple. First, communicate with family to ensure they mow 8 inches away from the perimeter so stuff can grow there. Second, scatter wildflower seeds sparingly along the perimeter, right among the grass. For larger stuff like sunflower seeds and sweet peas, I kneel and push the seed into the dirt between blades of grass, then cover it up with more dirt using my thumb. Then, I hope for rain!

      Pros: Doable. Worked last year to give me at least some flowers. Flax, cosmos, and a sunflower grew and survived here despite a serious batch of heat waves and drought.

      Cons: There were only one of each that survived and the sunflower and cosmos died after roughly the beginning of July. The flax managed to make it til late October, though, which was impressive. Grass along the fence line squicks me out and can hide snakes, bugs, and worse… will be using as much mulch as i can this year to smother that around each flower that makes it through the grass thatch.

      Notes 7/10/25: There really were snakes in the back corner of the yard. That had to get taken care of. With this method it really seems that an inch is quite sufficient in terms of space near the fence line so planting it that close is important. That way mowing just an inch away gets you some wildflowers but not unwanted wildlife, or at least too much of it

      © http://www.abrandnewbookofdays.com 2024

    • Salted Air Fresheners

      Salted Air Fresheners

      Mar 14, 2024 by HTV9

      Well, here’s the air freshener I made. As mentioned in this post: https://abrandnewbookofdays.com/2024/02/13/air-freshener/ It does work well, the drawer it’s in smells like roses. Really good. So I decided to open it up and cram it full of salt so it lasts a while, then add fresh tape and close it well, and shake it. Did that. Will probably last a year now, maybe two. Maybe longer. Ran out of neat plastic jars like this so will likely use supplement bottles for the next bunch.

      © http://www.abrandnewbookofdays.com 2024

    • No microfiber cloth on hand

      No microfiber cloth on hand

      Mar 1, 2024 by HTV9

      So if you have sunglasses, especially polarized ones, you’ve probably gotten smudges on them and furiously wiped them down with a T-shirt, yielding much disappointment. Going to the store to buy a glasses cleaning kit or a microfiber cloth for cleaning laptops and such is an option but not a very convenient one. Well as it turns out, using a spare corner of fluffy PJ pants works wonders. They are generally 100% polyester and made to be fluffy. T-shirts are generally mostly cotton. Gently buffing sunglasses inside and out in little circles seems to work for this task.

      © http://www.abrandnewbookofdays.com 2024

    • Pudding Cup For Hair Ties

      Pudding Cup For Hair Ties

      Feb 13, 2024 by HTV9

      An additional use for a rinsed out, dried pudding cup

      © http://www.abrandnewbookofdays.com 2024

      lifehacks spoonie upcycling

    • Applesauce Cup and Pudding Cup Pill Area

      Applesauce Cup and Pudding Cup Pill Area

      Feb 13, 2024 by HTV9

      This is a simple upcycle: I rinsed out an applesauce cup and pudding cup, and dried them. Now they are ready to use as pill holders instead of keeping pills directly on a bedside table.

      © http://www.abrandnewbookofdays.com 2024

    • Air Freshener

      Air Freshener

      Feb 13, 2024 by HTV9

      Plastic stuff builds up around here, as do essential oils. So here’s a DIY for making an air freshener out of it. All the materials required are shown aside from the bottle of essential oil: coffee filter, tape, cotton fluff, plastic vessel with lid taken off. The cotton fluff was had from a supplement bottle and would have otherwise been thrown away. I would’ve used a rubber band to put the coffee filter on it, but didn’t have any. I did, however, have tape. The cotton wad has 19 drops of rose absolute diluted in carrier oil atop it. If I didn’t have essential oil I would have used vanilla, almond, or orange extract. This was put into a drawer containing household linens. Hopefully they end up smelling good.

      © http://www.abrandnewbookofdays.com 2024

    • Meal Trays

      Meal Trays

      Feb 7, 2024 by HTV9

      This is something I’ve been doing for a while. On days when I don’t have a lot of energy I ask my family members to set up some food on a baking dish and stuff that in the fridge. I go grab it, microwave whatever’s in there, stuff other things from the kitchen on there, and take it back to bed. EZPZ

      © http://www.abrandnewbookofdays.com 2024

    • No Visuals: Uses Of Rags or Washcloths

      Jan 26, 2024 by HTV9

      Washcloths Uses:
      Fold into quarters and use as a soap dish
      Use instead of a plastic scrubby to exfoliate skin in the shower or bath
      When you get soap slivers, wet down the washcloth and rub the soap into the washcloth to use up the soap
      Wipe down surfaces in the kitchen with dish soap and water and one washcloth. Dry with another. In between uses if you want them super clean, suds up dirty washcloths in the kitchen sink with dish soap, using rubber gloves rub them against themselves or one another, squeeze them out, drain, soak in hot water, drain, cover with boiling water for 20 minutes, drain. Or, launder them using a sanitize cycle or launder them then soak in boiling water in a sink, but for safety’s sake if you use washcloths like this a separate laundry machine and separate washcloths for kitchen use only are important

      In theory, if you’re out of laundry detergent, you could rub half a bar of soap into a washcloth, add a handful of baking soda or 2 tbsp washing soda and/or borax if you got it and maybe a few squirts of dish soap, and use that instead. This could help with multiple chemical sensitivity or things like using greywater or being on a septic system if you omit everything but just the soap and dish soap and use fragrance-free biodegradable versions of those but I’m not sure. Will experiment.

      Fraying Washcloth Uses:
      Wipe down pots outdoors for container gardening between seasons
      Wipe down door frames and windowsills outdoors
      Use for general outdoor cleaning

      Now how do you hem a T-shirt rag to prevent it from fraying all over the place? Sounds like an annoying time-consuming task to me. Maybe just using the T-shirt as is, as a rag, would be the solution. However I assume that if you did manage to hem some clean ones, you could stuff them in a jar with vodka and use those as sanitizing wipes.

      © http://www.abrandnewbookofdays.com 2024