Use clamp hangers for more than pants

photo by goldberg

Pants hangers have multiple uses in your home. You can use them to clip a printed recipe to keep it off the kitchen counter when preparing it. Simply hang it from the cabinet handle. Or use them to display children’s artwork. The first tip shares a few additional ways to use pant hangers.

MULTIUSE HANGERS: I have a number of clamp-type pants hangers and have found some other things to use them for apart from their intended use.

– I clamp my three silicon baking mats together and hang them on a hook located on the inside of a door on my pantry cabinet. Now they are easy to find and use, and they always remain flat.

– On that same hook, I have used another hanger to clamp together sheets of parchment paper. I purchased a box of parchment paper from a restaurant-supply store and have to cut each sheet in half to use with my cookie sheets. Now I can precut a bunch and hang them up — ready to use.

– I use these clamp-type hangers to hang rugs on the clothesline to dry, as well as other heavy things that pins just aren’t quite enough to hold or you don’t want to fold the item over the line.

– We hang our handmade paper using these hangers. — Karen, Kansas

FLOOR CLEANER: I’ve had a bottle of Skin So Soft bubble bath in my stash for four years. I’ve been using my foaming hand-soap dispenser to use up all the body washes and bubble baths in my stash, so I put in the Skin So Soft. I use a Swiffer with a wet cloth rag on my wood floor. I wet it in my bathroom sink and pump a bit of soap foam on the rag to help get up smudges. This week, when I mopped, I was surprised to see my floor look absolutely brand-new after mopping with a bit of Skin So Soft. Then I remembered that one of the many uses of Skin So Soft is as a furniture polish. I probably wouldn’t buy it just for the floor, but it’s nice knowing that it works so well. — Constance, New Jersey

SAVING RECEIPTS: I have had my system of receipt storage for years, and it works great for me. I have 12 envelopes, one for each month. I keep the current month’s envelope in my desk drawer to be handy; the rest are in my filing cabinet. When I have entered the receipt in my checkbook register, I put it in the envelope. When I am moving on to the next month, I put away that envelope in my filing cabinet and pick up next month’s envelope. I take the receipts in that envelope (now a year old) and go through them. Ones that are for groceries, gas, etc., are shredded. I keep ones for pricier items (mattress, television, etc) in a separate file until I don’t need them anymore. Sometimes it’s neat to see what I bought last year at this time. — Becky, Kansas

MAKE IT LAST: When you have an expensive perfume that you would like to make last longer, take an unscented body lotion in your palm, spray a few drops of the perfume/cologne into the lotion, mix it up, and then rub it on your body. The scent lasts longer on your skin than just spritzing here and there and also stretches the perfume because you use less. — Jan, Indiana

Posted by Sara Noel on November 14 2009. Filed under Frugal Tips.
Sara Noel owns Frugal Village, LLC and is a nationally syndicated columnist with Universal Uclick. Bio, Follow me on Twitter, Join us on Facebook