Save the day with over 2,300 clever, ingenious, smart ways to use everyday household products—all guaranteed to save you time and money!

Did you know that tea can hide gray hair? Or that aspirin can revive a dead car battery? How about the power of table salt to make panty hose last longer? Or that shaving cream can remove rug stains? Yes, there’s a treasure trove hidden in your pantry, medicine cabinet, garage, and basement. This remarkable book shares amazing secrets to save you time and money—and shelf space in the process. Fully illustrated and written in a clear, down-to-earth style, this practical guide contains over 2,300 handy tips about using more than 200 common household items like aluminum foil and dental floss in exciting new ways. Don’t spend your hard-earned money on expensive storebought products. Restore, replace, repair, or revive practically everything in your home with this indispensable handbook that features:

• Nearly 400 full-color illustrations
• Easy A-to-Z format to find items easily
• Clear, step-by-step instructions
• At-a-Glance section provides the Best Uses for every item
• Hundreds of sidebars full of extra tips and informative ideas
• Complete index for cross-referencing

Throughout, Did You Know?, Science Fair, and Kids’ Stuff sidebars add to the wonder and fun of this easy-to-use reference. From Alka-Seltzer to baby shampoo, pepper to pillowcases, vinegar to yogurt—discover the untold value of hundreds of everyday items with Extraordinary Uses for Ordinary Things.

This new deluxe edition of the classic Black & Decker« Complete Photo Guide to Home Improvement now includes a durable washable flex cover that makes the book ideal for use on the homeowners work site.

With nearly 300 projects, this book is indispensable for DIYers who have moved beyond basic home repair and are ready to tackle projects that make a big difference in quality of life — and in their savings accounts. DIYers who tackle their own major remodeling projects achieve exactly the results they want, and can easily save thousands of dollars over the cost of hiring contractors to do the work.

Studio photography and the most detailed step-by-step information available make this book unique among books on remodeling.

Added to this edition is a homeowners convenience kit, including peel-and-stick reminder stickers and labels to help you tag your calendar with home maintenance reminders, keep track of furnace and appliance maintenance, index your circuit-breaker box, organize your tool collection, and more.

Veteran “organizational consultant,” TV show host and author Walsh (How to Organize (Just About) Everything) has more ideas in his latest book on clutter management than the spare closet has junk, and, even better, it’s organized, in-depth and entirely user-friendly. Part One examines the “Clutter Problem”: how it happens, how it hampers and how to face it without excuses or discouragement. Part Two presents a step-by-step approach to “Putting Clutter in its Place,” which begins with “surface clutter” and developing a household plan before moving on to the bulk of the book, a walkthrough of each room in the home. Also included are ideas for involving other family members, letters Walsh has received from viewers of his TLC show “Clean Sweep,” vignettes illustrating how real people deal with common organizational challenges and plenty of charts, checklists and sidebars (“Clutter Quiz,” “Yard Sale Planning”) for added utility. Walsh is upbeat and funny throughout, treating the task at hand like “a thrilling archeological dig,” a “positive and exciting” way to unlock your “ideal home” and “unearth those things that are most important in your life.” Entertaining and instructive, this is one guidebook readers should place in their “keep” pile.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. –This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

“Basic Country Skills lives up to its billing, although why “country” is chosen might be debated by any delighted city gardener who receives this almost 600-page tome as a gift. Over a third of the book concerns gardening, pure and simple, but the home maintenance and cooking sections are of value, also.” — The Toronto City Gardening Monthly Newsletter, December 1999

“Edited by Deborah Burns, subtitled “A Practical Guide to Self-Reliance,” this encyclopedia is big enough for the coffee table but better suited to the tool shed. In addition to providing bushels of advice on gardening, it’s a manual for everyday survival in rural America. Come to think of it, “BCS” may be required reading between Christmas and Y2K. Some skills you might pick up: how to build a garden shed, caring for pet llamas, techniques for building a stone wall and making your own preserves. Even if you only use 1 percent of the information in it, BCS is fascinating reading.” — The Boston Herald, Andy Tomolonis 12/19/99

“From Fighting Flu to Cleaning Your House…What Country Folk Know that You Don’t.” Now your audience can learn all the wisdom and secrets that have been passed down from generation to generation of folks living in the country. Tips on how to use rubbing alcohol, lighter fluid and vinegar when cleaning, and how to plant a cold and flu garden to make your winter healthier and happier.” — Radio-TV Interview Report, Mid-January 2000

“I could easily spend my whole column on this complete, modern encyclopedia to the art and science of country living…I wish I’d had Storey’s Basic Country Skills 25 years ago!” — The Patriot News, November 30, 1999

“Since 1983 the publisher (Storey) has produced more than 500 titles about country living. Now, it has boiled down this vast library of knowledge and placed it in one giant 3 pound, 576 page book. Even if you are a city dweller, without chickens or sheep, you will find a wealth of information about maintaining a home and garden.” — Cleveland Plain Dealer 11/26/99

It’s about time! Julie Morgenstern has written an organizing book that covers a new way of looking at the task of organizing effectively without labeling or blaming the person behind the lack of organization. Rather, she says, people who don’t organize just never learned how to organize, through no fault of their own–after all, it’s not a skill that’s taught in school. That said, she gets down to work helping you figure out an organizing system that will really work for you, not a system based on cookie-cutter filing concepts or special storage units.

Morgenstern’s “from the inside out” system begins by laying out the possible reasons for a failure of organization: technical errors (like having a complex organizing system that breaks down), external realities (like not enough space for your belongings), and psychological obstacles (like fear of failure–or success). Then, her Analyze and Strategize steps help create a plan of action based on your needs and goals, and the brief chapter called “Attack: Getting the Job Done” offers basic ideas for making space. The largest section of the book, “Applying What You’ve Learned,” addresses the specifics of organizing workspaces, home offices, living spaces, and storage areas. Each section has a “How Long Will It Take?” box that gives a realistic time estimate, and Morgenstern’s “Julie’s No-Brainer Toss List” for each area gives the permission and encouragement that most of us have been waiting for to get rid of things we’ll never use again. The section at the end, “Tackling Time and Technology,” is worth its weight in DayTimers and PalmPilots. Whatever your organizing issues are, you’re not a hopeless case, and you don’t need special equipment–just a little understanding of the problem and a willingness to plan before diving in. –This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Two sisters share the system of organising household chores that they created to make managing a home less time consuming and more efficient, in an updated handbook that explains how to reduce chaos and clutter and achieve organisation in the home.

Pam and Peggy certainly know what it feels like to be living in total chaos, and they use that understanding to good effect in this book, showing step by step how they got organized. They don’t take any knowledge or organizational ability for granted, and they have great senses of humor. Their card-file system will probably work for most people who are SHE’s (Sidetracked Home Executives) because of their creativity, or just general distractedness.

If, however, you are a SHE because you’re a frozen perfectionist, someone who never cleans because you don’t have time to do it RIGHT, this is not the book for you. The card-file is wonderful – except that I’m entirely capable of spending the next 6 months making sure I’ve got the file system perfect without ever actually doing any of the stuff on it. There’s also nothing to prevent you from overloading yourself with nit-picking chores and burning out. If these sound like things you would be prone to, then I would recommend “Sink Reflections” by Marla Cilley instead. She uses much of the same material as Pam and Peggy (she credits them as her inspiration), but her program is specifically designed for those of us who try so hard for perfection we get nowhere.