Here are this week’s Life Pro Tips.
01. Keep a list of all of the bills on autopay
If your card on file expires/is stolen, and if you don’t remember to update it with every company who regularly bills it, you can end up paying late fees or losing service.
02. If you don’t know where a group of ants are coming from…
If you notice a group of ants exploring your house but are unsure where they are coming from, gently poke/semi-squish a few of them with your finger and they will lead you back to their source.
With that said, ants find food by sending out scouts who, by sheer determination and statistical inevitability, stumble across crumbs/food/water/etc. The whole time they are looking, they lay down a pheromone trail.
Eventually, when one finds something, it follows its pheromone trail back to the nest, re-enforcing the trail, and notifying the colony that it found something. Then it returns back to the food (following its trail again), as do other ants, which re-enforces the trail’s scent. Other ants that may have been out scouting may stumble across this strong trail and abandon their own in order to follow it.
The result of this after a while is an efficient, organized line of ants traveling directly to the food from the colony.
However, ants also leave “warning pheromones” when they encounter a hazard. So by slightly squishing them, you can get them to run home while following their trail backwards. (be careful not to move them when you press on them… if they can’t find their trail, they will just run around chaotically).
A more bit less time consuming method of eliminating ants rather than tracking a paraplegic ant throughout your house and yard is using a mixture of borax and sugar water. Use 1 part borax, 1 part water, 3 parts sugar. The ants don’t taste the borax, and will cart it back to their nest. They think it is food, and most of the ants die. It works like a charm.
03. Get cotton items extra white by using vinegar
VERY IMPORTANT: DO NOT COMBINE VINEGAR WITH BLEACH
This will create lethal chlorine gas, which WILL kill you if inhaled!
When cleaning white cotton items like socks, shirts, sheets and washcloths use white distilled vinegar to get all the stains out. Add 1 cup of vinegar to a large pot of water and heat to boiling. Add the articles, let soak overnight and then launder as usual. This will also remove any odors such as mildew.
04. When establishing business relationships…
Be careful to avoid someone who never admits his/her mistakes. In short, never do business with a person who exhibits narcissistic tendencies. Working with this kind of a person will be challenge of epic proportions. This advice should also be applied to personal relationships.
05. When handing someone both cash and coin…
Hand them the coins first and then the bills. This allows for the best grip on the loose change and prevents the coin sliding off of the bills.
