Lifehacker readers show us how they clean up abused cookware and file paper documents for easy searching.
About the Tips Box: Every day we receive boatloads of great reader tips in our inbox, but for various reasons—maybe they're a bit too niche, maybe we couldn't find a good way to present it, or maybe we just couldn't fit it in—the tip didn't make the front page. From the Tips Box is where we round up some of our favorites for your buffet-style consumption. Got a tip of your own to share? Add it in the comments or email it to tips at lifehacker.com.
Clean Out a Gunked Up Scorched Pot
Len wrote in with a two-step method for cleaning a pot after it boiled dry:
[The first step was to] add water, and some detergent.. and get it to boil and then simmer for like 10 minutes.. then turn off the water completely.
[...]
[The results were] definitely a step in the right direction.. I actually scraped out the caked on food with a spoon.. easy enough, I suppose I could have used something else, but it did the trick.The next step I noticed everywhere was to leave it soaking in Vinegar overnight.. this worked out well since it was getting late and I wanted to go to bed anyhow!
You can see the results after each step in Len's original post.
Cleaning A Scorched Pot in Pictures [the lencurrie life]
Use Evernote to Organize Your Paper Documents
Photo by quinn.anya.
John shares his method for organizing paper documents for easy searching later:
You need:
- Evernote
- A scanner (I use the Fujitsu ScanSnap)
- Folders
- A label maker capable of printing today's date
Grab a folder, and print a label with today's date on it. Incoming paper (eg receipts, bills, etc) gets scanned into evernote, where I can rename and tag at my leisure. The document goes in the folder. When the folder is too full (say 50 documents), it goes into the filing cabinet, and I print a new label and grab a new folder.
The beauty of the system is its simplicity. When I want to find a physical document (say a receipt) I search for it in evernote. I'll either find it by name, tags, or OCR text. Then I check the creation date of the document in Evernote, and grab the folder from the filing cabinet with the closest date before that. I only ever have 50 documents to look through, and I know from evernote exactly what the document looks like.