Take A Hint Heloise Selects 10 Contest Finalists - And Declares Them All Champions
When you speak the lingo of Heloise, you’re in good company.
For nearly 20 years the one-woman reference service, like her mother before her, has dispensed advice to a national audience in dire need of household help.
The daily feature Hints From Heloise has guided many a newspaper reader through one minor emergency after another. In March, we asked Inland Northwest readers to send in their favorite Heloise-type hints, which the San Antonio-based columnist had agreed to judge.
The object was to have her choose what she considered to be the top 10.
According to Heloise, she uses two criteria in judging such would-be hints: 1. Does it save you money? 2. Does it save you time and/or frustration?
Further, she says, a good hint “appeals to the majority of the people regardless of gender or age.”
In our search for the 10 best hints, we received hundreds of entries from all over the Inland Northwest. Overall, Heloise said, the hints were “pretty good.” The problem she had was in finding anything new.
“It’s interesting that no matter what part of the country, the same hints keep coming in over and over,” she says. “There are certain hints that are original, of course, but the basics (are the same).”
She finally whittled the list down to 10, but Heloise declined to go any further.
“I think what I like about that is that it gives more people the chance to say ‘I was a winner, I was one of the 10 finalists,’ as opposed to what they say at the Academy Awards now. They don’t say, ‘And the Academy Award goes to…’ No, no, they’ve changed it to, ‘And the winner is…”
The result, she says, is too negative. “Because then,” she says, “the others feel like losers.”
There were no losers here.
Following, then, are the top 10 winners:
John R. Griffiths, Medical Lake
The hint: “Having trouble finding the end of the plastic wrap so you can cover food for storage? Simply wet your hands under the faucet, grasp the roll of plastic in both hands and twist with slight pressure, letting the hands slide as you twist. The end will come loose for you to see.”
How did he come up with the idea? Griffith says: “Just trial and error around the house. I’d just always had trouble, I guess everybody does, with the plastic wrap. It’s a common problem.”
Sharon Enterline, Veradale
The hint: “My dry cleaners use one-inch safety pins to pin their tags onto the clothes they clean. When removing the tags, I save the pins. I keep them together at home by looping them onto a larger safety pin. I then take three or four of these smaller pins, ‘chain’ them together and attach them to the zipper pull on an inside pocket of my purse. That way, if I have a need for a safety pin when I’m not at home, I always have one handy. I also do this on the zipper pull of my cosmetic bag that I pack when traveling.”
Enterline says: “Not only does this recycle the safety pins, but it has saved me on many occasions.”
Lorraine P. Murray, Richland
The hint: “My hint involves doubling your hanger space by using plastic six-pack can holders. Just cut the plastic circles apart, being careful to keep each individual circle intact. Slip one over the top of a hangar, then add a second hangar and even a third through the plastic loops. The result: up to three clothing items hanging in the space of one.”
Murray says: “My daughter lives in Spokane, and she knows that I’m always coming up with little hints like that. She sent me the (contest) clipping and said, ‘OK, now why don’t you give some of your ideas to the press?’ So I did, never thinking that I would be one of the top 10.” It was “Just my own idea,” she says. “… I thought, ‘What can I do with those?’ And it just kind of dawned on me.”
Linda McClain, Spokane
The hint: “I have found that the best and easiest way to get cat fur (especially Persian cat fur) off the furniture is to wrap duct or packaging tape around your hand and dab or roll your hand on the chairs, sofas, etc. It saves lots of time and energy, and it avoids you having to get out the vacuum.”
McClain says: “We have two cats, and one is a Persian with white fur. We have Persian rugs, hardwood floors and furniture that tends to catch every bit of fur. These cats don’t like to be brushed, and we’ve tried everything. We tried every kind of vacuum cleaner. So I just came up with the duct tape idea, wrapped it around my hand kind of just sittin’ there watching TV or readin’ the paper, pattin’ away on the sofa. And it really works.”
Ralph Tils, Spokane
The hint: “I use empty square tissue boxes to put plastic grocery bags in. You can put about 20 in, and if you stick the bottom of the next bag through the handles of the preceding bag, they pull out like the tissues do.”
Tills says: “I just sat there one day with an empty box and some bags there and started pushing them in. It got so handy, that I have one in the garage and I carry one in the trunk of my car. You invariably bust a grocery bag or something, then you’ve got one handy.”
Alice N. Norland, Spokane
The hint: “To keep white canvas tennis shoes looking like new, wash them and, while they’re still wet, use white liquid shoe polish on them. Brush the excess off when dry. I have done this for years. They still look good, even when holes appear.”
Norland says: “It’s just something that I’ve been doing ever since my kids were little and started wearing tennis shoes… I worked in a dry cleaners, and we had lots of different ideas of how to keep things clean. I don’t know if somebody mentioned it to me, or if I just tried it once and it worked, but I’ve been doing it for probably 20 years… They look brand new, even if they do have holes in them.”
Sherry Zweig, Spokane
The hint: “In case I should lose my wallet, I’ve made a list of all my credit card (and other important) numbers along with the 800 numbers that I will need to call for cancellation and replacements. I keep a copy in a safe place, and I’ve given a copy to my daughter in case something should happen to me. This way I know who to call, and it’s all on one piece of paper.
Zweig says: “It wasn’t until a year ago or so that my husband and I started using credit cards. And, of course, once you use one you get bombarded with a bazillion of them. And for some reason, I had to call one of them. It took awhile to find the number, and then they wanted the number off the card and on and on. And I thought, ‘Boy, it would just be much more convenient if I had it all written down.’ That’s how I started.”
Shirley Thiel, Fairfield
“My washer control knob is slick and difficult to turn. I cut a circle (larger than the diameter of the knob) out of plastic mesh, such as that which holds grapes at the produce counter. Secure it with a rubber band so that even with soapy, wet hands the gripper action of the mesh assists you in setting the control.”
How did she come up with the idea? Thiel says: “Just used my smarts. They say that necessity is the mother of invention. I didn’t know that would work (because)… maybe other people don’t have that slippery of a knob.”
Velma L. Smith, Spokane
The hint: “I add a teaspoon or two of vanilla to my morning cup of coffee. It’s an inexpensive way to have flavored coffee.”
Smith says: “I was just thinking that I was tired of just plain old coffee at home, and I don’t like to buy the espresso and the flavored coffees. So I just thought I’d try vanilla in my coffee. I had never heard of it before. It was my own invention. Aren’t I clever?” (Laughs)
Katie Montoya, Spokane
The hint: “Plastic shower curtain rings will hook toys to the front of the stroller, the diaper bag to the handle of the stroller and your belts to a plastic hangar. For the belts, I use a plastic hanger because it’s fat enough to leave the ring unlatched without it falling off the hangar. I can spin the opening to the belt I want and remove it without moving all the other belts.”
Montoya says: “In a set of 12, I had a broken one. I never got around to taking it back to the store (you know the sets are just $1.99). So I had 11 of them to deal with. My 2-year-old wore them as bracelets for a while, but how many can she wear? I needed something to clip the belts up… And now we’re economizing space.”
, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: 4 Staff illustrations by Molly Quinn