[seabreeze]

Rubbing your hands on stainless steel takes the smell of garlic off your hands.

Put the burner grates and plates from your gas stovetop in the oven when you automatically clean your oven and they come out looking like new.

Use a citrus peeler to devein shrimp.

Most people probably know this, but, anyway...use a nylon knife to cut lettuce to prevent the edges from browning.

[Peril]

Spray bottle of water and white vinegar. I use this for everything, including stainless steel (some one asked about that earlier). Then wipe down with stainless steel polish if I really want a shine. I have a LOT of stainless steel.

[curlykarot]

For the shower: Grab one of those soap dispensing sponges (like this http://www.oxo.com/p-300-soap-dispen...ish-scrub.aspx) and fill it half with vinegar and half with Dawn. Keep it in the shower and scrub the shower down each day. It takes 2 minutes tops.

For your glass cooktop: Grab a rag and submerge it into a bowl of hot, soapy water. Put baking soda all over your cooktop. Pull the rag out of the bowl, squeeze half the water out - you just want it soggy. Put the rag on the cooktop over the baking soda. Leave it for 15 min. Then scrub. You might need to use some elbow grease depending on how bad your cooktop is. Once you are done, go over it with some Windex to shine it up.

[JenLS]

Use a spoon to peel a hardboiled egg. So simple. Large spoons work really well for avocados once they're sliced in half.

[SmartAlex]

Magic Erasers are awesome!

Yup, especially for painted door jambs scrunge.

Also, Scrubbing Bubbles foam does a great job on the microwave.

If you want your husband to think you scrubbed the whole house but you really want to hang out on CoTH instead, run a pail of really hot water, put a splash of Pine Sol in it and have the pail sit in each room for at least 10 minutes. Put the throw pillows in the dryer with a dryer sheet for half an hour. He'll come home and comment on how clean everything smells.

[2DogsFarm]

I like to spray 'Pledge' around the opening of the door before visitors arrive - it makes people think I have cleaned.

Fred: you're my kind of housekeeper!

I have an even simpler (than JanM's) way to get rid of garlic/onion smells from your hands.
If you have a stainless steel faucet, just rub your stinky hands over it, then rinse.
I thought of this after seeing a place selling a stainless "egg" to do the same job.
ETA: oops - seabreeze beat me to it!

Now, off to spray Lemon Pledge all over my doorways
ETA#2:
SamrtAlex - you & Fred need to start a housecleaning consulting business.
May I be your first customer?

[Foxtrot's]

Fred - there is a very good chance you will know my friend with the gorgeous large vase of flowers - Sue Mills, Southlands, Vancouver, sister of Richard Stilwell from UK.

[SuckerForHorses]

Any way to get the wet dog smell out of a braided rug without having to shampoo it?

We have two dogs, adn even vacuuming every day, our house smells like dog, and the dogs are even clean! They lay on the rug, and I think its holding the smell.

I've tried Febreeze and that doesn't really work...it just masks it for an hour or two! LOL!

[MoonoverMississippi]

A light spritz and rub with regular Pledge to clean stainless steel appliances: taught that by the salesman @ Lowe's. He said that's what he uses for the display models (which get tons of touches every day) and it's cheaper than the stainless polishes.

[MoonoverMississippi]

A bit of Borax when cleaning a spot on carpet (test first). I've never seen anything pull stains out like that!

[wendy]

We have two dogs, adn even vacuuming every day, our house smells like dog, and the dogs are even clean! They lay on the rug, and I think its holding the smell.

if your dog(s) smell, there is something wrong. Healthy dogs don't really have a noticable body odor, and it certainly doesn't linger after they leave. Most commonly in our society if a house smells "Doggy" it's because of what kind of food the owners feed. Dogs on a good meat-based diet don't have much of a body odor and your house won't smell even if you a) never bathe the dog, or b) do much in the way of cleaning. Dogs on a soy/corn/gluten/grain based diet tend to develop a strong body odor that lingers in fabrics. And yes, many of the very popular not-particularly-cheap dog food brands fall into this category.
Vacuuming won't remove this kind of odor- you need to use strong detergents and possibly an enzymatic odor remover. And fix the source of the problem.

[EmJ628]

This was a good one I heard the other day: To make flexible icepacks that can stay in freezer till needed: combine 1 part rubbing alcohol and 3 parts water in a ziploc. The alcohol will keep the water from freezing completely. If you use ice boots, depending on how they are constructed this could be handy for that too!

[SuckerForHorses]

if your dog(s) smell, there is something wrong. Healthy dogs don't really have a noticable body odor, and it certainly doesn't linger after they leave. Most commonly in our society if a house smells "Doggy" it's because of what kind of food the owners feed. Dogs on a good meat-based diet don't have much of a body odor and your house won't smell even if you a) never bathe the dog, or b) do much in the way of cleaning. Dogs on a soy/corn/gluten/grain based diet tend to develop a strong body odor that lingers in fabrics. And yes, many of the very popular not-particularly-cheap dog food brands fall into this category.
Vacuuming won't remove this kind of odor- you need to use strong detergents and possibly an enzymatic odor remover. And fix the source of the problem.

Sorry, should've clarified! The dogs themselves don't smell, AT ALL! And they are fed California Natural Grain Free Salmon & Peas.

You can literally bury your nose into both dogs and smell nothing.