A DIY Guide to Dealing With the Domestic Life

With that said, if the idea of living life in an empty, house-sized box doesn’t appeal, here are a couple of tips to help deal with a few things that just don’t go right.

Torn Upholstery

Due to the fibre used in upholstery, small rips and tears can look pretty bad and, if left alone, tears can spread and completely ruin your furniture. But the fix is a pretty simple one, all you need is;

• An old paint brush
• Upholstery Fabric or some other heavy-duty fabric (off-cuts are fine)
• Upholstery glue (found in most craft stores)
• Safety pins
• Scissors or a pen-knife

The method is pretty straight-forward. Cut the heavy-duty fabric into a square with a few inches clearance of the tear. Insert this underneath the torn fabric, make sure you smooth it. Then pin it in, use the brush to coat it in glue and press down the torn flap. It may also be worth pinning this, or weighting it in some way.

Removing Crayon

I’m sure everyone agrees that children’s artistic urges should be encouraged whenever possible. However, when the hallway wall becomes a canvas for a brand new crayon masterpiece entitled I Love Mommy, complete with flowers, clouds, and a few too many suns – whose judging? – then it’s fair to treat art as a cherished memory, rather than a permanent fixture.

Crayon can be quickly and painlessly removed by using a basic hair-dryer. Turn the dryer to hot, melt the crayon (which is wax-based), and dab clean. Side note; dryers can also be used to remove sticky tags and labels from jars and containers.

Saving a Water-Damaged Phone

Water, phone, plop. It happens to the best of us and there are hundreds of methods for saving our beloved communication devices from water-damage. It is going to be assumed that you’ve removed the gadget from the water already, preferably as soon as possible.

The little sachets of silica that come in new shoes, canvas prints and the like are actually designed to keep things dry. It’s a good idea to keep them to use in these situations, provided they are stored high up where children can’t get to them. Few of us do this regularly, however, and you do need to buy an awful lot of cheap art and/or shoes to get enough. If you have to go by the rice route, then it pays to wrap your device in absorbent paper towel before burying it.

These fixes are all work, but there are a thousand tiny things that can go wrong from time to time. The best fixes, at least temporarily, are the ones that utilize the things that we all have lying around the house. Those old chopsticks in the top drawer – the ones with the square ends – can be used in place of a door handle until you can get to the store. Duct tape can be used to help loosen embedded down-lights. There are little fixes all around, it just takes a little creative thinking to work them out.