Hailey's Helpful Hints

I'm not a baker. In fact, I don't enjoy cooking either. But when I do cook or bake, I'm notorious for trying to substitute all fatty, bad ingredients for healthier options. And 9/10 those cookies that I intended to give to the neighbors, were either thrown in the trash because they were so inedible or my kids ate them with that "what the heck are these?" looks on their faces. So instead of trying to wing it anymore (when I do bake that is), I found this recipe substitution guide helpful;   Read more about these here:  83 Healthy Recipe Substitutions , via  Greatist . Or another thing I am notorious for is starting to bake assuming I have all the ingredients. Again 9/10 I don't. So this is another handy list to reference from All Recipes . 

I was complaining to my husband the other day about the annoying lint balls that were surfacing all over our linen couch. Casually he said, "That's no big deal. We just need to shave them off." Certainly I wasn't going to shave them off and run the risk of putting a hole in the fabric so I waited for him to devise a plan. Two days later, an Amazon Prime box showed up with a Home-It Fabric Shaver . So we got to shaving. Within minutes, the fuzzies were gonzo. And my couch looked brand new again.  We quickly whipped out all my sweaters that have gotten more wear in four months in Idaho than my eight years in Southern California and fought over who was going to get the satisfaction of de-pilling them first. No joke these sweaters were on the verge of being sent to the Goodwill because of the horrendous pills on the front. Five sweaters salvaged within 15 minutes and looking brand new. So before you put away your winter sweaters for the season or before you toss them beca

In contrast to my post about " 10 Things You're Not Cleaning But Should Be, " here are eight things you might be spending too much time cleaning when you really don't have to be. So before you whipe out the antibacterial hand sanitizer or the disinfectant spray one more time, check out this list of not so dirty places that get a bad rap according to Good Housekeeping .  Toilet || There's more E. Coli in the average sink than in the toilet after you flush it, says microbiologist Charles Gerba (a.k.a. Dr. Germ), a professor at the University of Arizona's department of soil, water and environmental science. The seat is especially clean. "There's usually 200 times more fecal bacteria on a cutting board than on a toilet seat," he adds. (Unfortunately, that's not the case for telephones, remote controls, sponges and dishtowels!) Because you "perceive" your toilet to be dirty, you're more likely to clean it, says microbiologist Lisa Ya