Works For Me Wednesday: Reusing Candy Canes

My kids don't like to eat candy canes (Aaaaack! It's too minty! It's burning my tongue! It's burning my tongue!!!!) but they do like to decorate the Christmas tree with them. Instead of buying four boxes of candy canes each year and then throwing them out after the holidays, I put the candy canes in a Ziploc freezer bag and stick them in the freezer till next year. Freezing keeps them from getting all gummy and sticky. We have been using the same candy canes for at least three years and they look as good as they did the first year.




Note: I do not recommend eating candy canes after they have been frozen year after year. They pick up that been-in-the-freezer-too-long taste. Not yummy.


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WFMW: Magic Erasers for Cleaning Tile Floors

I have a ceramic tile floor in my foyer that is wonderful because it hides dirt really well. As it turns out, maybe it hides dirt a little too well.

When I was washing the floor last week I noticed that the tiles around the door looked a little grungy even after I mopped them. So I tried scrubbing the dirt off with a Mr. Clean Magic Eraser. The results were shocking! Apparently the tiles had been sucking in a whole lot of dirt for the past 5 years. They looked beautiful after a few quick swipes of the Magic Eraser. Unfortunately it turned out my entire floor was really dirty and I had to then use the Magic Eraser on the whole thing.

Here is a before and after photo*:

Obviously the tile on the left has not been cleaned with the Magic Eraser yet. The really sad part is this isn't even the area of the floor that I thought looked grungy in the first place. Now it is like I have a brand new floor!


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*Please note that it is slightly embarrassing to be posting pictures of how dirty my floor was on the internet.