How to be a goddess
Handy tips for busy lives
We’re loving The Goddess Guide, a new handbook packed with life tips so clever we can’t believe we’d never heard of them before. Here, we’ve pulled out 15 of the best…
1. Make the zip of your jeans run more smoothly by rubbing the teeth with the graphite of a pencil.
2. Got a pen mark on your handbag? Squirt a little hairspray onto it, then wipe away with a tissue.
3. Stick an empty perfume bottle or a tumble-dryer softener sheet into the bottom of your dirty clothes bag. It will counteract the pong of your used socks and undies.
4. Try cooling your eye pencil in the fridge for half an hour before sharpening it to prevent crumbling.
5. Give your shoes a new lease on life. Spruce up black leather by rubbing it with the inside of an orange rind. Bring suede back to life by steaming over a hot kettle. Make patent leather gleam by polishing it with a teeny bit of Vaseline.
6. Lost an earring back? Who needs ’em? Replace it with that small piece of rubber from the top of a new pencil.
7. To beat jetlag, book a flight that lets you sleep while it’s night at your destination. That way, it’ll be morning when you get there and you can hang out all day (not sleeping). You’ll be right to hit the hay at bedtime.
8. Stop your fridge from reeking with a saucer of roughly broken-up charcoal (it’s very absorbent), an orange spiked with cloves, or a cotton ball soaked in vanilla essence.
9. If you take off your blinin’ rings to do the dishes or cook, pop them onto a safety pin and attach it to your clothes.
10. Giving jewellery as a present? Cut the pages out of an old hardback book using a Stanley knife, fill it with tissue paper and nestle your pressie in there.
11. To remove yellow underarm stains from white tops, try soaking it in warm water with clothes bleach, and then wash it in the hottest wash allowed on the care instructions.
12. Fill a hot water bottle, seal it and then cover it with double-sided sticky tape. Drag it across your dog’s bed, and any fleas will hop onto it and get stuck to the tape.
13. If you can’t get the taste of coffee out of a flask, fill it with warm water and add a few teaspoons of bicarbonate of soda. Soak overnight, then wash with warm soapy water. Always store a flask with the lid off, and a sugar cube or a few grains of rice inside of it.
14. Keep a good book by the loo, or a notebook and pen to doodle and jot down ideas.
15. Shop for shoes in the evening, when your feet are slightly swollen. That way, your new shoes won’t pinch as much the first day.
This is an edited extract from The Goddess Guide by Gisele Scanlon, published by HarperCollins.