The Manifesto - Handbook For A Better Life

I did not believe this when I first heard it but now I’ve done a bit of research (well, Googling) it appears to be true.

Apply duct tape to the wart. Leave it on for the next 5 or 6 days then take it off and clean it before you go to bed. When you wake up the next day, re-apply the duct tape for the next 6 days and so on and so forth. Within a few weeks the wart should be shrunk or gone.

A hangover cure is more about prevention

Eat and drink. Drink lots of water before you go to bed. Alcohol will dehydrate you, so when you’re asleep your body is doing a lot of dehydrating trying to process the chemicals in your system but not much-rehydrating. This is one of the causes behind your headache.

Also, eat lots of food. Food doesn’t absorb alcohol, but it does help increase metabolism which activates alcohol absorption, and increases the speed with which the body processes alcohol.

I generally go to bed mostly sober, having my last drink more than an hour before hitting the hay.

Other people swear by Berocca but I’ve never tried it. Because of the above methods I have never known what it is like to have a really bad hangover. Just thought I’d rub it in.

To prevent your mirror from fogging up badly while in the shower, use some toothpaste.

Just dab a little onto a cloth and rub it on and you shouldn’t have to worry any more.

Obviously the romantics who use fogged up mirrors to leave sweet messages for their loved ones won’t need this.

Also – try this one on your ski goggles. I haven’t but you’d think it could work!

Sick of losing socks… and having mismatched pairs?

Last year I bought 10 pairs of the same kind of sock from my local store. I have noticed the total number is diminishing but I still don’t have to hunt for a matching pair like I used to. I have saved a lot of time by doing this!

In June 2007, I sat in a tent in Mongolia while it was pelting down outside with freezing rain. Most Mongolians live in tents called gers which are heated from a wood stove in the centre. (A chimney runs up through the top of the ger.)

What dried me out on that cold night was that precious fire. But it wasn’t wood that was burning… it was horse dung.

The Mongolians are really quite resourceful people, and make use of everything they have. They take dried horse and sheep dung and keep it in buckets ready to be used in fires.

I don’t have a fire at home but it seems like a pretty good use for something normally considered to be quite disgusting. I didn’t notice any problems with smell so it should be ok for you as well and will give you a reason to clear up that doggy doo clogging up your back-yard.

If you’re worried about the effect this might have on the smell of your home, try it out in a camp-fire. I’d be too nervous to use it in a barbecue!

NB. If anyone actually does this I’d love to hear about the results!

It’s easy to create dandruff shampoo much cheaper than the normal stuff you see in the supermarket.

Just buy a much cheaper regular shampoo and dissolve aspirins into it to get an anti-dandruff effect.

When you’re having a movie night- or just looking for a great snack – popcorn is great to turn to. But there’s always the downside of those yucky, un-popped kernels that you have to avoid.

Popcorn is great until you hit the bottom and you run into all that crunchy, uncooked stuff sitting around the bottom.

An easy to way to avoid this and get all your pop-corn popping beautifully is to put your pop-corn seeds in the freezer the day before.

Mowing the lawns is a pain in the butt for me but for other (crazier) people it can be relaxing.
But surely for even them, having to clear out wet grass from a lawn-mower can get pretty aggravating at times! There’s such an easy way to deal with this and when it was told to me I just had to shake my head.

Get some canola/olive/vegetable oil - melted butter or margarine may do the trick - and spray it over your mower blades before you get going. This will create a slippery surface for the grass and it will be much less inclined to stick!

(NB. This trick works on snow shovels, spades, garden trowels, things like that as well.)

Eliminate shoe odor completely in two steps.

- Sprinkle with bi-carb soda on the inside. Shake out thoroughly after a day. The bi-carb will absorb a lot of the odor.

- Place your shoes in a bag and put them in the freezer. This will kill the bacteria.

Prevent future problems

Every time you shower, make sure you wash your feet! And just as important, dry your feet properly. These two factors will make a huge difference in foot odour on a day to day basis.