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Hell hath no fury like the staying power of baked on food on your pots and pans. Sometimes a soak overnight is required, but to guarantee things will come clean by morning, try turning to your dishwasher detergent instead.

Photo by jessicafm.

Like our parents before us, we’ve left pots and pans out overnight, filled with water and dishsoap to let stuck on food soften for a morning cleaning. It doesn’t always work, but it’s better than nothing, right?

Maybe not. The folks over at the weblog Parent Hacks suggest using 1 teaspoon of dishwasher detergent (that you would normally use in your dishwasher) in combination with hot water. Let it sit in your pan overnight and the food should rinse clean without any scrubbing. We were skeptical, so we put it to the test last night and it worked like a charm—even on the crusty leftover cheese from our baked macaroni dish. It didn’t even require a once over with our sponge, just a simple rinse and it all came clean. Best of all, it didn’t require any wear and tear to our sponges or additional elbow grease.

Have your own have a tip on getting your dishes sparkling without a lot of work? Share your thoughts in the comments.

It’s not a clever hack any of us want to have to use, but the Art of Manliness blog has a homebrew fix for the next time your restroom trip ends in disaster.

Photo by powerbooktrance.

When a toilet clogs, the first jobs are stopping water from flowing to prevent an overflow and finding a decent plunger. Then again, if you’re visiting a friend’s place and might feel embarrassed returning from the bathroom with such a request, some hot water from a bathroom sink might do the trick. Need more firepower? Add in dishwasher detergent to put things right:

Add a few cups of hot water to the toilet bowl before you start plunging. After you pour the hot water in, let it sit for a few minutes. To put it mildly, the heat helps break the, um, stuff up. This will make unclogging the toilet with the plunger much, much easier. The heat from the hot water can sometimes break up the clog without plunging, so this could be a good tactic to use if you a clog a toilet at a friends house and you don’t want to face the embarrassment of asking for a plunger.

The blog post, sourced from a Roto-Rooter representative, offers more good-to-know tidbits about properly using a (warmed and un-stiffened) plunger and using tools like an auger for the really bad, um, breakdowns. If you’d care to be so discrete as to share your own toilet emergency fixes, we’ll welcome them in the comments.