HELOISE You can use grocery gift cards just like cash

Dear Heloise: After years of fumbling at grocery checkouts for my checkbook or cash, I started buying grocery gift cards. You can use them like credit cards, and you don't have to wait around to sign a receipt. The store gives you the receipt, which tells your balance on the gift card. When it gets low, you can add money to the gift card.
Also, my teenage children can run to the store for needed items, and I don't have to give them any cash. Cathy Volpe, Columbus
Good thinking! Remember, the cards are like cash, so be sure to treat them as such. Heloise
Fast facts: Other uses for flat advertisement magnets:
UPut next to your sewing machine to hold straight pins.
UPersonalize and use to identify your locker at a health club.
UMark one end of a magnet with "clean" and the other with "dirty," and put it on the front of the dishwasher.
UStick them to the back of a small memo pad and pen or pencil, and keep on the fridge for quick notes.
Dear Heloise: I have solved the problem of quickly removing my driver's license from the tight space in my wallet.
I take two strands of dental floss and loosely tie them around the driver's license, leaving about 2 inches to use as a "pull." It slides out and in with ease.
My friends are now using this idea and insisted that I share it with you. Ruth Beasley, via e-mail
Dear Heloise: We found a helpful hint for college students as my freshman son moved into the dorm last year. He was given a plastic, three-drawer, tabletop shelving unit full of school supplies (stapler, staple remover, pencils, pens, tape, correction fluid, erasers, etc.). The drawers in the container were large enough to lay a ream of paper inside.
With dorm drawer space limited, the supplies already had a home. When it was time to move at the end of the year, we secured the drawers with string, and all was ready to move. R.B., via e-mail
Sound off: I was reading the hint about taping a ribbon "kite tail" to TV remotes to make them easier to find, and I had an "aha!" moment, one that I think doubles as a sound off.
Most cordless phones have a page button on the plug-in base; push it, and the hand unit will start beeping so you can find it. Why don't TV, DVD, VCR and stereo makers do the same thing? It sure would be easier to push a button on the television to find the remote than to search high and low and in the cushions for it. Bree Turner, Thomasville, Ga.
XSend a money-saving or timesaving hint to Heloise, P.O. Box 795000, San Antonio, Texas 78279-5000, or you can fax it to (210) HELOISE or e-mail it to Heloise@Heloise.com. I can't answer your letter personally but will use the best hints received in my column.
King Features Syndicate