Be sure to check garage doors for safety

heloise

Dear Readers: Automatic garage-door openers are nice, but they should be checked to be sure they are working safely. Here are some hints to use to keep your family safe:

• First and foremost, do not let children play with the remote control. The wall-mounted control should be placed in the garage high enough that young children cannot reach it. And the remote-control “boppers, clickers, etc.” should be kept locked in a car and out of the reach of children.

•Never try to “beat” the door on its way down. It’s imperative that children do not try to do this! It could end tragically!

•When going on vacation, unplug the garage-door unit so that it cannot be opened. Burglars sometimes get several garage-door openers and drive down a street using them to see if they can get a door to open. Some garage-door openers have a safety feature that disables the remote while you are away from home. Heloise

Dear Heloise: I use night lights in hotel rooms but have not left any behind. I carry the night lights and sticky notes in a plastic bag. When I plug the night light in, I put a sticky note that says “light” on the hotel-room door. I can’t leave the room without seeing the reminder note. This not only saves electricity but prevents the noise that some fans connected to bathroom lights cause. Nancy Weaver, Spring, Texas

Dear Heloise: I read in your column about cleaning can openers after using. I have always washed the tops of all cans with soap and water and dried them before opening with a can opener. There are lots of germs on top of canned goods that can be transferred into the food once the lid has been removed. E.S., Okeechobee, Fla.

Good advice, but food gets on the blade itself and might contaminate other food, so clean it also. Heloise

Dear Heloise: I have an alternate use for an inflatable pillow that fits around your neck for traveling. I use it as a bathtub pillow. Sharon, San Antonio

Dear Heloise: Ever since I was a small child, my mom would always cut the box of table salt in half to get the last bit of salt out of it. Now, I do the same thing with a tube of lotion. I carefully cut the bottom of the tube off and dip lotion from that end to get it all out. Pat Zoccali, Warren, Ohio

Dear Heloise: I just read your article on cleaning grout. To make the job much, much easier, use a battery-powered toothbrush (an old brush, I hope! Heloise). It manages to get into all the little crevices, and gets the grout cleaner without lots of manual scrubbing. Jane, via e-mail

SBlt Send a money-saving or timesaving hint to Heloise, P.O. Box 795000, San Antonio, TX 78279-5000, or you can fax it to (210) HELOISE or e-mail it to Heloise@Heloise.com.

King Features Syndicate