Reena’s Tips of the Week:

S.O.S pads are dirt cheap, but that doesn’t make having to replace them so often due to rust any less annoying. There’s actually an equally inexpensive solution to this common household problem.

Gotta cut down on the caffeine but the tea addiction kinda gettin’ in the way? Well, there isn’t a solution that will decaffeinate your favourite drink, but we’ve got something that might help ease the nerves.

Stop scrubbing those pots! The green/blue hue that develops at the bottom of your stainless steel pots can be easily avoided.

Click on for the details!

A Common Bond

Prevent S.O.S pads from rusting by lining a small dish with aluminum foil and placing your pads in the lined dish after use. This works incredibly well.

The geeky science behind this:

Rust on steel wool pads is created when the iron in the metal reacts with the oxygen in the air, causing it to “oxidize” (or bind to the oxygen, forming iron oxide hydroxide – i.e. rust). Note that you cannot rid existing rust, but rather prevent it from forming on the pads. Why? Because steel + aluminum creates a positive charge in the aluminum, thus transferring the oxidization process from the steel to the aluminum. Aluminum oxidizes in the same way but its “rust” isn’t corrosive and actually acts a protective layer on the aluminum, preventing further corrosion. Ain’t Science grand?

What’s a Tea Cookie Without the Tea!

When reader Jan’s friends went to Australia, they visited a tea plantation and brought back this useful tip:

According to the plantation owner, you can easily remove caffeine from tea by letting loose leaves steep for 1 minute in hot water and then discarding the liquid. This first brew contains most of the tea’s caffeine. Add water to the teapot a second time and let steep for 2-3 minutes. This subsequent infusion is the one that you can enjoy because it contains only small amounts of caffeine (over 80% of the caffeine is removed during the first wash of the leaves!).

Keeping Stainless Steel Stainless

To avoid the problem of stainless steel pots forming that green/blue hue at the bottom of the pot, try not to add salt to the water until the water has come to a full boil.

The reason why you want to wait for the water to come to a boil is because by doing so, the salt dissolves immediately and doesn’t have time to reach the bottom where it would cause a chemical reaction, attaching oxygen molecules from the water to the iron molecules in the stainless steel, creating magnetite (which is bluish-green).

Funny thing…this layer actually kinda helps prevent rusting! Albeit not very well.

All solutions are to be used at the risk of the user.

Reena Nerbas is the author of “Household Solutions 1 with Substitutions & Household Solutions 2 with Kitchen Secrets.”

To learn more about Reena, click here.