The Plight Of The Middle Child

["Let Inga Tell You,"  La Jolla Light, published May 19, 2025] 2025

I'm a middle child so I m always interested in studies about birth order, and particularly, middle child syndrome. And yes, there apparently is one.

Middle children in general are thought to be the peace makers but also the forgotten children, hence needing to develop resilience, independence and social skills so they can be seen and heard.

Obviously, much depends on how many children are in a family, something that is known in scientific circles as "sibship size."  In a family of eight, there's a lot of middle kids.

But in my case, I was the true middle child. My Protestant mother had to agree to raise us as Catholics when she married my Catholic father, but after three kids in three and a half years, she underwent a profound spiritual conversion and became one of the world's foremost proponents of birth control. She was watching her sisters-in-law have a child a year (one had nine before her female parts gave out) and Mom was already feeling that three might be two too many in such a short period of time.

I was a blue-eyed blond in a family of brown-eyed brunettes, the creamy blond filling in the family Oreo. (OK, so we may be mixing some metaphors here.) My mother endured a lot of milk man jokes but if she could be getting it on with the milk man with an infant at home, then more power to her.

I not only didn't look like anybody else in the family (people always assumed I was my sister s visiting friend given our proximity in ages) but my skill sets were vastly different than my siblings as well. They were very quick learners; I was a plodder. I, however, had natural social skills that they struggled with.

My parents met in an Honors Shakespeare class at Brown University and I think had expectations of at least moderately intelligent children.

While my siblings tested into the stratosphere on IQ tests, the school s guidance counselor informed my mother that "two out of three ain't bad."   Mom was advised to (waaay) lower her expectations where I was concerned. Vocational school could be a good fit, or perhaps one of the less demanding state schools.

My parents, being educationally aspirational, refused to believe I was as dumb as I tested. But I think there may have been some unstated concern that babies had been switched at birth. Somewhere out there was a family of blond dumdums who inexplicably ended up with a brunette genius.

There were always at least three trips a week to the Pleasantville Public Library where my mother and sibs stocked up on new reading material. I did too, but I read one book to their five.

Somehow the family speed reading gene seemed to have missed me. I liked reading but I read slowly and with my lips.

As the blond sheep of the family, I was sometimes the target of my siblings touting their superior reading-acquired vocabulary. (And yes, you do acquire an amazing vocabulary if you read a lot.) Our dog, Josephine Bonaparte, was misbehaving one day, and I announced, "Josephine, you are a recalcitrant animal!"  ( Recalcitrant being one of the vocabulary words in English class that week.)

Everyone looked up from their books. "Whoa! Inga said a big word!"   (Then they went right back to reading.)

Reading a recent article on middle child syndrome, I was interested to learn that the three qualifiers include feeling overlooked, struggling to find their place (i.e. finding it harder to figure out what is unique or special about them) and feeling like they aren't getting enough attention (although the first and third seem kind of the same to me.)

I knew what was unique or special about me: I was the family idiot. I think my parents, who loved me and supported me in everything I did, would be horrified to think I saw myself that way but my siblings were truly human encyclopedias.

Of course, I wasn't an idiot. But in my family I was a relative idiot. It's a thing.

Ironically, I was always a much better student than either of my siblings, grade-wise. It s amazing what dogged determination will do for you. In fact, it was my signature pathological persistence (my husband's term) that finally got our streetlight fixed last year after more than 100 hours and a year of effort. Do not try to outlast me. I never give up.

So was that the upside in my personal journey as a middle child? Like the old Avis slogan, "We try harder,"  did I have to put in more effort to achieve the same results as my brilliant sibs?

As a postscript, I confess I was secretly relieved when both my sister and I signed up for 23andme and matched as siblings. I would never have thought my mother really got it on with the milk man. But that switched baby thing could really happen. Probably especially after the Second World War when a billion people were having babies (like me) in way-overcrowded maternity wards.

Interestingly, one of my sons is very much like me: blue-eyed, blond, very creative. The hazel-eyed brunette son bears no resemblance to me in appearance, talents, or personality.

The one who's like me is adopted.

 

Bait, Switch and Extort: Please Protest The New Trash Fees

["Let Inga Tell You,"  La Jolla Light, published May 12, 2025] 2025

In November of 2022, San Diego voters passed Measure B by a squeaker 50.5 percent vote allowing the City of San Diego to charge 222,485 single family home owners for trash pickup. It wasn't as though home owners previously got free service. It was considered to be part of our property tax bill.

The proposed monthly fee cited on Measure B for single family home owners was projected to be $23-$29 per month. Now that the new fees are about to be implemented, the fees are going to be more than double that - even triple or more if you have more than three total Environmental Services bins - and going up yearly probably in perpetuity. La Jollans, whose larger properties tend to generate more yard waste, will be especially financially affected.

Nobody voted for this. Not even the people who voted for it voted for this. The proposed new system isn't just bait and switch, it's bait and switch and extort.

The 233,000 affected property owners have until June 9 to protest the new fee system. But fifty-percent (111,243) of us will have to do so by the deadline. Read below to see how (it's actually very easy.)

Failure to return the protest form is considered a Yes vote for the new trash fees!

Allegedly, all affected homeowners received a six-page flier regarding the new rules on or about April 25. I say this because even though I was alerted to it and was on the lookout for it, we did not receive it. Many other people thew it away thinking it was junk mail. Fortunately, you can resurrect it with this link:

https://www.sandiego.gov/sites/default/files/2025-04/measure-b-prop-218-mailer.pdf

Reading through all six pages will make your head explode. Honestly, whoever designed this mind-numbing incomprehensible plan should be banished to a desert island where they will hopefully be devoured by wildlife. But on the sixth and last page of this document - where they hope you have already lost your will to live during the first five pages and will never ever see it - is a protest form which asks for your name, address or parcel number, and signature. It must be mailed in to the address on the form or hand delivered by June 9 to be counted. Only one form may be submitted for each owned parcel.

Please, please do this. Even if you are OK with paying for trash pickup, this is a terrible plan.

If you don't want to use the actual form, you can also just write on a piece of paper: I (name and name of trust if house is in a trust) oppose adoption of the proposed solid waste management fee. Write your address or Assessor s Parcel, and sign. Mail to: Office of the City Clerk, 202 C St., MS 2T, San Diego, CA 92101.

One important note about the protest form: The County Clerk s office, upon query, stated: "For properties held in trust, the protest should be signed by the Trustee, or other person legally authorized to act on behalf of the trust, and it should include the name of the trust as it is listed on the last equalized secured property tax assessment roll.  Only one protest per parcel will be counted. Protests submitted by email, facsimile, or as a photocopy (i.e., the signature is a photocopy) will not be counted."  

But nowhere is this information included on the actual protest form which simply says I (no mention of including a trust name). Will these weasels not count forms sent in that only include the name of the owner and not the trust info? Could/should this be a disqualifier of the entire proposed plan?

Among the many many things wrong with the new plan is that the fees will show up your property tax bill so that the city doesn't have to pay for billing. Corrections or credits to fees will take a full year to show up on your next year s tax bill. So if you sell your property, will the new owners be the beneficiaries of your credits?

Measure B made no mention of requiring people to choose among three "Bundles", depending on the size of Environmental Services containers you have/need, with each additional bin an additional monthly fee. But you have to pay for three containers regardless.

Table 1 on page four of the flier shows the increase in costs of the three bundles and add-on bins for the next four years. The cost of each of the bundles goes up 5% from 2025-26, a whopping 19% from 2026-27, and another 3-4% from 2027-28. No mention of fees from 2029 into forever.

My current two 95-gallon green bins and one 95-gallon black bin fall into Bundle 3. Adding in my two 35-gallon blue bins (which, by the way, I paid for personally since ES discontinued this size some years ago) would be an additional $13.88 per month, making my 2025 monthly costs $61.47, my 2026 monthly costs $63.91, my 2027 monthly costs $73.30, and my 2028 monthly costs $75.12. I could probably downsize the 95-gallon black bin to a 65-gallon one but the chaos this would likely inflict on my tax bill, never mind hold time with all those new customer service people, probably isn't worth it. I just don't think I have the mental bandwidth.

And it even gets worse than this. Part of the cost being assessed is replacing all of the current black trash and blue recycle bins regardless of condition with new bins equipped with special computer chips to allow the city to keep track of customers.

What? Even my trash is spying on me now? Just what kind of track are they going to be keeping?

And what about the two almost-new 35-gallon blue recycling bins that I had to purchase at Home Depot after the city trash trucks destroyed the two they had originally dispensed to me but no longer provide. Are they now obsolete?

And what happens to tens of thousands of blue and black bins being replaced?

Ironically, the taxpayers paid $4.2 million to an Independent Budget Analyst (IBA) to study this situation and estimate the costs of this program. The guy was millions of dollars off. The San Diego-Union Tribune in a May 4 article quoted the IBA, Jordan More, who created the wildly inaccurate estimates, with "Mea culpa. I am human."

WTF? Is this the new national mantra? I can hear my parents voices from their graves: "Human is a given. Ineptitude is not."   Are 233,000 single family homeowners supposed to be paying for this mistake in perpetuity?

To be slightly fair, there are some new benefits with this plan, including free replacement of our bins after the trash trucks destroy them instead of having to pay for them as is currently the case. I'm not sure why this would matter as nowhere in the proposed service changes is the promise to create trucks that don't destroy the containers in the first place. Do we really need that much velocity?

The new fees will, however, give us weekly recycling pickup instead of alternate week.  We'll also get curbside pickup of "up to two bulky items per year."   Frankly, I could do without both of those for the money being charged.

I was amused to read that the new fees will provide customer service representatives to meet the anticipated "increased demand in inquiries."   Do ya think? If you need six pages and multiple footnotes to describe a new bundles system, you can be sure you re going to get plenty of calls.

Another use of the new fees, you'll be pleased to hear, is for saving to prepare for "future costs and reserves."   Yup, thrilled to be paying for that. I'll probably be dead!

As noted above, even the people who voted for this didn't vote for what is being proposed now that they secured voter approval.

If enough affected property owners file protests in time, the current Proposed Solid Waste Management Fee will be canceled or at least revisited. And it should be 

As a poster on local social media noted:

Voters can't give informed consent if the information they are given is wrong or incomplete. Proposition campaigns must be based on clear, accurate information. If the government lowballs the cost during the election and raises it afterward, it damages public trust. Ethically, a government that misleads voters should not be allowed to profit from that deception. When voters make decisions based on false expectations, the result does not reflect the true will of the people. Measure B's implementation should either be canceled or require a revote this time with full disclosure of the real financial impacts. Voters deserved honest information when making their choice, and they didn't get it.

I couldn't agree more.

 Protest form:

 

 

 

Saved From Chocolate Until October

[“Let Inga Tell You,” La Jolla Light, published April 28, 2025] ©2025

For those of us who serious chocolate addicts, there are two seasons of the year, Easter and Halloween, that are positively perilous.  I basically can’t go into CVS.  All those Cadbury eggs and chocolate bunnies at Easter call out to me. 

Unfortunately, I answer.  They know they have me on speed dial. 

I have been promised that at my funeral, some seriously unflattering (actually downright vicious) chocolate stories will abound.  The kids will relate how I had them hide the Halloween candy from me but then rifled their rooms for it when they were at their dad’s.  Or when they went out Trick or Treating, I had them stop by the house from time to time to dump out their bags so I could poach the mini Mounds Bars. 

It is not surprising that I have long collected articles about the genuine health benefits of chocolate.  Apparently it’s full of antioxidants and all kinds of other heart and brain enhancing benefits that I don’t look at too closely because the words in front of those benefits are always “when eaten in moderation.” 

It doesn’t seem to matter how much I try to restrain myself.  I’ve attributed my inability to lose weight to the Lindor Truffles commercial: “Do you dream in chocolate?” You betcha.  That’s what’s sabotaging my dietary efforts: it’s all that chocolate I consume in my sleep.  My ever-skeptical primary care physician suggested I should consider eating less chocolate in my sleep and while I’m at it, start exercising in my sleep as well.  She just never lets up.

But here’s where I think you have to view nutrition creatively. 

For example, unknown to any but the most dedicated wrapper-reading chocoholics, one can supply ONE HUNDRED PERCENT of one’s daily calcium, riboflavin, protein AND fiber requirements (never mind a whopping 50% of your daily iron) with only twenty-five vending machine-size packages of M&Ms – all with no trans-fats and staying WELL within your daily sodium and cholesterol allotments.   It is unclear how there can actually be any fiber in M&Ms but the label says there is and surely they wouldn’t lie about it.  Must be the cornstarch?   (Source:  Nutrition Through Candy:  Eating Your Way to Better Health with Sugar and Red Dye #2, by Inga.)

One of my most serious chocolate addictions involves Nutella, a chocolate hazelnut heroin popular in Europe and even more popular with me. This stuff was a mainstay of my diet during the time we lived in Sweden. I never even knew it existed until then.

Nutella has actually been available for quite a while in the U.S. in the peanut butter aisle.  Its most common application is as a spread on white bread, the breakfast of non-champions. 

But in Inga-think, Nutella is hazelnuts which are definitely healthy for you, enrobed in a bit of that anti-oxidant cocoa butter.  How can this not be a health food?

Nutella makes a sinfully oozy filling for a crepe.  (The crepe is also supposed to have fruit but I regard this as a distracting contaminant.)  It’s equally great on ice cream.  Or rubbed on Olof and… oops, getting carried away here. 

Sadly, someone of my age and avoirdupois does have to show some restraint. I long ago concluded that putting Nutella on bread only dilutes its rich chocolately gooeyness; it should ideally be mainlined, er, consumed in its purest right-out-of the-jar form.  But I pledged to restrict myself to a tablespoon per day – 100 calories, 6 grams of fat, no worse than peanut butter.

It turns out, however, that if you use a soup spoon (the equivalent of a tablespoon) and you buy the large economy size jar of Nutella, you can get the spoon buried into the Nutella jar about five inches up the handle.  Then with dedicated practice (it’s all in the wrist), one twists the spoon until a giganto glob of Nutella at least three inches in diameter is wrapped around it.  A power drill may be employed if necessary. 

Of course, to get full immersion of the spoon into the Nutella, one’s fingers often inadvertently end up in the contents of the jar, sometimes one’s entire thumb!  And if one is not careful, the index and middle fingers as well!  Which must be licked!  And which is the only explanation as to why a large economy size jar of Nutella has at best three tablespoons.  And is also how I lived in Stockholm with no car, walked five miles a day, and gained twelve pounds. 

Fortunately for me, Easter is now over and those mini Mounds Bars in their mega-sized Halloween-portioned bags won’t be taunting me at CVS for another five months.  But Nutella, alas, will still be on the supermarket shelf.  Shamelessly calling out to me. 

 

 

Considering Running For Mayor

["Let Inga Tell You,"La Jolla Light, published April 21, 2025] 2025

I don't think there is a single person in San Diego, including me, who doesn't think they could run the city better than whomever happens to be running it at the moment. Doesn't matter which party happens to be in office at any given time. And for the record, I voted for the current mayor.

Also for the record, I am a fourth-generation feminist and Democrat married to a life-long Republican, although Olof and I have both voted across party lines on many occasions. It's a dynamic that feels very familiar to me. My father was a conservative Republican and my mother a liberal feminist Democrat. It made for a lot of lively, but respectful, dinner table conversation.

My husband is still fervently hoping the Republican party will return to what he thinks of as its former glory. I, of course, think it never had one. But conversations are pretty lively at our dinner table too but in the current era, for different reasons entirely. Olof and I have never been more politically aligned.

There are several local issues that truly puzzle me and, in my view, totally lack even a modicum of sense. The city has a significant budget shortfall and has to make cuts. But if you've passed legislation that doesn't require parking for new construction within a half mile of a transit route (i.e. a bus or trolley line) then proposing cutting bus routes and schedules seems like it should be among the last items to go.

My husband Olof and I lived in Stockholm without a car and were so enamored of public transit by the time we returned that we attempted to use public transit whenever possible. Olof was even willing to get up an hour early every morning to take the bus instead of the 20-minute drive. It just couldn t be done. He couldn't be late for the eight o clock meetings since he was the one running them. Within six months, he was back to using his car. 

And while we're on that subject, a half mile is a hefty hike, especially if the terrain is hilly and you're lugging groceries and/or toddlers. One of the reasons Stockholm s transit system works so well is that you're rarely more than two blocks from some kind of transit. We just aren't ever going to have that here. But making it yet harder to use public transit seems like a huge step in the wrong direction. 

Moving on, given how many pot holes need to be filled and streetlights repaired, I am still trying to get my head around $4,232,339 for the roundabout on Loring Street and Foothill Boulevard. OK, it does include some storm drains too but this project seems to have gone on for years. And I hope someone can explain to me why it was ever a priority in the first place? (I am willing to concede that there is some pressing issue there that I, and pretty much everyone on Next Door, are unaware of.) You could do a lot of city repairs for that kind of money. Maybe even add some bus routes! 

And then there s the new trash fees Personally, I never buy anything that I don t know the cost of ahead of time. Well, medical care, but you don t have a choice. The projected $23-$25 a month was just that: a projection. Now that it has passed, the actual fee was bait-and-switched to $53 a month (more than double the estimate) and projected to go up to $65 in July of 2027. The outcry has been sufficient that it is most recently proposed to come down around $5 to $47.59 (then rising to $59.42 in 2027) but still waaaay higher than the public was suckered into believing.

Customers willing to use the smallest size (35 gallon) bins may get a reduced rate. A minor detail is that Environmental Services currently only has 35-gallon cans for green waste; they discontinued the 35-gallon black bins (for trash) and blue bins (for recycling) years ago. As one who needs the smallest size blue bin because of space limitations in my back walkway, I have had to buy them at Home Depot (you have to buy a specific brand to accommodate the Environmental Services trucks) for $132.49 (including tax) plus $55 delivery (unless you go pick it up there after it is delivered to the store.) Are they planning to start supplying the 35-gallon sizes in trash and recycle colors again? If so, can I get a refund?

But the most incomprehensible issue of all is how the proposed 23-story building on Turquoise Street was ever a possibility. Proposition D, passed in 1972 established a 30-foot maximum structure height in coastal areas of the City of San Diego known as the Coastal Height Limit Overlay Zone.

Prop D was passed largely in response to the construction of the 18-story condo complex at 939 Coast Boulevard and the realization that La Jolla s waterfront would soon look like Miami Beach. So, how why does this 23-story monstrosity that will only provide a few units of alleged affordable housing ever get considered for a nanosecond? Inquiring minds want to know. Lots and lots of inquiring minds. Would a family needing affordable housing even want to live in such a building? Would any of these units even be big enough? The list of reasons why this project is a ridiculously bad idea is long and has been covered extensively in the Light and on local news stations, but even a 5-story building is too high for this street. How did it even get this far? And how did our leaders even allow it to? Let me repeat: how did our local leaders even allow it to? Why are the locals even having to spend their energy fighting such a fundamentally insane project?

Ok, the short answer is that the state (unbelievably) allows it to. The state Department of Housing and Community Development has said the state density bonus law can supersede local restrictions, including voter-approved initiatives such as the 30-foot coastal height limit. 

California s 1979 and since much-amended density bonus law provides incentives and waivers for developers to build residential units considered affordable for lower-income households.

However, in the Turquoise case, HCD sent a  technical assistance letter in December stating that San Diego could deny the project by proving that some or all of the developer s requested bonuses, waivers and incentives are not necessary to create the 10 affordable housing units. 

So, why doesn't the city go ahead and deny it already?

Signed,

Waiting to hear from you in La Jolla

 

Hacks And Gadgets Part 3: Great And Horrific Gadgets

["Let Inga Tell You," La Jolla Light, published April 14, 2025]  2025

In the first two parts of this series, I explored the strange and amazing world of internet hacks -     suggestions on how you can make life easier for yourself using what are allegedly items you already have in your own home. There are no lack of hacks to boil and peel hardboiled eggs, make insect repellent, unclog drains, clean stove tops, crush garlic, and chop vegetables.

I couldn't help but notice that by the time you used some of those ingredients you already had, you could have bought the commercial product for half the cost.

But I get it: the homemade version will likely not have as many chemicals and it harkens back to the days when homemade recipes for cleaning products were pretty much the norm.

All of this did not prevent me from trying all manner of hacks myself. My results:

As reported last week: Pots will boil over even with a wooden spoon across the top.

Putting a sponge with a scrubber side in your washing machine to collect pet hair and dirt didn't collect much of anything.

Barkeepers Friend did not remove the discoloration from my mother-in-law's Spode china. But it worked great on the bottom of my wok when the toothpaste and green dish soap hack failed. I guess you just have to be flexible.

Then there were the hacks I didn't try: I didn't rub toothpaste on my windshield wipers. I just got new ones. I was trying to figure out how I would explain to my insurance company after the accident why my windshield was obstructed with Crest. 

I was equally nervous about rubbing a potato half on my car windows so there would be no water spots if it rained. (See "toothpaste", above.)

I also forewent using Coca-Cola to remove facial wrinkles. I kept remembering that hack for using Coke to remove grease from your oven hood vent.

Shaving cream failed both as a carpet spot cleaner and mattress stain remover. (Maybe need a different brand?)

There are definitely some hacks I do plan to try, however, when the fly season is upon us. Like putting cinnamon sticks or wine corks atop fruit in a bowl on your counter to keep flies away. Or putting cut-up orange peels in bowl with a teaspoon of sugar plus dish soap and water and setting it on counter. I will definitely report if any of those work.

In Part 1 of this series, I tried using a hack that involved little balls of aluminum foil plus silver coins in a bag of water that is hung up outside. I think this was meant to be an insect deterrent. But whatever it was supposed to do, I couldn't detect that it did anything besides look ridiculous.

I might have failed at many of the hacks, but have become completely hooked on gadgets. Like hacks, they don t always work in your home as well as they do in the video, but many of them do, and they're just totally fun to try. The internet is abuzz with lots of creative garlic mincers, food choppers, wine openers, magic cleaning cloths, sweater de-fuzzers, etc. Not surprisingly, I found them irresistible and seem to have Amazon showing up pretty much daily with a new one.

My home now sports a bathroom sink stopper with a basket, a teeny mushroom-shaped silicone funnel, a digitized tire pressure gauge, an amazing computer devices cleaning kit, a great sweater de-fuzzer, a magnetized clip that keeps the kitchen towel from falling off the stove handle, along with some over-hyped and not very good but fun to try skin creams. So many fun gadgets on Amazon. Truly addictive.

That said, there are some absolutely horrific (in my personal view) gadgets out there.

For example, re-usable machine-washable toilet paper sheets. (Comes in a pack of 25.) Saves paper! Not sure it saves the washing machine! This is definitely another one of those hacks/gadgets that pretty much guarantees you'll never have guests again. (See Part 1 column about using tampons to soak up grease while sauteing ground beef.)

There s also a pot on which you can cook food on your bed if you re too tired to get up. WTF??? How is this not incredibly dangerous?

How about a fast-food dipping sauce holder that attaches to your car air vent. No! You should not dip and drive!

Then there s a UV flashlight that detects blood spatter that someone has tried to wash off. Has someone been watching too much CSI? Still, if I saw one of these in my home, I'd want to re-evaluate my marriage.

You can also buy a step-in gadget that wraps your guests shoes in plastic wrap while they're still wearing them so they don't have to take off their shoes off when they come into your home. Seems...  slippery?

Among my four conclusions are that, first, both hacks and gadgets are really fun to try, even if my success rate with the hacks is less than I might have desired. I really really want at least one of those fly repellent hacks to work come July.

Second: nothing is going to get the hard water deposits off my shower door except new shower doors. Sorry, hacks!

Third: Especially with hacks, do some people have too much time on their hands?

And finally: Is that person me? 

 Some of the cool gadgets I have acquired recently. 

 

Hacks And Gadgets, Part 2: Some Weird Stuff Out There

["Let Inga Tell You," La Jolla Light, published March 31, 2025]  2025 

In Part 1 of this series, I explored some of the mysteries of internet hacks that seem to show up on my Instagram account even though I have never posted and follow exactly 1.25 people. But it has opened up a whole new world for me.

I cannot help but observe in all these hacks that logic is sometimes in short supply. For example, dumping out an entire liter of soda (shown on the video) so you can use the bottle makes no sense to me.

Another cleaning recipe calls for Expired beer? Who has that? Not my house! Should you let a bottle of beer go flat just to use in a hack that could probably be purchased at the hardware store for less than the cost of the beer? Other cleaning hacks required fresh (unbrewed) coffee grounds, or lots of toothpaste, or tons of aluminum foil, or Cascade dishwasher cubes. Hard to imagine cost savings using any of those.

Some of these hack videos go by a warp speed. It's a puzzle, trying to connect a tomato, drain cleaner, and aluminum foil into the same hack. Is this a test? Is it one hack or ten?

A lot of these hacks will start with: "my grandmother taught me this"  or "a plumber taught me this."   Frankly, grandma was an idiot, and you ought to fire the plumber. Some examples:

Learned this from a plumber: Wrap aluminum foil around a faucet then squirt Meyers soap on top and turn on the faucet. What exactly does this do? The soap is on top of the aluminum foil.

Learned this from my dad. He s a genius! Rubbing a sanding block over a $100 bill. Verify its authenticity? I'd be afraid of shredding it and the bank not being willing to let me trade it in for another one.

Always do this before travel: Wrap car and house keeps (including fobs) in aluminum foil and put in freezer. (Can this be good for the electronics in the key fobs?)

Most people don't know this trick: Put a can of (unopened) garbanzo beans in the dishwasher. (Is she then running it?) Absolutely no idea what this is supposed to do for either the garbanzo beans, the dishes, or the dishwasher itself. Does whatever it is still work if the beans are canellini?

Then there's a whole class of hacks that to me just seem, well, flat-out weird. Some examples:

Cut a tomato in half horizontally. Insert gold jewelry between the two halves of the tomato to polish/clean it. Hopefully you can sneak the tomato halves into your kids sandwiches afterwards so as not waste the tomatoes.

Get rid of musty odors on clothes by spraying them with vodka. They used a men's suit jacket as an example. Yup, definitely need to go to work reeking of vodka. Sure hope those European alcohol tariffs don't go into effect because this could be an expensive hack!

Dumping something blue (what?) in the toilet then sticking your bare muddy foot in the toilet and flushing for an "instantly clean foot."   Doubt this really works unless you have one of those old toilets that actually power flushes. And how did you even get into the bathroom without tracking mud all over? And eww.

Rubbing raw egg whites on leather boots to clean and shine them. (How does this not end up with boots smelling like rotten eggs?)

Take an avocado pit from an avocado and cut it into pieces. (Machete required?) Put it in a jar with Coca-Cola, wait 24 hours, then rub the avocado pieces with some of the Coke in the jar on stiff muscles and joints. Try not to attract ants. OK, that last part was mine.

One hack I tried that did not work as well as I hoped was to put a wooden spoon over a pot to keep it from boiling over. It boiled over.

The hack I am always looking for is the one that purports to remove hard water build-up on glass shower doors. Even though Olof and I are religious about squeegee-ing the doors after every shower, hard water has built up that has defied every commercial cleaning product on the market, never mind epic amounts of elbow grease. Even an Amazon product called Shower Door Cleaner didn't touch it.

But ever an optimist, I have mixed up every concoction the Instagram hackers have touted. It worked so well on their shower doors. Maybe they don't live in a place with hard water like we do. Or it's had less time to build up. At this point, the only conclusion we can come to is that we'll just have to replace the shower doors. But they'll likely just end up looking the same again. Fortunately, by then we'll be dead and whoever ends up with our tiny built-by-the-lowest-bidder-after-the-war-with-all-non-standard-parts-cottage will raze it and build a McMansion on the lot with hopefully a soft water system.

Stay tuned next time for Part 3: Amazing and horrifying gadgets.

In spite of the wooden spoon, the pot boiled over.

 

Hacks and Gadgets: A Whole New World: Part 1

["Let Inga Tell You,"  La Jolla Light, published March 24, 2025] 2025

I'm not on any social media except for an account on Instagram so that I can follow 1.25 family members (one who posts all the time, and another who posts rarely). I've never posted myself.

So, I'm puzzled as to why Instagram is constantly sending me videos of recipes, products, and particularly, hacks.

Now, everyone loves a good hack. They used to be called household hints and were generally found in a newspaper column by a mother and daughter duo named Heloise. (They were both named Heloise.) I think they're dead.

It was my experience that the Heloises'  hints only worked about 70% for me. Maybe they had a different brand of oil on their driveway than I did that would respond better to eradication with kitty litter. (Maybe it was my brand of kitty litter?) Maybe their kids were less sloppy eaters. But even though they promised that with their hint that the stain will be gone, it somehow never was.

But the Instagram version has actual videos. The one thing I can conclude with all the Instagram hacks is that there is nothing that cannot be cleaned with a combination of baking soda, white vinegar, blue dish detergent and toothpaste, often all four at once. Coca-Cola is another frequent cleaning product which makes me wary about what it might be doing to the lining of my stomach, if it is that good at melting baked-on grease off one's stove vent.

Having now been sucked into endless Instagram feeds of household hacks, I've been able to make several observations.

Some, of course, do work, even for me. But in the spirit of the Heloise columns, never as well as they work on the Instagram video.

A number of these hacks require serious power tools, never mind sharp objects like knives to cut off the tops (or bottoms) of plastic water bottles. I would be more likely to sever a digit in the process, making my hospital co-pay for surgical re-attachment waaaay more than whatever I was saving with the hack.

Some of these are ridiculously time consuming, measuring and mixing big batches of frankly suspect cleaning products. For example: Squeeze juice from three oranges and do something else with the juice. Take the peels and grind them up in blender with water and two tablespoons salt. Strain. Pour the strained liquid in a dispenser bottle with one tablespoon baking soda. Use it to clean the toilet bowl. Or buy Ty-D-Bol?

A good number of them use so many products you already have in your home that you could buy this solution's twin on Amazon for a lot less.

The preponderance feminine hygiene product hacks deserves a section all its own.

If I could add two provisos to this category of hacks, they would be "discretion"  and "aesthetics."   Maybe also "judgment."  Also, "WTF"??? It's one thing to infuse a panty liner with some essential oil and tack it mostly out of sight on the back of your toilet base. Ditto for using a panty liner as an emergency bandaid on your heel (minus the essential oil).

Taping panty liners to the bottom of your kitchen mop as a substitute for Swiffer pads, as several videos suggested, could work in a pinch.

I'm fairly dubious, however, about panty liners soaked with Pine Sol and stuck inside lamp shades (presumably meant to be emitting Eau de Cheap Mountain Cabin?)

I'm marginally OK with a scented panty liner stuck inside the lid of your kitchen trash bin, as one hack suggests, but worried about putting them as room fresheners on the top of blades of ceiling fans. I'd be afraid they'd fly off in inopportune (would there be opportune?) moments. Who'd want to get hit in the face with a Pine Sol-soaked maxi pad?

Some of these hygiene product hacks truly crossed the line. Like taking an extra-long panty liner and sticking it to the driver's seat back of your car. Is it supposed to absorb sweat? Regardless, it just looks wrong. So wrong. A puzzled observer of this hack could only speculate how this product got from Point A (where you'd expect it) to Point B? Should they leave a note on your windshield? This is definitely not a hack for anyone who does car pools or is in real estate. Or wants to continue in either.

But the absolutely worst one was the video of three tampons, their little strings tied neatly together, swimming in a fry pan of ground beef to soak up grease. I can't un-see this. This might be one hack you don't want to use if you want anyone, including and especially your husband, to ever eat at your house again.

Next week, in Part 2, I'll elicit readers'  help in trying to figure out what, exactly, a lot of Instagram hacks actually do. Someone posts a video with no sound or explanation which ends with the poster doing a thumbs up. Like it's supposed to be obvious. Seriously, it's keeping me up at night.

For example, there s a frequent hack that shows someone putting Scotch tape over the keypad of one's microwave, then peeling it off. No idea what this does.

Or: melting a bunch of (expensive) dishwasher pods in a fry pan. (Why?????)

Or: Taping a large cabbage leaf to the knee with adhesive tape. Medicinal? Or just because you can?

Or: Taking a plastic supermarket veggie bag, adding small balls of wadded-up aluminum foil along with coins (quarters, it looks like), filling the bag with water, tying it closed, and hanging it outside on the porch. What does this do? Clean the coins? Ward off evil spirits?

I'm already thanking you in advance!