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Reading Is Educational: thanks, Naomi!
Oct. 26th, 2025 08:46 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
elisem In 2015, Naomi Kritzer wrote a story called "So Much Cooking." I really love it, even though it's a hard read these days. It's about a pandemic, and about making do, and about taking care of each other. One of the recurring plot points is that the narrator, a food blogger, doesn't have some significant ingredients for any recipe they try, so they improvise and this teaches the readers of their food blog useful tricks to get by when supplies are uncertain, partial, patchy. It was the account of making cookies without eggs or oil that made me think of possibilities. And the Sven-Saw cleaning actually went better than I expected.
It happened because there does not seem to be either mineral oil or mineral spirits or WD-40 or any other semi-plausible things around the house. This does not usually matter for me on a daily basis, but the Sven-Saw needed to be cleaned, and it was going to be a bigger than usual job for ADHD reasons. As is true of so many things around here.
It would be one thing if it were just the abundance of resin that the smallish tree stump I needed to saw was dispensing with every stroke. That might not have been too bad, but it got more difficult because as I was assessing what to do about this, I got distracted and had to attend to something, and then realized that meds were overdue, which meant fixing something quick to eat so the meds didn't bounce, and the Sven-Saw sat in the kitchen, patiently waiting.
I don't know if it was patiently waiting or what. It might be patient.
I try not to anthropromorphize everything, because some things don't like it.
Anyhow, it may or may not be patient. What it definitely was was resin-laden. And the distraction took long enough that the resin was doing its best to dry on the saw blade, and this is not the way a person is supposed to take care of their tools. Which set me looking for the right thing to use, and not finding either right things or wrong-but-maybe-worth-a-try things... until I realized that this was possibly solvable by the peanut butter trick.
The peanut butter trick is a thing someone taught me to remove glued-on or stuck-on labels from glass containers. When soap and water doesn't work because the adhesive in question doesn't care about soap or water, you take a very small spoonful of peanut butter, and you generously coat the label you're trying to remove with it. Go out beyond the edges some, because having it soak in at the edges is a win. Put it down and ignore it for at least fifteen minutes. Then come back and look at whether the peanut butter has at all soaked into the label. It probably has. And the now-altered label may well have changed its mind about soap and water. Try some soapy water and a scrubby or a rag or whatever you've got. Chances are, the label and its adhesive will now come right off.
I did have peanut butter, and I knew the peanut butter trick would probably work, but there wasn't all that much peanut butter, and what there was, I had plans for. So I tried an alternative.
Friends, I am here to report that it is quite possible to clean semi-dried tree resin off a Sven-Saw with mayonnaise in place of peanut butter. I did do some additional work on some recalcitrant bits with some dry baking soda, but honestly, some of those marks might have already been on there before I started. I'm pretty sure the Sven-Saw blade is shinier than it was.
But we probably should either lay in some of the usual remedies, or figure out where they have got to if we already have some, as is sometimes the case in this here palace of ADHD.
Anyhow, reading is educational, or a least good for jogging the memory, the saw is clean enough to put away until tomorrow, when I'll take up work on that stump again, and I am a relieved saw caretaker, because whew.
Have you used any interesting substitutes in household problem-solving lately?
It happened because there does not seem to be either mineral oil or mineral spirits or WD-40 or any other semi-plausible things around the house. This does not usually matter for me on a daily basis, but the Sven-Saw needed to be cleaned, and it was going to be a bigger than usual job for ADHD reasons. As is true of so many things around here.
It would be one thing if it were just the abundance of resin that the smallish tree stump I needed to saw was dispensing with every stroke. That might not have been too bad, but it got more difficult because as I was assessing what to do about this, I got distracted and had to attend to something, and then realized that meds were overdue, which meant fixing something quick to eat so the meds didn't bounce, and the Sven-Saw sat in the kitchen, patiently waiting.
I don't know if it was patiently waiting or what. It might be patient.
I try not to anthropromorphize everything, because some things don't like it.
Anyhow, it may or may not be patient. What it definitely was was resin-laden. And the distraction took long enough that the resin was doing its best to dry on the saw blade, and this is not the way a person is supposed to take care of their tools. Which set me looking for the right thing to use, and not finding either right things or wrong-but-maybe-worth-a-try things... until I realized that this was possibly solvable by the peanut butter trick.
The peanut butter trick is a thing someone taught me to remove glued-on or stuck-on labels from glass containers. When soap and water doesn't work because the adhesive in question doesn't care about soap or water, you take a very small spoonful of peanut butter, and you generously coat the label you're trying to remove with it. Go out beyond the edges some, because having it soak in at the edges is a win. Put it down and ignore it for at least fifteen minutes. Then come back and look at whether the peanut butter has at all soaked into the label. It probably has. And the now-altered label may well have changed its mind about soap and water. Try some soapy water and a scrubby or a rag or whatever you've got. Chances are, the label and its adhesive will now come right off.
I did have peanut butter, and I knew the peanut butter trick would probably work, but there wasn't all that much peanut butter, and what there was, I had plans for. So I tried an alternative.
Friends, I am here to report that it is quite possible to clean semi-dried tree resin off a Sven-Saw with mayonnaise in place of peanut butter. I did do some additional work on some recalcitrant bits with some dry baking soda, but honestly, some of those marks might have already been on there before I started. I'm pretty sure the Sven-Saw blade is shinier than it was.
But we probably should either lay in some of the usual remedies, or figure out where they have got to if we already have some, as is sometimes the case in this here palace of ADHD.
Anyhow, reading is educational, or a least good for jogging the memory, the saw is clean enough to put away until tomorrow, when I'll take up work on that stump again, and I am a relieved saw caretaker, because whew.
Have you used any interesting substitutes in household problem-solving lately?
