Natural cleaners are less expensive and much safer to use, especially with children in the house.

- Flour is a wonderful buff and polish for stainless steel sinks. Sprinkle a little flour into a dry, clean sink. Buff well with a soft cloth or paper towel. Then, just push the flour down the drain. Then put a little cooking oil on a towel and rub the sink with the oil.

- Dry mustard removes odors. Sometimes plastic food containers will retain odor from whatever type food was in them. So, to nix the odor, fill the plastic container with warm water and add a few shakes of powdered dry mustard. Soak overnight, rinse, dry and the odor is gone. Dry mustard is also good for removing the odor from a cutting board. Wet the cutting board and just rub dry mustard on the cutting board and let it sit for a couple of hours.

- Potatoes are great for removing mud from pants. Rub a cut potato over the mud on the pants prior to laundering. The starch helps to remove and break down the mud. Also, to polish white shoes, like baby shoes, just rub the shoe with the cut side of the potato. The starch in the potato helps the polish go on smoothly.

- Apple peels are good to use on stained and discolored aluminum pans. Fill the pan with water and then use your apple peelings to clean it by tossing the peels in the water and bring to a boil. Simmer for about 30 minutes. The acid in the apple peels will remove the dark discoloration on the inside of the aluminum cookware. Another solution is to add a tablespoon of cream of tartar to the water -- it will also bleach the stain out of the aluminum.