Every Friday is 11 Things day at Living Behind the Curve.

People who write infomercials are convinced that women are morons. They have to be. How else could they build marketing campaigns built on a foundation concept that, for example, millions of people are wasting untold hours bewildered by a complicated, malfunctioning pair of scissors? Most of this junk is either for the kitchen or for cleaning, and therefore marketed directly to women, and I frankly find it infuriating that an entire industry is built on the asinine assumption that women are too incompetent to do “women’s work“.

Rampaging sexism aside, there are ways to actually make your cooking and cleaning simpler. I’ve collected my favorite tips together for today’s whiter, brighter and cleanly-scented 11 Simple Kitchen Solutions That Really Work.

1. Dani’s dad gave us a pair of kitchen shears for the holidays last year, and damn if they aren’t the most useful tools in my kitchen. I use them to chop veggies for soup, open frozen slow cooker meals, snip herbs and efficiently de-bone whole chickens. I’ve also twice butchered entire 10 pound chuck primals into 1 inch cube-oids with nothing but kitchen shears. If you’ve never owned a pair, go get some. It’ll take a little while, but soon you’ll be constantly finding new uses for them that you’d never considered.

2. Cider or distilled vinegar can be had by the gallon jug at any supermarket for a dollar or two, and until a few years ago, I couldn’t figure out what anyone would do with that much vinegar. I was raised to believe that common vinegar was a seasoning for dark green vegetables, bought sixteen ounces at a time, and sprinkled conservatively on your dinner from small salad oil cruets. I was also taught that you can use vinegar to clean your coffeepot. Since I met Dani, I’ve learned that vinegar not only tastes good, it also cleans floors, polishes glass, unclogs your drains, and kills bugs dead without any nasty chemicals to poison you or your pets. Speaking of pets, it’ll neutralize the pungent odor from what are euphemistically referred to as “pet stains” just as well as those mysterious enzyme sprays. Vinegar is good stuff. Use it.

3. Is your coffee just not giving you the perk in the morning it once did? Are you suffering from tepid, weak, bitter or just plain boring brew? Then get out and get yourself a french coffee press. These exotic little bits of javacrucianism are simply the best devices out there to make coffee with. Over-brewing is the #1 culprit for bitter, sour coffee. A french press doesn’t brew coffee as much as it steeps it, making it much more difficult to extract the nasty flavors from your beans. French pressing your coffee also adds a lot more of the beans essential oils into your coffee, giving it a much more unctuous, almost silky texture, and a wildly rich and complex flavor. If you’re in the market for one, though, be careful; since they’re all fancy and French, a lot of retailers will charge enormous prices for them. Don’t be fooled. Last time I checked, IKEA sells an excellent French press for about 12 bucks. All you need to do is throw some coffee in the bottom, and pour in some water that you get from your nifty…

4. Electric kettle! Yeah, OK, I could just put a regular kettle on the stove and boil it and bam, hot water. It’s not exactly the lowest-tech solution on the block, but the electric kettle is an improvement on the original. They’re lighter, they’ve got insulated handles on the side, and they boil faster. They’re super handy if you need hot stock for a recipe, to deglaze a pan or make risotto with. And have you ever tried to reach inside and clean a tea kettle? I’ve got large hands, and have yet to meet one that has a hole on top big enough to admit mine. And it was built to make…

5. The greatest kitchen crud-busting cleaning fluid known to man: Hot Water. If you soak your baked-on crud with power dissolver and hot water, the crud will lift away. If you soak your dried-on muck with dish soap and hot water, your muck will be a mere memory. If you soak your burnt-on crust in hot water, it’ll disappear. Detecting a pattern here? It’s very unusual that a dish soaked in soapy water will be cleaner than if it was just soaked for the same amount of time in plain hot water. Hot water is also fundamental to my favorite cleaning trick. This is especially good to do if you’re about to replace your sponge. Get the sponge nice and wet, and throw it in your cruddy microwave, right on the turntable. Set the microwave on high for a couple of minutes, carefully remove the now very hot sponge, and just wipe the crud out of your ‘wave with a towel. It works, and you don’t need to worry about cleaning chemicals accidentally staying in there and possibly mixing with your popcorn.

6. A potato masher. The old-fashioned wiggly wire metal kind, thank you very much, as they’re about a million times easier to clean than the usually plastic cross-hatch variety. It’s perfect for mashing potatoes, obviously, but it’s also great for mixing meatloaf, stirring thick sauces, or making lots of different sorts of dough. The next time you reach for your heavy spatula or sturdy wooden spoon, take another look at your masher.

7. Scrubbies. You know the scrubby green back on your kitchen sponge? You can get little packs of just that stuff for, yanno, scrubbing. Do yourself a favor, though, and buy the name brand. I’ve found the generic versions useless. Grab one, and keep it separate from the others, and use it to scrub your potatoes and other veggies. It’s so much easier than dealing with a traditional veggie brush, trust me. They’re also the best solution I’ve found for scrubbing soap scum out of the corners of your bathtub ledge.

8. You know Dani and I love our slow cooker with an unnatural passion. It cooks. It’s fairly easy to clean. It keeps food hot if you’re doing a buffet. It’s great for melting wax if you want to dip your own candles. You can simmer potpourri in there and make your house smell nice. If you put a sheet of aluminum foil in the bottom, add plenty of water, a couple of hefty pinches of salt and about three times that amount of baking soda, then dump grandma’s silver in and set it to cook on high for half an hour or so, you’ll have nice clean silver, too, no polishing needed.

9. Spring-loaded tongs. I shouldn’t have to explain this one. Go watch the Food Network, and see that every single chef AND Rachel Ray uses these flat aluminum v-shaped tongs for everything. They’re simple and cheap, and yet they’re almost never found in the typical American kitchen. Just go get a couple and make me happy.

10. Not just for your dad to do that stupid walrus impression every single time you go out for Chinese food, chop sticks are sorely lacking on this continent. They’re my favorite tool for cooking delicate foods, like eggs and fish. If you need to whisk something but find a whisk is incorporating too much air (scrambled eggs come to mind), use chop sticks. They also work great in a pinch as skewers and corn holders, too. What, you say you can’t use them? Learn. You never know when you’ll be invited to have dinner with the Emperor.

11. Last on my list, silicone pot holders. Remember the last time you grabbed your fluffy pot holders and dumped your spaghetti, but the water splashed back onto the holder and it absorbed the boiling hot water and you burned the Janet Reno out of your fingers? Yeah. Silicone pot holders won’t do that. They also make excellent trivets and keep cutting boards from sliding around, and they’re the second best tool for opening stubborn bottles and jars I’ve ever met.

(The best tool for opening jars and bottles is a probably 75 year old iron mechanical doodad my mom picked up somewhere, and I’ve demanded she state clearly in her will that I get it when she shuffles off this mortal coil. Incidentally, after threatening her with a lease in a substandard nursing home in her old age if I don’t get her jar opener few weeks back, she says she found a replica of it at a small specialty store in New Jersey. I’ve been looking for one for years and never found one like hers. I’m seeing her this weekend, so watch this space, as I’ll probably rattle on and on about The Best Jar Opener Ever next week. It really is that good.)

Did I forget something you can’t live without? Leave a comment and let me know!