Tips can extend life of cellphone battery

Heloise

Dear Heloise: If you want to extend the life of your cellphone battery, try these hints:

• Be sure to charge the battery fully before first use.

• Turn your phone off if you won’t be using it for several hours. Sounds like a no-brainer, but many people forget.

• Do let the battery fully discharge before recharging. Lithium batteries can be damaged by letting the battery charge get too low. A lithium battery is designed to be charged often, and the battery life can be prolonged with frequent chargings.

• Your battery will last longer if you keep it out of extreme heat, like a hot car or direct sunlight. If your battery gets extremely hot while charging, it might be malfunctioning.

• Use only a charger rated for your battery.

Dear Heloise: My daughter flew to Canada with her boss and co-workers to a job site. Upon arriving in Canada, my daughter was informed that she could not enter the country for 10 years following a DWI.

Her offense was eight years ago! She was so embarrassed. She was put on a plane home. It was a hard lesson learned, but she will never again drive after having a drink.

This is a valuable piece of information, and I hope my readers will remember that a DWI stays on your record a very long time. The police are cracking down on drunken drivers, so please, don’t drink and drive.

Dear Heloise: Eggshells are a great fertilizer for the garden. Break them up into small pieces and mix into the dirt.

Lucille, I like to put all my eggshells in a plastic bag, then crush them up and use in a compost pile, or loosely break them up and scatter on the lawn for the birds.

Dear Heloise: I have stumbled on a good use for the mesh bags that grocery stores use to package produce like potatoes or onions. We all are aware of their value as storage containers, but they also make wonderful scouring pads.

Because the mesh used to make the bags is of various degrees of coarseness, the pads that you make will work well for a wide variety of surfaces. Making the pads is merely the process of cutting pieces of the bags into various sizes.

Dear Heloise: My daughter has a fenced-in backyard, and her dogs love being out there, even in hot weather. She has a kiddie pool of water for the dogs to get in and stay cool. There is just enough water for them, and it’s not too deep for the smaller dogs. This is a good idea for dogs to be comfortable and enjoy being outside in the summer.

Just be sure to drain the water after each play session; mosquitoes can breed in standing water.