INPUT ARTICLE: Article: An air purifier is essentially a fan that pulls air in before filtering it back out to remove the odors in a room. Buy an air purifier from a building or cleaning supply store and plug it in the wall in the painted room. Set it on high and leave it running for 2-3 days to filter out the smell of paint.  This is a good option if you really don’t have a lot of ventilation in your living space. If you don’t have central air conditioning or access to a lot of windows, get an air purifier. You need to replace the filters for air purifiers after a few months of running. Air fresheners come in the form of sticks, sprays, or plug-ins. They release synthetic odors that replicate the smell of popular odors like lavender or citrus. Get a few air fresheners with odors that you like and set them out in the painted room to mask the smell of paint. This will keep the smell of paint at bay while the room clears out and ventilates.  Air fresheners are an excellent choice if you have a very specific scent that you want to replace the paint with. This won’t technically remove the smell of paint. It will help mask the odors though. While it’s typically more expensive than standard acrylic, latex, and oil-based paints, low-VOC paints are an excellent option if you want to avoid paint odors altogether. Before painting your room, ask your paint supplier about low-VOC options. Apply low-VOC paints the same way that you would normally paint a room.  Low-VOC paints aren’t made with high quantities of the chemicals that make paint smell like paint. They’re also typically healthier for your lungs too. VOC is short for volatile organic compound. They’re a set of chemicals that tend to have strong odors and are commonly found in aerosol products.

SUMMARY: Buy an air purifier and plug it in to clear your room of paint odors. Set out air fresheners to replace the scent of paint. Cover walls with a low-VOC paint to avoid paint odors altogether.


INPUT ARTICLE: Article: Take the crust off the bread when you slice it into cubes. Before putting in the oven, brush it with melted butter and add seasonings like garlic and parmesan if you would like. Otherwise, bake the cubes like you normally would and throw them into your next recipe for texture and flavoring. Croutons go well in dishes like French onion soup or chowder. No one will blame you if you eat the croutons straight out of the bag, though.

SUMMARY: Turn dried bread into croutons for soups and salads.


INPUT ARTICLE: Article: Usually you can't get a job at Cracker Barrel, but at some of your local cafes and restaurants, you can send a letter or talk to the manager about doing small things for a small price. This means if you go to a cafe, you can sweep and clean tables or wash a few dishes. You can tend to the plants, water them, and prune them. You can maybe do this at a local plant shop, where you know the owners of the business. Get your parents to talk to the owners. You can also just work for your parents. It will not be awkward, and you might have fun!

SUMMARY: Work somewhere. Work at a plant nursery. Work in your family business.


INPUT ARTICLE: Article: If you're new to following recipes, get out all of the ingredients you'll need and prepare them. If a recipe calls for dicing, mincing, or slicing ingredients, for instance, do all of the prep work first so you can start making the food. If you already feel comfortable doing prep work while you cook food, read through the recipe to see when to do specific prep. For example, if you're caramelizing onions, they'll probably take a long time. Get them cooking and then prep the rest of the ingredients while they're caramelizing. Instead of roasting large chunks of vegetables or boiling entire potatoes, chop them into smaller pieces than you usually do. Vegetables that are 1⁄2 to 1 inch (1.3 to 2.5 cm) in size will cook much faster than 2 to 3 in (51 to 76 mm) pieces.  If you're really short on time, try dicing or grating the food. For example, instead of cooking chunks of home fries, grate the potatoes to make hashbrowns. You can even cut meat and seafood into smaller pieces. Slice a large roast or fillet into smaller and thinner pieces to cut down on cooking time. A lot of cooking and baking recipes direct you to use softened butter instead of cold butter from the fridge or freezer. Although you could warm the butter in the microwave, you might accidentally melt it. Try grating the butter against the coarse side of a box grater before using it in the recipe.  This works best if the butter is very cold or frozen. Try this trick the next time you're baking biscuits or scones. It's much easier than rubbing or cutting chunks of butter into the dry mixture! The time you spend washing, chopping, and preparing ingredients adds up if you're cooking every day. To save on some of this prep time, consider what you'll be cooking for the week and prep the ingredients at the same time. Then, you can just pull what you need out of the refrigerator when you're ready to cook. For example, if you need diced onion for 2 meals, chop the onion and store them in separate containers in the refrigerator. If you're making rice for dinner and you also plan to serve it in a few days, make a double batch and refrigerate half of it. If you're making a few different things to serve, think about which dishes take the longest to cook and which can be prepared right before serving. If it helps you stay organized, write down a timeline of when to prep and cook each dish. Your list might look like this:  Marinate chicken for 3 hours Start the grill 30 minutes before dinner time Remove the chicken and thread it onto skewers Put the chicken skewers on the grill  Bring a pot of water to boil and cook rice noodles Remove the chicken from the grill Make a tossed salad to serve with the chicken and rice noodles Your food will cook evenly if the oven is already at the recommended temperature when you put the food in. If you put food into a cold oven while it's heating up, it will take longer to cook and the bottom or outside of the food could overcook before the center is done. For example, if you toss a frozen pizza into a cold oven that's heating up, the bottom may burn while the center only becomes warm. If you put it into a hot oven, the whole pizza will cook within the recommended time.

SUMMARY:
Cut or chop your ingredients before you start cooking. Cut food into smaller pieces. Grate your butter so you don’t have to wait for it to soften. Prep food for several meals at once. Plan the cooking order for a meal. Preheat your oven while you prep the food.