Salt is the solution for common (and uncommon) household challenges. Besides the consumer tips collected by the Salt Institute , salt is a popular material to solve a vast range of maladies affecting your body, your dwelling and lots of things in your home. Several bloggers have useful collections of tips, including 15 tips by Darlene McFarlane and 60 uses for table salt by The Kitchen Witch . As has author Patty Moosbrugger in her book Solve It with Salt: 110 Suprising and Ingeneous Household Uses for Table Salt . One of the tips that prompts interest is that a bit of salt will keep your goldfish healthy and happy .
Salt tablets (salt pills). Salt tablets used to be widely available; now only a few manufacturers produce them. Pure 1 gram salt tablets for the preparation of saline or for use as a supplement to offset salt loss during heavy exercise are made by the Consolidated Midland Corporation (CMC), 20 Main Street, Brewster NY 10509, Phone: (845) 279-6108. These tablets normally have to be ordered through a local pharmacy. The CMC salt pills have a catalogue # of 0223-1760-01.
Health and beauty tips. One of the most popular treatments at spas is the salt glow. Find out more about the treatment at About.com . But you don't need to visit a spa to incorporate salt into your health/beauty regime; while you're at About.com, read how you can make many personal grooming aids such as bath salts; see their Aches and Itches Bath Salt recipe.
Fun with salt dough. Although children love to indulge their creativity with commercially-prepared "play dough," you can create your own salt dough for the same purpose. No toxic chemicals. Easy to clean up. Great to encourage creative expression. And, best of all, bargain-priced entertainment! And education, too.
Enjoy Morton Salt's "Create Salt Sculptures " or download their Dough it Yourself® handbook. Or choose among these online sources for a salt dough recipe you like:
For Christmas decorating
Christmas time together is a great place to start. You might then want to explore ideas on using salt dough to create ornaments for your Christmas tree. Try Digs Magazine and Kritters .
For everyday fun
Many sites contain salt dough recipes and some ideas for engaging children's creativity with this low-cost activity. Most recommend flour/salt combinations for the dough, but not all. These are the best, listed alphabetically. Experiment until you get the recipe you like best.
AllFreeCrafts.com suggests "folk art projects"
Ancient Nile . Here's your history lesson. The art of salt dough making is an ancient one, dating as far back as Egyptian times. Salt and wheat (flour) were two of the most common foodstuffs available to the Egyptians. Bread was the staple diet of most Egyptians and natron, a natural salt found in Egypt, was commonly used as a food preservative. (It was even used in the mummification process!)
Creative Whimsy suggests kids stamp the salt dough, then paint it when it dries
Gigglemoose explains how to store your salt dough -- and paint and preserve it.
iVillage uses salt and cornstarch (most of the rest use salt and flour)
Kaboose has a five-star rating and "easy" rating for its recipe
Explore how you can teach geography with salt dough
More fun with salt
Explorium teaches how to construct a mini lava-lite using salt
Educational activities with salt
The Science Center has classroom activities, one of which focuses on salt
One of the most popular classroom activities can also be done at home: growing salt crystals. Learn how at the San Diego (CA) Natural History Museum or The Science Corner at Kerala.com (Kerala, India). Yes Mag teaches how to grow a salt "crystal garden."
The US government stores low-level radioactive wastes in salt caverns for their geologic advantages (The Waste Isolation Pilot Program (WIPP) in Roswell, NM) and has discovered -- and cultivated -- ancient bacteria living in water trapped inside eons-old salt crystals .