Cuca de lllum/flickr

When I was little, the only color nail polish that a “nice” girl wore was clear. And we knew how to use that clear goo in many ways. Here are my top 10 favorite uses for clear nail polish:

1. Stop nylons from running. Remember we wore hose ALL the time. Even in the snowy winters of New England during the mini-skirt fashion craze. You just COULDN’T bear to have a run in your stocking. A little dab of clear polish would stop the run. Of course, it would also stick to your leg, so you have to kind of pull the nylon away from your skin until it dried.
2. Polish the inside of the yarn you have wrapped around your “steady boyfriend’s” class ring.The fuzzier the yarn the better. But if you put a coat of clear nail polish on the inside, it kept the yarn from unraveling. This entire procedure – wrapping yarn around your boyfriend’s ring– was repeated every night while you talked to your girlfriends on the phone.
3. Coat the end of a piece of thread so that it will go through the eye of a needle easier. We sewed a lot more than people sew today. I sewed on my girl scout patches, my cheerleader letter on my sweater, and the hems on my skirts every time the fashionable length changed.
4. Keep the ends of shoe laces from unraveling if that little plastic thing came off. Plain white tennis shoes with white laces. That was what we wore for gym class and they HAD to be clean. Washing the shoes in the washing machine not only ruined many washers but also caused the lace ends to disappear into the great washing machine void (along with one sock that always gets lost.)
5. Keep the metal shaving cream cans from rusting. The bottoms of the cans rust when left in the shower. Coating the bottom edge with clear polish keeps the rust from forming.
6. Use instead of glue on paper. A dab on the edge of a note keeps the paper sealed but can easily be torn away.
7. Coating a picture to give it a glossy look. This works well on color pictures from magazines, but not with pictures from ink jet printers.
8. Use to coat pictures inside bottle cap art.
9. Coat the inside of a cheap ring or earrings to keep the metal from reacting badly or irritating your skin.
10. Put an additional coat of clear polish on your new manicure and/or pedicure when you get home from the nail salon. This will add another layer of protection and keep the polish from chipping. Make sure you give yourself plenty of time for this to dry before you go to bed or you will end up with lines in your lovely polish.

Are there uses that I am forgetting?