Minute Rice is my new best friend!

Yep. Good old-fashioned Minute Rice.

Not the latest mascara or face cream, not some fancy car. Not even the woman at Macy's who swore I couldn't be the mother of a 27-year-old!

You see, College Boy's room is a disaster. Has been all summer. He is working long, hot days at a very physical job. Out of the house by 6:30, seldom home before 10:00 at night. He makes good money, in overtime, but he doesn't make his bed. Or pick up dirty clothes. Or take out the dirty dishes and empty Gatorade bottles from the room. He told me to just shut the door, and not worry about it...but he really has no time to do his laundry either.

So I did all of the above, including several loads of laundry. Stripped the bed, hung out the sheets. And instead of hearing "Oh man, Mom, you're the BEST" I heard...

"What the @#%*& happened to my iPod?" "Why is my room so CLEAN?"
Turns out, his iPod Touch ($300 plus his music, movies...) was in the pocket of some shorts. And went into the wash. Then, was either hung on the line or dried in the dryer.

You could see the water inside it. The pictures were all wavy. If I had just shut the door and not worried about it like he asked... Yeah, right. When pigs fly.

His girlfriend suggested we put it in a ziploc bag full of rice, and maybe the rice would absorb the water. It was the best, the only idea we had. Short of buying a new iPod. So that's what we did.

And it WORKED! By the next morning, the iPod is as good as new. Good save!

Wish we would have tried it with the cell phone that took a dunk in a glass of beer. "Since when do college boys pour beer into glasses?" I asked, thinking that was pretty upscale. "Beer pong," was the answer. So much for upscale.

This wasn't the first phone to take an unscheduled plunge. There was one in a swimming pool in Florida and one in the lake. Both were retrieved, both were ruined. Or maybe not.

But I'm satisfied that this time, a box of rice saved me a bunch of money.

Hope you never have to try it, but you never know. Rice might work for you, too.