Thanks to the reader's digest for sending me an email thingie that I don't remember ever signing up for- but it landed in my inbox with some nifty tips about clothespins. The regular, straight, wooden clips that you can pick up in the dollar store for next to nothing.

Use them to mark your place in a book.
Fasten them to the wall, or a rack, to make your own cheap and useful bulletin board. I use a little piece of duct tape to do it. I have a pin for holding my bills together, my outgoing mail, my coupons; when my daughter was on a special preemie formula that had to be prepared a certain way with extra cereals and baby food, I wrote down the recipe of the week [that's how often it changed, sometimes] and clipped it to the inside of the cupboard where her supplies were stored. This came in as a priceless help during middle of the night feedings, and my husband felt more confident about preparing the bottles. -He hesitated before the clip system because I spent so much more time with her, and when only one person is in charge of the system there's so many fewer ways it can go wrong. And who wants to play that game with their firstborn?

Use clothespins to seal up bags of chips, and to fasten up the innards of cereal boxes or any similar item. Use them to create impromptu bibs for messy meals- faster than tying on an infant bib and the best part is that the child won't outgrow the size of the towel!