Ice Packs

One cool tip I learned (please pardon the pun) is how to make ice packs. One of the home health nurses shared this with us.

Take one bottle of regular rubbing alcohol. The green kind makes a better texture, apparently. Pour that into a gallon-sized zip-closed freezer bag. Pour in two bottles of water. Press out all the air and seal. Seal that bag into another bag, then add a third bag around that. Freeze for about 4 hours.

You may need to squish it a little to soften it enough to mold around wherever you want it, but it will stay cold for some time, and chills back up quickly.

Great, huh?

Another good thing to do is make rice bags. Sew a bag approximately 15"-16" by 4"-5" finished size. I've found that fat quarters will make two bags of about the right size. I double-seam all of bag seams to make sure the rice doesn't work its way out of the bag.

Fill with cheap-o white rice, leaving a space of about 5" at the top, and sew closed. You need some room so the bag will drape around your neck or can be shaped as needed.


You can add essential oils to the bag, too - lavender is really nice. Put a layer of rice, a few drops of oil, another layer of rice, some more oil, until it's as full as you want it.

Now you can either freeze the bag for a really nice cold-pack, or you can warm it in the microwave. How long depends on your microwave - I use about 1 1/2 minutes per bag. The first few times you microwave it you may have a rice smell, but that will eventually go away, and the oil helps with that, too.

I also like to use the heated bags around my feet at night in the winter. Toasty!