Brown Sugar Macaroni

Wait, brown sugar and macaroni in the same sentence? You guys probably think that I am nuts but stay with me. I bet you have clumpy brown sugar and you feel like you are hacking into stone with chisels every time that you want brown sugar, right? Did you know that adding macaroni to your brown sugar loosens it up completely? Really.

Here is a project on how to do that.

You're probably still thinking that I am nuts but stay with me. Just don't take this advice literally. When my husband found out about this trick, this is what he did:

So, I spent half an hour this morning taking the macaroni out with a slotted spoon. I wasn't impressed.

What I did is I made a little cheesecloth bag for the macaroni. For this, you will need cheesecloth (about 6 by 6 inches), white thread, a small sewing needle, scissors, 1/4 cup dry, uncooked macaroni and some clumpy brown sugar.

To start, I folded the cheesecloth over so that it was two layers thick. I unrolled a section that was about 6 by 6 inches then I folded it over to see how big of a "baggie" I needed then I cut like so:

I cut a little off of the top as well as I didn't need a baggie that tall:

Now I have a little baggie that is about 3 inches by 3 inches (with the fabric folded over). I took out the needle and thread and started to sew. You can't do a straight stitch on cheesecloth though because it is so holey so I did a zigzag stitch. I folded down the top edge of the baggie and did the zigzag stitch by hand so that I didn't have a rough edge on the top:

Once the top was done, I placed the ends together and started stitching them together. Here is more detail on the zigzag stitch that I did. I highlighted the stitches in blue so that you can see them numbers indicating the order of the stitches:

So, I stitched it up on the sides and the bottom until the baggie was done. I turned it inside out to hide the rough edges.

Then, I went to the kitchen and added the macaroni with a spoon.

I dug a hole in my brown sugar canister for the baggie and dropped it in like so:

Voila! Done.

Estimated time for this project: about 30 minutes. This was mostly in the hand-sewing.

Notes: 

• This really does work! Adding macaroni to brown sugar was a brilliant idea that came from my sisters-in-law so I credit them. 
• You can close off the baggie if you'd like. I didn't so that it would have a stronger effect. 
• Double-threading really helps to secure the sewing. I didn't learn this until I reached the bottom of the bag so if you make this, I recommend double-threading before sewing. 
• I hate hand-sewing. Really. That's why I have a sewing machine.