Handy home remedies don’t have to come out of the pantry or off the spice shelf; sometimes, they can be found in the kitchen drawer that you use to store all the useful stuff with no other home. That’s where we keep our instant glue.

We find this product especially useful for sealing up the slits that sometimes occur spontaneously on cracked fingertips. But it can also be quite good at closing a cut, as a reader told us:

“I cut my finger with a knife while slicing bread. It was bleeding badly and I had soaked a few tissues when I remembered black pepper. That didn’t work because he blood just washed the pepper away. What finally helped was instant glue.

“I held the skin together (not easy with only one hand) and applied the glue thinly. It held the skin together as a couple of stitches would have, and the bleeding stopped. So if the pepper thing doesn’t work, try the glue. It is similar to what the surgeon used on my skin after surgery, instead of stitches or staples. That’s what made me think of it.”