eloise is a woman who has 76 file drawers filled with papers and notes on timesavers and shortcuts, and lives a life that requires most of them.

This is primarily because Heloise, household hints maven, just isn’t in the house that much. As a professional household authority, Heloise sees far more of the road than of the kitchen. She gives hints at lectures, on talk shows, on the Internet, and in a monthly Good Housekeeping column. She autographs books of hints on 20-city book tours. Today she’s shooting a public-service announcement at a local TV station. Heloise times the spot herself, stopwatch in hand. In tow she has a journalist to interview her, an assistant to style her, and, since she’s in hair and makeup anyway, an artist to take pictures for an upcoming portrait.

“I like to kill two birds with one stone,” Heloise says as we all pack into the dressing room.

“Many birds,” her assistant Jane adds dryly. Jane mainly manages the office, but once inadvertently revealed to her boss that she used to own a salon. “You gotta hide your talents around her, I tell you,” she says, brushing Heloise’s abundant silver mane.

This is a common theme in the Heloise world, one in which hair conditioner can be used for shaving cream and toothpaste can substitute for spackle.

As Heloise later dines on nachos in her favorite Mexican restaurant, she explains the gist of the hint business. “I’ve brought it into lifestyle management. It doesn’t matter what your situation is, there’s a Heloise hint to help you.”

This hint legacy originated with her mom, Heloise Bowles, who invented and wrote the syndicated “Hints from Heloise” column for 18 years. Over that time she probably issued 15,000 time- and money-saving ideas to homemakers she called her “dear gals” or “precious ladybugs.” The current Heloise, born Pónce Kiah Marchelle Heloise Cruse (Ponce, or PAWN-see, to friends), took over the column after her mother’s death in 1977. Her favorite photograph of Mother shows her posing with a youngish Richard Nixon while wearing a foot-high chapeau made of nylon net.

Like her mom, Heloise has sharp, dark eyes set under arched velvet brows, a confident chin, and signature hair. (Heloise is 48 now, and started going gray at 12. Mother sprayed her own hair blue, purple, or silver, depending on her outfit and mood.) Like her mom, too, readers are “friends,” foods are “yummy” or “fantastico!” and the best things in life are “cheap, cheap, cheap!”

Unlike her mom, though, the Heloise of today occupies a more complex, hint-deprived world. F’rinstance (as Heloise might say), consider her own high-maintenance lifestyle, which includes a husband, contractor David Evans; three dogs; a parrot; five office staffers; and a sprawling San Antonio home she has to leave almost weekly. Travel is so frequent, in fact, that Heloise, a woman who knows seven ways to clean a grease stain, has at times found herself not only unaware of what time it was, but also of what city she happened to be in.

Having dealt with this qualifies Heloise, friend to homemakers, to be friend to business travelers as well. It takes one to know one. So when we asked Heloise about troubleshooting a business trip, here’s what she had to say.

1 Before you go:

• Make sure your house plants are low-maintenance. African violets, no; cacti, succulents, and most ivies, yes.
• Keep skim milk on hand instead of whole milk; it stays fresh longer. Ditto for apples, oranges, pears, and other hardy fruits. Bananas, melons, and berries won’t be happy if you’re gone more than a weekend.
• If you don’t like fruit flies, empty the garbage. Keep fruits and veggies in the fridge, including potatoes. If it’s humid, stick your cereal and crackers in there as well. Maybe even your dirty dishes, if you haven’t got a dishwasher. When single, Heloise used to stash them in the freezer.
• Hint from Heloise’s dad, a former Air Force pilot: Do an “instrument” check just before you leave. Stand by your luggage, recite what you need out loud, check, and repeat. Airline tickets? Airline tickets. Speech? Speech. Tape recorder? Tape recorder. That’s the idea.

2 Take the following:

• Copies of your passport, plane tickets, any prescriptions, and driver’s license. If you’re traveling with a companion, give him your copies and take his. If you’re traveling alone, fold them up and hide them in your luggage. And if you’re traveling internationally, make sure someone at home has copies, as well. Ten minutes of prevention can save you hours in a foreign embassy.
• Emergency food. Heloise likes dried fruit and nuts, and she brings instant coffee in a plastic bag with a scoop of powdered milk and artificial sweetener, to mix, if necessary, with hot tap water. At 5 a.m., you won’t be fussy.
• Three small travel bags to tuck in your suitcase. One will have a travel set of all your favorite cosmetics, your toothbrush, and toothpaste. Another sealable plastic bag will hold all potential gooey items, like shampoo and other toiletries. A third, which you’ll keep by the bed, will have your alarm clock, mini-flashlight, and earplugs and pharmaceuticals. When you get home, keep them all in the suitcase. You’ll never forget your toothpaste again.
• Miscellaneous must-haves: Always carry a Swiss Army knife (“David fixed my belt hole with the corkscrew once”), a can opener, and a nail file. “Locking” cinch ties can attach luggage tags or tie garment-bag hangers together. Nylon net, the Heloise staple, can brush suede, clean lint from a suit, or pumice tired feet. “It weighs next to nothing and washes out easily,” Heloise advises.

3 About your clothes:

• Give them the crumple test. Grip a handful of material in your fist, count slowly to five and let go. “This my mother taught me,” Heloise says, noting that her own dress, sadly, fails to pass. “If it wrinkles,” she says, “I don’t take it.”
• Coordinate. “I have what I call my travel uniform,” Heloise says. “Everything I’ve got in my closet is color-coordinated. And if I can’t wear it with more than one thing, I don’t take it.”If you’re female, take scarves. Draped on shoulders or even at the waist, a scarf can hide multitudes of accidents. Speaking of which:
• Practice stain removal. Soak washable fabric in cool water, then dab with bar soap. For grease, dump on some artificial sweetener and keep it on as long as possible. Eventually, the stain should absorb. Note: “We’re not talking dry-clean-only, expensive clothes.”
• Bonus hint: Break a collar stay? Open a blade from your Swiss Army knife and cut up an expired credit card. Or, in a real pinch, your plastic hotel key.

4 After you arrive:

• Stale, smelly room? If you can’t open a window, put a few drops of cologne on a tissue and tuck it in the air vent.
• No “real” hangers? If you need to steam your clothes in the shower, you can usually hang the knob of the theft-proof hanger in a shower curtain hook or ring.
• Keep forgetting your key? Leave it in the same place in every room, like, for instance, on the television. Heloise’s mother used to leave hers at the foot of the hotel door every time she latched it.
• Left your cuff links last time? If you hide valuables in your room, write a cryptic note to yourself (i.e., “Call Mr. Gold”). Put it next to your tickets, your wallet, on top of your briefcase—whatever it is you pick up last when you leave the hotel.

5 Multitask your freebies:

• Toothpaste. It cleans jewelry. It removes stains, if other methods fail. It even makes a decent blemish cream or styptic pencil. “It may sting,” Heloise warns, “but it is a drying agent.”
• Shower caps. “I love them,” Heloise says. “Bar soap, shampoo, anything that might leak, there you go. Tie it with a rubber band. Your shoes are dirty, you put them in. I take one for my belts, and I take one for flowers if I’m bringing them home.”
• Laundry bags. Poke a hole in the top and you can put it over a suit hanger in your garment bag. Or you can use it as an emergency tote or briefcase. “I’m known in some New York circles for having such a designer, upscale briefcase,” Heloise cracks.
• Shampoo and conditioner. Shampoo can wash out lingerie and remove tough stains. “That’s a no-brainer to me,” she says. Conditioner really does make decent shaving cream, for face or legs.
• Shoe mitts. Pack jewelry in them. Separate cosmetics with them. Use them for emergency washcloths. Just make sure they’re free of chemicals before you do.

6 And finally, when you go:

• Move your packed luggage to the door.
• Now do a final “search and seek.” Look behind the bathroom door. Check the shower, the vanity, the far side of the bed. Check the desk near the phone. “Invariably,” she says, “you find something.”

In her many travels, the hint maven herself can admit to only two traumas. One occurred when she arrived late at night in Los Angeles for a 5 a.m. TV appearance, while her luggage, with her makeup, didn’t. The second involved needing to know the correct time in St. Louis at 3 a.m. Neither event will happen again, since Heloise now carries a tiny bag of makeup samples in her purse, as well as a credit-card-sized time-zone calculator. “It’s just for those one or two times when you really need it,” she says. And being Heloise, she probably never will again.