Homophones and Kanji... Yuck

Today I sat down at iKnow... it still wanted me to do 40... so I did.

I've got this nightmarish conundrum I'm trying to sort out.
If I'm saying them correctly...

締める - shimeru - tighten, fasten
閉める - shimeru - close
閉まる - shimaru - be closed
開く - hiraku - open

They're all so similar it's hard to come up with ways to memorize! ugh...

I've also got
きれい(kirei) - clean, pretty
嫌い - kirai - hated, disliked

single vowel differences are a pain for me.
You'd think it'd be easier... like clean v. clone in English... but nope.

Two notable things I learned...
六日 - muika - 6 days, 6th of month
六つ - muttsu - six (things)
I need to learn the whole list of these...

I learned this too.
晴れる - hareru - to be sunny(weather)
It's easy, because it sounds close to "haru", which is 春, spring (season


I've been a little slow at responding to answers... I need to work on focusing better.

My other interesting misc were:
直る - naoru - be repaired, return to normal
お姉さん - older sister (another form... i need to go look up lists and differences. I think this is formal)
辺 - hen - vicinity, area, part
易しい - yasashii - easy, simple


The sentence I'm studying for the day is this:
私はパンよりご飯が好きだ。
I prefer rice over bread (or the other way around, i can't remember)
I'm trying to figure out how comparisons work.