2 of the best life hacks I learned early on. Please & Thank you
36
When your wife says don’t worry about it, you better worry about it.
28
I figured out how to extend the life of those cheap headphones you can buy at Wal-Mart for $12.00 or $14.00.
They always fail at the connection to your device from being bent and folded over until the cheap wire inside fails. I break a toothpick into three pieces and with about a 4 inch piece of black electrical tape I make a splint around the elbow of the connector to protect the weak point in the wire. Voila!
22
To keep from hitting your thumb with hammer when pounding nails. Get someone else to hold nail.
58
Avoid Liberals like you would pernicious anemia
42
To extend battery life on phone. Remove battery. Also eliminates unwanted calls.
38
Chewing gum will remove peanut butter out of your hair.
29
When the caller wants to sell you a car warranty or help you with your student loans or sell you Medicare supplement insurance, just scream at the top of your lungs like a Marine drill sergeant for them to remove you from the call list and hang up.
22
In order to get anything done on the weekends, I leave my phone in the office, turned off. Or in a drawer…or under a pillow. If I want to talk to someone, I’ll call them.
Use a fork with the tines straddling your picture hook/nail. Then slide the picture wire over the fork and onto the hook. To remove old paint and grime from door/drawer hardware (any kind of hardware): put it in an old pan in enough water to cover with a little dish soap and let it simmer until the paint falls off or will brush easily off with a toothbrush. Polish with metal polish and your old hardware looks amazing. “30 Seconds” cleaner in a pump sprayer will clean anything outdoors. Spray it on, hose it off. “Oil Eater” concentrated cleaner will clean anything indoors. I buy it in 5 gallon buckets at Costco’s business center. Use alcohol-based gel hand sanitizer to removed dried paint/stain/varnish off anything vinyl (and other things, too). Squirt it on, let it dwell for ten mins., wipe it off. Do a couple more times for really stubborn paint (learned this after splattering the hot tub cover with deck sealer.) Doesn’t damage like solvent-based cleaners. Mix equal parts spackle and wood fill (like Elmer’s), put it in a plastic sandwich bag and clip a very small corner off to squeeze it into nail holes and to fill wall dings. Smooth with a putty knife, sand and prime before painting. It’s more durable than spackle, less shrinkage and easy to sand.
I’ve got tons of tricks involving painting restoration.
32
My grandpa used to put chalkboard chalk on his metal files before using on soft metals. Would lessen the clogging of the file. Also if you use files a lot invest in a file card. I keep mine stored in cloths sprayed with WD 40 to inhibit rust.
13
Don’t brush your teeth with Nutragena soap no matter how pure the ads say it is. I won’t say how I know this. But you can clean scuff marks off just about anything with toothpaste.
15
Knowledge is power.
You always remember the assholes.
If you don’t do it right the first time you will the second.
9
To remove old built up paint from hinges, door hardware, metal parts, soak overnight in Pine Sol. This really works! Doesn’t affect the finish on the metal like the chemical paint removers will.
12
When storing your camper or RV for the season scatter fabric softener sheets liberally throughout. Mice and bugs hate them. Plus you will not have the musty smell from storage.
14
Start your bacon in a cool frying pan. Less likely to stick.
22
To eliminate hic-ups, expel ALL the air from your lungs as possible for as long as possible, (probably about 5 or 10 seconds).
It always works for me.
10
@jellybean – I had a bad case of hiccups as a kid. So bad and long lasting that my mom called a friend who was a nurse to see if she thought I should go to E.R. The nurse told my mom to have me hold a match stick or a toothpick clenched between my teeth and drink a large glass of water without stopping. It worked and has worked on anyone I’ve since told to do it.
5
Keep all of your money as cash stuffed into your pillow. That way you can always get cash if there’s a power outage and the ATMs are down
9
Different Tim reminded me of the fun and smirks of my youth when we would constantly ask one another in Shop to borrow the Bastard File. We could swear without getting in trouble.
‘Larry, are you finished with the Bastard File?’
‘No, I’ll be done with the Bastard File in a minute.’
For those who don’t know, it’s the proper name of a particular type of file.
😄
17
Hiccups are easy to cure.
Fill a large bucket with water, immerse your head in it and inhale deeply three times.
Always works.
8
Once you locate a mole burrowing across your lawn. Come up from behind the mole and mash down the tunnel behind the POS insectivore. Then wildly stab at the remaining tunnel with a weed fork. Either leave the POS critter in the ground or burn it in the firepit so the dogs don’t dig it up.
15
Here’s another lawncare hack, I found this one while browsing sprinklers. Apparently, there’s a need for a shutoff valve on the new sprinklers so you don’t get wet.
My solution is to either turn the water off at the spigot. Or if you’re too lazy to walk 100ft of hose back to the spigot. Just grab the sprinkler and aim the stream away from your body. You might have to wait for it to cycle for a few seconds, but it can be placed back on the ground without getting wet.
3
This isn’t so much of a life hack as it is a tip.
Don’t eat the yellow snow.
7
Never underestimate the power of human stupidity
15
BR – I’m in my wife’s bastard file.
12
My grandpa used to use beer to eliminate dandelions. He’d sit on the patio drinking beer while grandma popped out the dandelions.
20
Use Scotch to get that taste of water out of your mouth.
24
I have some real cork corks in my kitchen drawer. You can cut pieces off and use them to fix wobbly lamps, furniture, etc.
18
Aim low. Achieve your goals. Avoid disappointment.
8
The cheapest white toothpaste you can find is the best nail hole sealer for plaster, drywall, etc.
If you have a mechanical self-cleaning catbox, the ones with the replaceable cardboard trays can be reused indefinitely with regular old clay litter vs the expensive crystal type, because the tray has a plastic coating that resists moisture. Just let the tray sun dry after emptying it to kill off bacteria and, if need be, after scraping it out. Saves a ton of money within a matter of months.
Cheap shaving cream makes excellent hand soap to be kept at the sink. That’s all it is — emulsified soap and propellant. Lasts at least as long as any froo froo scented bottle soap and can be found for under a buck.
Dawn beats any laundry detergent out there. Formula is simple: small load, 1 tsp. Medium load, 2 tsp. Full load, 3 tsp, max.
12
Drink lotza cold beers & ale.
Then you don’t need no stinkin’ hack…
2
Life hacks? Jeeze….OK.
1. stay away from Vagos.
2. diesel + styrofoam = napalm
3. drink a cup of coffee after you start you bike. That way it’s warm before you ride and less likely to leak and/or explode.
4. if in custody, answer all questions in Fat Alberts voice
11
LMAO! These are all great! 😀
3
AA, here is another good pointer. Don’t put tubes of anything in your shower kit that could be confused with toothpaste. Like Preparation H for example.
10
When it’s cold out, and You lose power….
Warm up Your Kerosene on the Stove before putting it in the Generator.
1
@joe6 — lol! Well, now I gotta tell my Nutragena story. I was coming off TDY at Yakoda AFB/Japan and up before the rest of my roomies because I was really ready to get out of that cockroach-infested billet and come home. My bags were packed and, sitting in the quiet of the morning, I started flipping through a magazine I had that had an ad for Nutragena bar soap. The soap is an amber color and it was pictured over the block writing on the page. You could see right through the bar and the text said, “So pure you can brush your teeth with it.” With nothing but time on my hands and the burden of a curious mind, I thought, “What the heck! I gotta check this out.” The End. Epilogue: Liars!
10
Stay off any street named after a civil rights hero.
50
FYI – Contrary to popular belief, eating a diet consisting of nothing but broccoli and tuna fish for four months WILL NOT enlarge your breast. (Don’t ask me how I know, but I do. Just trust me.)
11
Jeeze Diggy, all ya’ gotta’ do is get knocked up. Hooters for days….
10
Under-promise and over-deliver, and no good deed goes unpunished. Learned the hard way.
15
Don’t follow peers like a sheep: they are usually as clueless as you are, and they are likely following other sheep.
And: ALWAYS trust your gut – it will never fail you.
17
When I was teaching, I had these instructions on the board (for the classroom and all other life situations):
1. Show up
2. Pay attention
3. Complete your assignments
5
A good percolator makes better coffee than any drip machine. Our Hamilton Beech 12-cup is a champ.
Disc filters for a perc are hard to find (but try Amazon); buy cheap drip basket filters and with scissors you can cut out a month’s supply in about three minutes.
Find a fat plastic straw the right size to go over the perc basket tube. You can use it to insert and flatten the filter. Dip the bottom of the basket in water and a wrinkled filter will flatten right out. Leave the straw over the center tube and keep coffee out of the tube as you fill the basket.
3
As far as toothpaste goes, it’s probably the bet thing you can find for wasp, bee, or other stinging insect stings and bites.
I use fluoride toothpaste, don’t know if the fluoride kind is needed though.
Try it, it actually works.
4
Uncle Al, I take drip basket filters, fold them in half then half again. Cut the bottom tip off the now folded filter. No more coffee grounds in sink as filter covers side of perc basket. And much better coffee as you state.
3
@Different Tim – Good idea, I’ll give that a try. But try my straw trick; it’s a life simplifier.
1
Nail polish makes a good cut sealer unless the cut is bad enough to need stitches. It acts a lot like surgical glue and lasts several days. Clear or any color if you want to be fancy.
Loose screws? Coat them w/ nail polish, let dry and use them.
My favorite to annoy libturds – to remove the stem and leaves from strawberries take a plastic straw and insert in the end of the berry opposite the leaves. Push all the way through.
Clorox cleans diamonds but it will pit gold. Clean your rings with toothpaste paste – mildly abrasive.
Dental floss slices water melon nicely and also can be used to remove the melon from the rind.
Recently had a plantars wart and looked up natural cures. It seems duct tape on the wart removes it but it takes a while. This I haven’t tried – pee in a cup and saturate a cotton ball. Place on wart and tape in down. Do this several times a day and wart will go quickly.
I ended up using a friend’s cold laser on the wart for 2 minutes. Easy cure.
When you slice off the end of a finger cutting potatoes an unwrapped, undone tampon makes a great bandage until you can get to the urgent care. Just ask my husband. Don’t forget to put the end of the finger in a bag of ice so it can be reattached.
8
Forget the round up or expensive weed killer. Boil a kettle full of water. Pour boiling water in the centers of weeds. Gone by the next day. Works on poison ivy too.
26
Instead of tap water, use filtered or bottled water for ice cubes.
@ Eugenia- Super glue works for cuts too.
5
Pour a couple of ounces of household ammonia into the bottom of your automatic dishwasher just before starting it. It helps dissolve grease during the initial rinse cycle, thus making the dishwasher detergent work better.
5
@Vietvet — I’ll try that one. Ammonia is also a great remedy for mosquito bites. Dab it on with cotton balls or tissue and don’t scratch for a few minutes. Works great to take the itch away.
4
A wise old man told me once…
Don’t ever discuss your problems with people.
10% don’t really give a shit and the other 90% are glad it happened to you!
9
Isopropyl Alcohol with an Olive in it tastes just as good as a Martini
14
Vietvet – Used to spend time with an Aunt who lived in the country. Hardwater used to scale up her dishwasher. I remember she would put a couple scoops of Tang (the breakfast drink for us old farts) and run it through the cycle. Darn thing would look like new. Do they even make Tang anymore?
4
Different Tim…Yes..But sadly due to rising Production costs,
it is now being made Overseas…Somewhere in Asia….
under the trademark “PoonTang”
7
Bobcat – Think my Dad (rest his soul) knew her. Talked about her quite a bit.
1
Living hacks – Gavin McInnes
8
clean hazy headlight lenses with toothpaste. i found a circular motion with pressure works best. then follow up with regular auto polish paste.
3
@Different Tim (at 8:32 pm): Never tried Tang, but lemon juice or vinegar work pretty good, too:
Life hack #1:
Ignore Gavin McInnes
2 of the best life hacks I learned early on. Please & Thank you
When your wife says don’t worry about it, you better worry about it.
I figured out how to extend the life of those cheap headphones you can buy at Wal-Mart for $12.00 or $14.00.
They always fail at the connection to your device from being bent and folded over until the cheap wire inside fails. I break a toothpick into three pieces and with about a 4 inch piece of black electrical tape I make a splint around the elbow of the connector to protect the weak point in the wire. Voila!
To keep from hitting your thumb with hammer when pounding nails. Get someone else to hold nail.
Avoid Liberals like you would pernicious anemia
To extend battery life on phone. Remove battery. Also eliminates unwanted calls.
Chewing gum will remove peanut butter out of your hair.
When the caller wants to sell you a car warranty or help you with your student loans or sell you Medicare supplement insurance, just scream at the top of your lungs like a Marine drill sergeant for them to remove you from the call list and hang up.
In order to get anything done on the weekends, I leave my phone in the office, turned off. Or in a drawer…or under a pillow. If I want to talk to someone, I’ll call them.
Use a fork with the tines straddling your picture hook/nail. Then slide the picture wire over the fork and onto the hook. To remove old paint and grime from door/drawer hardware (any kind of hardware): put it in an old pan in enough water to cover with a little dish soap and let it simmer until the paint falls off or will brush easily off with a toothbrush. Polish with metal polish and your old hardware looks amazing. “30 Seconds” cleaner in a pump sprayer will clean anything outdoors. Spray it on, hose it off. “Oil Eater” concentrated cleaner will clean anything indoors. I buy it in 5 gallon buckets at Costco’s business center. Use alcohol-based gel hand sanitizer to removed dried paint/stain/varnish off anything vinyl (and other things, too). Squirt it on, let it dwell for ten mins., wipe it off. Do a couple more times for really stubborn paint (learned this after splattering the hot tub cover with deck sealer.) Doesn’t damage like solvent-based cleaners. Mix equal parts spackle and wood fill (like Elmer’s), put it in a plastic sandwich bag and clip a very small corner off to squeeze it into nail holes and to fill wall dings. Smooth with a putty knife, sand and prime before painting. It’s more durable than spackle, less shrinkage and easy to sand.
I’ve got tons of tricks involving painting restoration.
My grandpa used to put chalkboard chalk on his metal files before using on soft metals. Would lessen the clogging of the file. Also if you use files a lot invest in a file card. I keep mine stored in cloths sprayed with WD 40 to inhibit rust.
Don’t brush your teeth with Nutragena soap no matter how pure the ads say it is. I won’t say how I know this. But you can clean scuff marks off just about anything with toothpaste.
Knowledge is power.
You always remember the assholes.
If you don’t do it right the first time you will the second.
To remove old built up paint from hinges, door hardware, metal parts, soak overnight in Pine Sol. This really works! Doesn’t affect the finish on the metal like the chemical paint removers will.
When storing your camper or RV for the season scatter fabric softener sheets liberally throughout. Mice and bugs hate them. Plus you will not have the musty smell from storage.
Start your bacon in a cool frying pan. Less likely to stick.
To eliminate hic-ups, expel ALL the air from your lungs as possible for as long as possible, (probably about 5 or 10 seconds).
It always works for me.
@jellybean – I had a bad case of hiccups as a kid. So bad and long lasting that my mom called a friend who was a nurse to see if she thought I should go to E.R. The nurse told my mom to have me hold a match stick or a toothpick clenched between my teeth and drink a large glass of water without stopping. It worked and has worked on anyone I’ve since told to do it.
Keep all of your money as cash stuffed into your pillow. That way you can always get cash if there’s a power outage and the ATMs are down
Different Tim reminded me of the fun and smirks of my youth when we would constantly ask one another in Shop to borrow the Bastard File. We could swear without getting in trouble.
‘Larry, are you finished with the Bastard File?’
‘No, I’ll be done with the Bastard File in a minute.’
For those who don’t know, it’s the proper name of a particular type of file.
😄
Hiccups are easy to cure.
Fill a large bucket with water, immerse your head in it and inhale deeply three times.
Always works.
Once you locate a mole burrowing across your lawn. Come up from behind the mole and mash down the tunnel behind the POS insectivore. Then wildly stab at the remaining tunnel with a weed fork. Either leave the POS critter in the ground or burn it in the firepit so the dogs don’t dig it up.
Here’s another lawncare hack, I found this one while browsing sprinklers. Apparently, there’s a need for a shutoff valve on the new sprinklers so you don’t get wet.
My solution is to either turn the water off at the spigot. Or if you’re too lazy to walk 100ft of hose back to the spigot. Just grab the sprinkler and aim the stream away from your body. You might have to wait for it to cycle for a few seconds, but it can be placed back on the ground without getting wet.
This isn’t so much of a life hack as it is a tip.
Don’t eat the yellow snow.
Never underestimate the power of human stupidity
BR – I’m in my wife’s bastard file.
My grandpa used to use beer to eliminate dandelions. He’d sit on the patio drinking beer while grandma popped out the dandelions.
Use Scotch to get that taste of water out of your mouth.
I have some real cork corks in my kitchen drawer. You can cut pieces off and use them to fix wobbly lamps, furniture, etc.
Aim low. Achieve your goals. Avoid disappointment.
The cheapest white toothpaste you can find is the best nail hole sealer for plaster, drywall, etc.
If you have a mechanical self-cleaning catbox, the ones with the replaceable cardboard trays can be reused indefinitely with regular old clay litter vs the expensive crystal type, because the tray has a plastic coating that resists moisture. Just let the tray sun dry after emptying it to kill off bacteria and, if need be, after scraping it out. Saves a ton of money within a matter of months.
Cheap shaving cream makes excellent hand soap to be kept at the sink. That’s all it is — emulsified soap and propellant. Lasts at least as long as any froo froo scented bottle soap and can be found for under a buck.
Dawn beats any laundry detergent out there. Formula is simple: small load, 1 tsp. Medium load, 2 tsp. Full load, 3 tsp, max.
Drink lotza cold beers & ale.
Then you don’t need no stinkin’ hack…
Life hacks? Jeeze….OK.
1. stay away from Vagos.
2. diesel + styrofoam = napalm
3. drink a cup of coffee after you start you bike. That way it’s warm before you ride and less likely to leak and/or explode.
4. if in custody, answer all questions in Fat Alberts voice
LMAO! These are all great! 😀
AA, here is another good pointer. Don’t put tubes of anything in your shower kit that could be confused with toothpaste. Like Preparation H for example.
When it’s cold out, and You lose power….
Warm up Your Kerosene on the Stove before putting it in the Generator.
@joe6 — lol! Well, now I gotta tell my Nutragena story. I was coming off TDY at Yakoda AFB/Japan and up before the rest of my roomies because I was really ready to get out of that cockroach-infested billet and come home. My bags were packed and, sitting in the quiet of the morning, I started flipping through a magazine I had that had an ad for Nutragena bar soap. The soap is an amber color and it was pictured over the block writing on the page. You could see right through the bar and the text said, “So pure you can brush your teeth with it.” With nothing but time on my hands and the burden of a curious mind, I thought, “What the heck! I gotta check this out.” The End. Epilogue: Liars!
Stay off any street named after a civil rights hero.
FYI – Contrary to popular belief, eating a diet consisting of nothing but broccoli and tuna fish for four months WILL NOT enlarge your breast. (Don’t ask me how I know, but I do. Just trust me.)
Jeeze Diggy, all ya’ gotta’ do is get knocked up. Hooters for days….
Under-promise and over-deliver, and no good deed goes unpunished. Learned the hard way.
Don’t follow peers like a sheep: they are usually as clueless as you are, and they are likely following other sheep.
And: ALWAYS trust your gut – it will never fail you.
When I was teaching, I had these instructions on the board (for the classroom and all other life situations):
1. Show up
2. Pay attention
3. Complete your assignments
A good percolator makes better coffee than any drip machine. Our Hamilton Beech 12-cup is a champ.
Disc filters for a perc are hard to find (but try Amazon); buy cheap drip basket filters and with scissors you can cut out a month’s supply in about three minutes.
Find a fat plastic straw the right size to go over the perc basket tube. You can use it to insert and flatten the filter. Dip the bottom of the basket in water and a wrinkled filter will flatten right out. Leave the straw over the center tube and keep coffee out of the tube as you fill the basket.
As far as toothpaste goes, it’s probably the bet thing you can find for wasp, bee, or other stinging insect stings and bites.
I use fluoride toothpaste, don’t know if the fluoride kind is needed though.
Try it, it actually works.
Uncle Al, I take drip basket filters, fold them in half then half again. Cut the bottom tip off the now folded filter. No more coffee grounds in sink as filter covers side of perc basket. And much better coffee as you state.
@Different Tim – Good idea, I’ll give that a try. But try my straw trick; it’s a life simplifier.
Nail polish makes a good cut sealer unless the cut is bad enough to need stitches. It acts a lot like surgical glue and lasts several days. Clear or any color if you want to be fancy.
Loose screws? Coat them w/ nail polish, let dry and use them.
My favorite to annoy libturds – to remove the stem and leaves from strawberries take a plastic straw and insert in the end of the berry opposite the leaves. Push all the way through.
Clorox cleans diamonds but it will pit gold. Clean your rings with toothpaste paste – mildly abrasive.
Dental floss slices water melon nicely and also can be used to remove the melon from the rind.
Recently had a plantars wart and looked up natural cures. It seems duct tape on the wart removes it but it takes a while. This I haven’t tried – pee in a cup and saturate a cotton ball. Place on wart and tape in down. Do this several times a day and wart will go quickly.
I ended up using a friend’s cold laser on the wart for 2 minutes. Easy cure.
When you slice off the end of a finger cutting potatoes an unwrapped, undone tampon makes a great bandage until you can get to the urgent care. Just ask my husband. Don’t forget to put the end of the finger in a bag of ice so it can be reattached.
Forget the round up or expensive weed killer. Boil a kettle full of water. Pour boiling water in the centers of weeds. Gone by the next day. Works on poison ivy too.
Instead of tap water, use filtered or bottled water for ice cubes.
@ Eugenia- Super glue works for cuts too.
Pour a couple of ounces of household ammonia into the bottom of your automatic dishwasher just before starting it. It helps dissolve grease during the initial rinse cycle, thus making the dishwasher detergent work better.
@Vietvet — I’ll try that one. Ammonia is also a great remedy for mosquito bites. Dab it on with cotton balls or tissue and don’t scratch for a few minutes. Works great to take the itch away.
A wise old man told me once…
Don’t ever discuss your problems with people.
10% don’t really give a shit and the other 90% are glad it happened to you!
Isopropyl Alcohol with an Olive in it tastes just as good as a Martini
Vietvet – Used to spend time with an Aunt who lived in the country. Hardwater used to scale up her dishwasher. I remember she would put a couple scoops of Tang (the breakfast drink for us old farts) and run it through the cycle. Darn thing would look like new. Do they even make Tang anymore?
Different Tim…Yes..But sadly due to rising Production costs,
it is now being made Overseas…Somewhere in Asia….
under the trademark “PoonTang”
Bobcat – Think my Dad (rest his soul) knew her. Talked about her quite a bit.
Living hacks – Gavin McInnes
clean hazy headlight lenses with toothpaste. i found a circular motion with pressure works best. then follow up with regular auto polish paste.
@Different Tim (at 8:32 pm): Never tried Tang, but lemon juice or vinegar work pretty good, too:
https://www.pcrichard.com/library/blogArticle/how-to-clean-a-dishwasher/2500014.pcra
now being made Overseas…Somewhere in Asia….
‘rising Production costs’ due to attempts to make it odorless,,,