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How To: 5 DIY Methods for Unclogging a Clogged Toilet Without a Plunger

Got a clogged toilet on your hands? Before you call the plumber or bust out the plunger, try one of the five DIY methods listed below, all of them incorporating common tools or ingredients easily found in your closet, kitchen or medicine cabinet.

How To: 7 DIY Ways to Remove Oil Stains from Your Asphalt Driveway

If you have an oil stain on your asphalt driveway, wipe up the excess oil with an absorbent cloth or mop it up, then act quickly using the common household items below to make sure that it doesn't become a permanent eyesore or a headache to clean up later.

How To: 9 Ways to Cool Down Your Burning Hot Mouth After Eating Really Spicy Foods

Mouth burning with pain from eating too much hot sauce or some seriously "spicy" food? Well, ignore your first instinct and steer clear of that cup of cold water — it won't help. Instead, reach for a glass of milk, a lemon slice, a spoonful of sugar, or some starchy bread to dilute the painful heat on your tongue.

How To: Make Your Own Temporary Tattoo

Whether you need very temporary skin art for a costume or simply want to test-run a potential tattoo design before it gets permanent, making your own temporary tattoo only requires wax paper, a printout or drawing of your desired design, black eyeliner, rubbing alcohol, baby powder, liquid bandage, and a lot of patience.

How To: 10 DIY Ways to Repair Nicks & Scratches on Wooden Furniture

If you've had wooden furniture in your living space for a while, chances are that you've accumulated at least a couple of nicks and scratches on the surface. Before you spend money on a professional wood refinisher to restore the surface, try out some of the DIY techniques below using common household items to minimize the visibility of the scratch.

How To: 9 Common Household Items That Can Unstick Your Stuck Zipper

Sooner or later you're going to have to deal with a stuck zipper, whether it's on your favorite jacket, backpack, or pair of pants. Simply tugging hard on the zipper tab hardly ever works, but a few things lying around your house might do the trick.

How To: 16 Home Remedies for Treating Poison Ivy, Oak & Sumac Rashes

Poison ivy, poison oak, and the lesser known skin irritator, poison sumac, can all cause a conundrum in the search of itch relief: to scratch or not to scratch. Fortunately, there are a number of home remedies one can try to help alleviate the itch(ing), with many like coffee, a banana, baking soda, or mouthwash likely already in-house for most.

How To: 7 Quick Fixes for Squeaky Door Hinges & Creaky Floorboards

If squeaky wooden floorboards and creaky door hinges are preventing you from raiding your refrigerator after midnight in secret, you might already have everything you need in your kitchen to fix that problem.

How To: 9 DIY Ways to Painlessly Remove Splinters from Your Skin

Removing a stubborn splinter from your finger or foot is never fun, especially if it involves digging into your skin with a needle or tweezers. But if you use common household or food items around the house, you can actually remove splinters from your skin very easily and quite painlessly.

How To: 4 Cheap & Easy Ways to Unclog Your Kitchen Sink Without Any Nasty Chemicals

Oh, boy. A stopped-up drain. It'll inevitably happen with any home plumbing system and your kitchen sink is no exception. That clog won't go away on its own and will require immediate attention to keep any standing water from rising. But you don't have to resort to calling an expensive plumber or using a bottle of hazardous chemicals. Using simple kitchen staples or common household objects, as well as some determination, you can unclog your kitchen sink on your own without paying a dime.

How To: 6 Ways to Remove Ghastly Scuff Marks from Shoes Using Common Household Items

It'd be a financial burden to have to buy new shoes every time a current pair gets scuffed up, but thankfully there are some easy DIY tricks for saving us that trip to the shoe store. Scuff marks can easily be remove from shoes and sneakers using common household items found in your medicine cabinet or in your desk.

How To: Remove Wrinkles from Clothing Without Ironing

Need to remove wrinkles from your shirt but don't want to bust out the iron and ironing board (or don't even have one)? Well, with a little bit of do-it-yourself ingenuity, you can "iron out" that wrinkly top in no time.

How To: 13 Unexpected Uses for Baking Soda You've Probably Never Heard Of

When it comes to common household items with a million practical uses, baking soda reigns supreme. We all know that baking soda is great for deodorizing stinky things, whitening your teeth, and helping with clean-up around the house, but did you know about the other weirdly unexpected and esoteric uses for baking soda?

How To: Wash Your “Dry Clean Only” Clothes at Home for Cheap

Dry cleaning can be a pain the butt, not to mention super expensive, especially if you're wearing a lot of wool sweaters during the cold winter season. Thankfully, with a little time and effort, you can wash most of your "dry clean" or "dry clean only" clothing at home.

How To: 6 DIY Tips for Watering Your Houseplants While Away on Vacation

What can you do if you're about to leave for a big trip and can't find a plant-sitter to regularly water your indoor plants? Just like pets, your indoor ferns and marigolds need attention, too!

How To: 9 DIY Tricks for Cleaning Your Car

Ever see those cars so covered in dirt, dust, and grime that someone writes "Wash me" on it using their finger? Well, for those cars' sakes, as well as cases less extreme, a word of advice: procrastination is not a solution — it can only compound the problem. Self-cleaning cars are the stuff of the future, not the present, and your car needs attention now.

How To: 10 Easy DIY Methods for Removing Ink Stains with Household Items

Need to remove an ink stain from your carpet, clothing, wooden furniture, or new pair of jeans? Thankfully, as with most DIY stain removal techniques, you can probably concoct your own stain-removing solution from common household items in your bathroom or kitchen. Some examples include white vinegar, corn starch, toothpaste, WD-40 spray, dishwashing soap, hair spray, and even milk. Yes, milk.

How To: 7 DIY Cures for Headaches

What can you do when you're suffering from a pounding headache and you're in too much pain to drive to the nearest drugstore? Fill a large plastic bowl with hot water, add one tablespoon of dry mustard powder, and soak your feet for twenty minutes.

How To: 9 DIY Home Remedies for Relieving Itchy Mosquito Bites

There are few things peskier in the summer than an unexpected mosquito bite swelling up on your arms and legs. Fortunately, there are many ways to heal your body of its annoying itch, ranging from fruit (lemon slices and banana peels) to common household items (baking soda and apple cider vinegar).

How To: Open a Door Chain Lock or Bar Latch from the Outside

Assuming that you're not a burglar-in-training, you may one day find yourself in a situation where you have to break into a home through a door chain lock. But what to do if you have no time to wait for a locksmith?

How To: Do a Very Basic Ikebana Flower Arrangement

Ikebana, the Japanese art of flower arrangement, dates back to over 500 years ago and is still practiced as a highly respected cultural art form in modern-day Japan.

How To: 7 Unexpected Uses for Epsom Salt

If you've never had a reason to keep some Epsom salt in your home, I'm about to give you seven good ones, some that will surely surprise you.

How To: 11 Unexpected Uses for Silica Gel Packets

Though silica gel packets clearly instruct you to throw them away (and not eat them), you can actually keep them for a variety of unexpectedly practical uses around the home. Silica gel is a desiccant, a substance that absorbs moisture, which makes these packets perfect for keeping things extremely dry and moisture-free.

How To: 14 Practical Uses for Nail Polish Remover That Have Nothing to Do with Removing Nail Polish

Acetone-based nail polish remover is great for removing nail polish, and it's also great for some DIY uses around the home. From eliminating scratches to fixing the consistency of correction fluid, its uses are varied but all effective. With nail polish remover, you can also clean your computer keyboard, get rid of ink stains, and even remove leeches from your skin. Talk about versatile!

How To: 16 Tips for Staying Awake When You're Tired

While there's an art to surviving the all-nighter, there's also an art to staying awake throughout the day when you're operating on little to no sleep. In 1964, the record for sleep deprivation was set by 17-year-old Randy Gardner, who stayed awake for an incredible 264 hours and 12 minutes. Now while we're not out to challenge Randy for his title, we can certainly look to him for inspiration in beating back our own fatigue.

How To: 9 DIY Ways to Eliminate Static Cling Without Using Dryer Sheets

If you ever need to get rid of static cling quickly while on the go, simply run the article of clothing through a metal hanger to dispel the static. You could also place lotion on your skin underneath the clothes you are wearing to get rid of the dryness that is causing the static cling.

How To: 9 More DIY Ways to Painlessly Remove Splinters from Your Skin

Got a stubborn splinter lodged into your finger? There are a number of ways you can remove it easily using materials found around your home. Elmer's glue, banana peels, eggshells, potatoes, and baking soda are all great at painlessly extracting those tiny pieces of wood, glass, or other material.

How To: 7 Easy Ways to Remove Water Ring Marks from Wood Furniture

Summertime is officially here, which means that the likelihood of someone leaving a glass of cold water on your wooden furniture without a coaster and leaving behind an annoying water ring mark on the surface has increased tenfold. What can you do to get rid of that annoying mark?

How To: Unshrink Jeans & Other Clothes That Shrunk in the Dryer

Is your cotton tank top or beloved pair of jeans feeling a bit tighter than usual? If you need to un-shrink an article of clothing that has been left in the dryer for too long, then you can use baby shampoo, hair conditioner, or simply water to gently stretch and pull the fabric back into its original shape.

How To: 8 Ways to Cry on the Spot

Are you an aspiring actor with a crying scene in a play? Or are you a shameless manipulator who will need some cheap sympathy from the jury during a court case? You never know when the ability to shed fake tears will come in handy.

How To: 11 Weird & Wonderful Uses for Magnets

Other than sticking your crayon drawings onto your refrigerator door, magnets have a variety of unexpected and sometimes surprisingly practical uses, ranging from keeping your chip bags sealed to creating weird patterns on your nail beds using magnetic nail polish.

Winter Warmth: How to Make a Cheap Microwavable Heat Pack Using a Sock & Dry Beans

Using dry beans and and some scraps of cotton fabric, you can make your own DIY microwavable heat pack which can be used to relieve sore muscles, warm your hands when stepping outside into cold weather, heating up your pillow case on a freezing night, and more.

DIY Cat Repellent Spray: 3 All-Natural Recipes That Are Safe for Indoor & Outdoor Cats

Whether you want to prevent your cat from scratching up the couch or deter stray cats from using your front yard as their personal litter box, a DIY cat repellent spray can go a long way in keeping unwanted furry guests away.

How To: 13 Unexpected Uses for Vinegar You've Probably Never Heard Of

We all know that distilled white vinegar is great as a general non-toxic cleaning solution and for deodorizing funky smelling rooms, but did you know that vinegar is also great for curing hiccups, deterring ants from invading your home, relieving jellyfish stings, and testing the alkalinity of your garden soil?

How To: 21 Cool Ways to Use a Paper Clip

A single paper clip can go a long way. Having just one of these ubiquitous office supplies can make you a smartphone mount, replace your broken zipper tab, scratch your lottery ticket, and eject the CD from your stuck DVD drive.

How To: 10 Helpful Non-Kitty Uses for Cat Litter

Whether or not you have a feline companion at home, a bag of cat litter makes for a handy household staple that can help prevent grease fires, add traction to slippery icy steps, remove grease spots, preserve your fresh flowers, and clear algae from your backyard koi pond.

How To: Effectively Disguise Yourself and Keep Your Identity Secret

The art of disguise is a very important skill to master, no matter if you're a hounded celebrity trying to ditch the paparazzi or just someone who'd like to step out of the house without being recognized. If you think simply throwing on sunglasses and a hat is a good disguise, you are so wrong.