Hot The Secret Yumiverse How-Tos
How To: Chill a Lukewarm Can of Soda in Less Than 5 Minutes
A lukewarm can of soda placed in a refrigerator can take about 45 minutes to chill. On the other hand, a lukewarm can of soda placed in a bowl of ice, water, and table salt can take less than 5 minutes.
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: 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?
Guerrilla Gardening 101: How to Make a Seed Bomb
Build up your arm strength and beautify your local community in a single stroke by dropping homemade seed bombs in and around your neighborhood. A guerrilla gardening technique anyone can participate in, seed bombing is a fun and effective way to add tiny oases of wildflowers and healthy green plants in vacant lots and other overlooked and neglected parcels of land.
How To: 12 NASA-Approved Houseplants for Improving Indoor Air Quality
Back in the '80s, NASA and the Associated Landscape Contractors of America did a study where they discovered which houseplants were the most effective in purifying the air in space facilities. Though you may not be living in a rocket ship, you can definitely benefit from having one or more of these plants in your home.
How To: 14 Weirdly Useful (And Non-Drinkable) Uses for Soda Pop
If you just gave up drinking soda and you don't know what to do with the six-pack of Coke gathering dust in your garage, then this article is perfect for you. The acidity, sugar content and carbonated nature of most soda drinks are perfect for a number of surprisingly practical uses for DIY home projects, garden work, kitchen cleanup, car maintenance, cooking and more.
How To: 6 DIY Cat Toys You Can Make Out of Household Items
Need to keep your favorite feline entertained at home? Using common household items lying around your bathroom or kitchen, you can craft together DIY cat toys that cost nothing to make and will provide endless entertainment for your favorite cat.
How To: Make Realistic-Looking Fake Blood
Store-bought fake blood isn't too expensive, but the consistency and color are always the same. Real blood varies, from bright red when oxygenated (arterial blood) to deep, dark red when deoxygenated (venous blood), and it can be either thick or thin. So to achieve the best special effect, you're better off making a batch of DIY fake blood yourself to get the look and texture you're going for. And it's very simple to do.
How To: Send a Secret Message Inside an Egg
Whether it's for Valentine's Day or you simply want to send a note to someone in a unique way, a secret message inside of a seemingly untouched raw egg is the perfect way to go.
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: Your Guide to Lazy Baking, Part 4: How to Make Cupcakes for Two Using One Bowl
The most dangerous thing about having a bunch of baked goods in your home is the possibility that you will gorge on all of them. If you are in a cupcake-y mood, but want to keep your sugar-happy gluttonous side in check, just make enough batter for two cupcakes in a single mixing bowl. Sharing is optional.
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 remove splinters from your skin very easily and quite painlessly.
Street Art 101: How to Make a Wheatpaste Poster
Itching to make your own guerrilla-style street art on the side of buildings, freeway overpasses, and abandoned billboards? The beauty of street art is that you don't need an expensive canvas or frame to display your creative expression.
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 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: 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: 10 Unusual Uses for Discarded Eggshells
Many foods do not come in natural packaging that is as useful and versatile as its content. Eggs are an exception. So, the next time you buy a carton of eggs, be sure to hold onto the eggshells after you are finished cooking with them.
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.
How To: Fold a Chopsticks Rest from Its Paper Wrapper
The next time you go out for sushi with friends, impress your company by fashioning your own chopstick rest using the paper wrapper the wooden chopsticks come in. Keeping the ends of your chopstick off the table surface makes for good hygiene (who knows when was the last time the table was really wiped clean?), and there is no awkward moment of getting your chopsticks off your plate when your server whisks your finished plate away mid-meal. Gotta love functional origami.
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: 9 Non-Toxic DIY Techniques for Killing Weeds in Your Garden
Got pesky weeds in your garden? Rather than stocking up on toxic weed killers from your local gardening store, you probably already have everything you need to kill weeds in your kitchen or living room.
How To: 15 Ways to Reuse Old CD Spindle Cases
Compact discs...remember those? Before you toss your old CD spindle cases away, consider upcycling them to a DIY terrarium, cable storage container, hamster toy, rainfall shower head, bird feeder, bagel sandwich lunch box, and more.
How To: 11 Awesome Uses for Paint Chips
Paint chips, small cards that show different colors from paint manufacturers, can be picked up for free at your local hardware store to help you decide what color you want to paint your living space. They can also be used for a number of crafty DIY projects, such as making your own drink coasters, gift tags, bookmarks, and more.
How To: 9 Useful Things You Can Do with a Turkey Baster Besides the Obvious
Thanksgiving is still a few weeks away, but it's definitely not too early to pull out that turkey baster hiding in your kitchen drawer. There are many things you can do with it besides baste a roasting turkey.
How To: 10 Easy Recipe Hacks for Cooking Food in Your Hotel Room
Traveling can be pretty expensive, but your meals don't have to be. Though hot dogs made in the cheap coffeemaker of your hotel room probably won't be the best dinner ever, you can bet that it'll be oodles cheaper than ordering room service or going to a fancy restaurant.
How To: 10 Broken or Worn Out Things That Can Be Made into Something Useful
Despite the tremendous increase in recycling programs across the states, 136 million tons of municipal solid waste still ends up in landfills. So, the next time you throw away something, conjure up your DIY spirit and ask that trash, "Are you really trash, or just the beginning of my next ingenious project?"
How To: 10 Alternative Uses for Your Old Oatmeal
Oatmeal may not be the most exciting breakfast option in the world, but in uncooked form the oats can be used to neutralize odors in your refrigerator, relieve your dog's itchy skin, soak up kitchen oil spills and treat your poison ivy or chicken pox itch.
How To: Make a Smoke Bomb with Sugar and Potassium Nitrate
Surprisingly, making your very own smoke grenade is pretty easy—and cheap. All you need is a saucepan or skillet, piezoelectric lighter, sugar and some potassium nitrate (easily available online and in most gardening stores).
How To: 13 Handy Cooking and Baking Substitutions for Missing Ingredients
What do you do when you're right in the middle of your cooking or baking groove and realize that you're missing an extremely vital ingredient? Rather than delaying your next meal or one-person cake-eating party with a last minute trip to the supermarket, get around your missing ingredient by substituting another common ingredient. Below are 13 handy cooking and baking substitutions that just might save you time or money for your next cooking and baking adventure.
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.
CONTEST WINNER: How to Peel an Orange in Just One Piece
Thank you to everybody who submitted entries to last week's Secret Tips Of The Yumiverse: DIY Contest!
How To: 5 Clever Uses for Toothpaste (No Teeth Involved)
Almost every human being on the planet uses toothpaste daily, but typically for just one task—oral hygiene. Keeping your teeth clean is undoubtedly important, but this magical mixture of abrasives, fluoride, and detergents must be useful for more than just scrubbing your chops, right? For instance, it's great at removing scuff marks from shoes!
How To: Collect Safe Drinking Water from the Wilderness
Without water, human beings can only survive for a few days. When you are out in the wilderness, knowing how to collect safe drinking water can be a matter of life or death. Large plastic bags are extremely handy for collecting condensation from grass and tree leaves, as well as creating a solar still. Dew water can be collected very easily with a clean towel and a small bowl. Large waterproof vinyl sheets are especially good for keeping your belongings from getting wet—and for collecting cle...
How To: 7 Great Things Black Pepper Can Be Used for Besides Cooking
Like table salt, black pepper has its unexpectedly handy uses that goes beyond seasoning your meals at the dining table. You can use black pepper to keep ants from invading your home, drive away bugs from eating your delicious garden vegetables, temporarily fix a radiator leak, and even stop bleeding on a minor wound.
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: 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: Read Your Own Palm Lines
Palmistry is the art of characterizing or foretelling the future through the reading of palm lines. Though there are certainly many variations and techniques when it comes to interpreting the meaning of palm lines, you can brush up on Palmistry 101 by getting acquainted with your four major palm lines: the heart line, head line, life line, and fate line.
How To: Make an Upside-Down Tomato Planter Using an Empty Soda Bottle
Combine your passion for drinking soda and growing your own vegetables by making an upside-down tomato planter! This gardening project is especially great for people who have limited space for growing their own green things. To make this, you'll be using an empty soda bottle, aluminum foil, masking tape, twine, potting soil, and other simple materials.
How To: 12 Helpful Uses for Those Annoying Bread Clips
Plastic bread clips, which are primarily used to keep bread bags closed, can also be used to add new life to your old flip-flops, scrape gunk off your nonstick pans, keep matching socks together before laundering, label your cable cords, and more.
The Dried Beans Cheat Sheet: Soaking & Cooking Times for 15 Different Beans
While it may be tempting to rely on canned beans to save time, going through the process of preparing dried beans for cooking can actually be better for you in the long run—for both your physical and financial health.
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