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How To: 8 Weird Tips to Help You Fall Asleep
Do you have trouble falling asleep? If the usual methods don't work for you anymore, like taking a warm bath or drinking warm milk, check out some of the more unconventional methods below, like drinking melatonin-rich cherry juice or listening to a sleep hypnosis video before bedtime.
How To: 10 More Truly Last-Minute Halloween Costume Ideas for the Cheap & Lazy
If you still have no idea what to wear for Halloween, but don't want to spend a lot of money or time putting together a costume that doesn't completely suck, welcome to the club.
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: 8 Practical Ways to Use Bacon Grease
Need to get a painful splinter out of your skin? Apply some bacon grease onto the affected area and place a band-aid on it overnight. The bacon grease will soften the skin tissue and draw out the splinter, making it easier to remove with tweezers the next day.
DIY Eye Makeup Remover: 11 Natural Substitutes You Probably Already Have at Home
Makeup can get expensive, but removing it from your eyes shouldn't have to be. Thankfully, some DIY eye makeup remover probably already exists in your refrigerator, kitchen pantry, or medicine cabinet.
Tell If It's Ripe or Not: The Ultimate Cheat Sheet for Tricky Fruits
How can you tell if a coconut is ready to eat? The entire fruit is covered by a rock-hard exterior, so you can't really squeeze them to test their ripeness. Instead, feel the three "eyes" at the bottom of the coconut. If they feel slightly soft and dry, that's a good sign that the fruit is mature.
How To: Your DIY Bug Repellent Guide to Common Household Pests
Contrary to popular belief, eliminating household pests from your home can be accomplished without completely bombing your living space with a mess of toxic fumes. Whether you have annoying fruit flies in the kitchen, fleas on your beloved pet or silverfish lurking around your bathroom, it is very likely that a DIY, non-toxic and super inexpensive solution exists for your household bug problem.
How To: Increase Your Alcohol Tolerance
Whether you're embarking on an epic wine tour with friends or simply want to last an entire night of socializing and drinking with important people, there are times when good alcohol tolerance comes in handy. If you're a lightweight who would probably be labeled as a "cheap date" when it comes to drinking, you can actually increase your alcohol tolerance gradually by drinking more on a regular basis. Who would have thought?
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: 8 Things You Can Use Shaving Cream For Besides Shaving
If you want to prevent your bathroom mirror from fogging up in the morning, simply rub shaving cream all over the surface before hopping into the shower.
Acupressure 101: Relieve Mental & Physical Stress Using These Acupoints
The next time you're feeling tired and stressed out, pull down on your earlobes firmly for a few seconds, or apply firm pressure to the indentation on your nose bridge between your eyebrows using your thumb for several minutes while breathing deeply. Sometimes a little acupressure is all you need to give an extra lift to your mental and physical health.
How To: The Best Way to Peel a Hard-Boiled Egg
So, you want to decrease your hard-boiled egg peeling time because you don't want the time- consuming task to cut into your limited lunch break. Or maybe you've somehow been burdened with the task of cooking a lot of homemade deviled eggs for a big family gathering. How do you peel a hard-boiled egg as quickly and efficiently as possible?
How To: Pickpocket-Proof Yourself from Thieving Hands
When you are in Rome, do as the Romans do... avoid carrying your wallet in the back pocket of your jeans. But no matter what city or country you are in, there are several easy precautions you can take to keep yourself as pickpocket-proof as possible so that your amazing travel memories won't be sullied by the experience of having your camera or passport stolen.
How To: Make Giant Homemade Soap Bubbles
These dog days of summer are the perfect window of time to make giant homemade soap bubbles outdoors.
How To: 8 Awesome Uses for Chalk That You've Probably Never Heard Of
Commonly associated with classroom blackboards and sidewalk art, chalk can also be used to repel ants from invading your home, lift grease stains from clothes, prevent your tools from rusting, and hide your wall scrapes and nicks in a pinch.
How To: Make Invisible Ink
Need to pass along an important message on paper without having it accidentally discovered by your archenemy? Using very common household products, you can easily whip up an invisible ink recipe and write out your secret message with the solution. All the recipient needs to do is heat up the paper using a stovetop of light bulb, or brush the surface of the paper with a simple iodine mixture to read the message.
How To: 8 More Weird Tips to Help You Fall Asleep Faster
If cherry juice and curling your toes didn't help you fall asleep right away, as recommended in my previous post of 8 Weird Tips to Help You Fall Asleep, then here are some more unconventional tips and tricks you can try to help you start nodding away into dreamland ASAP.
How To: 13 Non-Edible Uses for Bread
The best thing since the creation of bread may just be... sliced bread. Soft bread slices have the perfect absorbent texture for picking up tiny pieces of broken glass, gently cleaning dust off your precious oil paintings, and even safely removing splinters from your finger when soaked with milk and taped to your skin with a bandage.
How To: 18 Useful Things You Can Do with Cardboard Tubes
Don't toss out those cardboard tubes just yet. Whenever you have one leftover from a roll of paper towels, toilet paper, or wrapping paper, hang on to it, because it's got some great DIY potential.
How To: 4 Easy Tricks to Removing a Stuck Ring from Your Finger
If you ever find yourself with a ring that won't come off your swollen fingers, grab some Windex, lubricate the area around your ring below your knuckle, and slowly wiggle your ring around until it slides past your knuckle.
Natural First Aid Box: 9 Household Items for Minor Medical Needs
Itchy bee stings, sore throats, swelling muscles, minor scraps, splinters... all of these common ailments can easily be fixed with things you've probably got lying around at home in your kitchen and bathroom cabinets. Honey, ginger, castor oil, garlic, baking soda, aloe vera, white vinegar, and chamomile tea are all great natural remedies for your next minor medical need. No drugstore trips required (except for maybe some Elmer's glue).
Extreme Frugal Living: Tips For Living In Your Car
Whether you really need to pinch pennies for a long road trip or are really at the end of your rope with your financial and living situation, desperate times call for desperate measures--and sometimes that involves living in your car for an extended period of time. It is certainly not easy, but with the right equipment and know-how, making your car your abode is certainly possible if you make the continuous effort to keep things clean, be smart about where you park your car and avoid arousing...
How To: Make Your Own DIY Watercolor Coffee Mug
Using water, nail polish, and a white ceramic mug, you can easily create your own artsy DIY coffee mug with a "watercolor" effect colored on its surface.
How To: 14 Clever, Non-Crafty Uses for Popsicle Sticks
If you ever need an emergency finger splint for a broken or sprained finger, use a popsicle stick. Wrap medical tape around your broken finger to the side of a popsicle stick until you can receive proper medical attention.
How To: 12 Weirdly Practical Uses for Potatoes
Sick of using potatoes as side dishes for your dinner meal? Left in their uncooked form, raw potatoes have a variety of weirdly practical uses, from aiding you in removing a broken light bulb from its fixture to keeping your ski goggles clear in the cold weather. A raw potato can also help with your floral arrangement, add new life to your beat-up shoes, and absorb the excess salt from your overly salted soup and stews.
How To: Make a Miniature Meditative Zen Garden for Your Desktop
If you don't have the backyard space to make a Japanese rock garden where you can spend long afternoons meditatively raking ripple-like patterns into the sand below your feet, settle for the next best thing by making a simple, miniature zen garden that can easily fit on the corner of your desk or nightstand.
How To: Cold-Brew Perfectly Refreshing Iced Coffee at Home
Iced coffee may not be as simple as brewing hot coffee and sticking it in the fridge until it cools down, but it's still very simple to make if you plan ahead.
How To: 6 Brain Hacks That'll Help Motivate You into Getting Things Done
What to do when your motivation is running low and you absolutely don't want to do something that needs to get done? If nothing is working for you, hack your brain with the following techniques to motivate yourself.
How To: 9 Weird Study Tips to Help You Excel in School & Life
Chew on gum while you're reviewing study material, and then chew that same flavor on the day of the exam to help jog your memory. Or, if you're having difficulty understanding a concept, see if you can find that same concept explained on the internet in the form of a YouTube video or a visual infographic. Studying and memorization works best when you engage all of your senses instead of just one.
How To: 8 Crafty Ways to Reuse Old Christmas Ornaments & Decorations
Broken glass Christmas ornaments? Evergreen wreath falling apart? Before you throw away or donate Christmas decorations you no longer need, see if you can reuse or recycle them for better use year-round or for next year's holiday season.
How To: 8 Cool Things You Can Do with Rocks
Are your paper clips, pushpins, and other metallic objects always in a disarray on your work desk or drawer? To organize them more efficiently and in a visually cool way, paint over medium-sized rocks with magnetic paint and then use its magnetic surface to keep clips and other metallic items in place.
How To: 13 Unexpected to Downright Crazy Uses for Mason Jars
Invented by Philadelphia tinsmith John L. Manson in 1858 for canning and preserving perishables, mason jars are experiencing a major resurgence in the DIY community. In addition to being a handy storage device for both food and non-food items, its old-timey, quaintly antiquated look also makes for good drinking glasses, candle holders, flower vases and eye-pleasing decorations.
How To: Survive a Zombie Apocalypse
What should you do in case of a major zombie outbreak? Many of the best survival techniques follow the same logic as to how you should prepare for major natural disasters; stock up on food and medical supplies, have an escape route, and form a community of people you can work with. When you're dealing with the flesh-eating undead, it also helps to invest beforehand in full body armor, weapons, and basic parkour lessons so that you know how to scale walls and jump across buildings when a horde...
How To: 9 Ingenious Uses for Your Spare Contact Lens Cases
There are over 38 million people who wear contact lenses in the United States, but nearly a quarter of those never replace their contact lens case. If you're one of those folks, you probably have a drawer full of empty, unused lens cases in your home. Start putting them to good use!
How To: Change Negative Thoughts into Positive Ones
When we are dealing with something as abstract as your thought process, visualization is the best way to improve the way you think your thoughts. So what is the easiest way to change your negative thoughts? Literally imagine flipping them around to its optimistic counterpart. It also helps to imagine them as little monsters, too.
How To: 9 Things Disposable Diapers Are Good for Besides Poop
Need to keep your beloved houseplant alive while you're on vacation? Repot the plant with a disposable diaper at the bottom of the flowerpot before covering with soil; the diaper will help retain soil moisture at the bottom, which will keep your plant properly hydrated for a good window of time while you're gone.
Increase Your Willpower: 9 Mind Hacks for Better Self-Control
Have you already abandoned your New Year's resolutions? Maybe you need a refresher on how to stick to your goals and avoid succumbing to your worst temptations and unproductive habits. No matter where you are in life right now, all of us can benefit from increasing our sense of willpower.
How To: 13 Ways to Make Hot Chocolate Even Better Than It Already Is
Hot chocolate is great and all (especially when made at home with real dark chocolate bars and whole milk), but sometimes even old holiday classics need a taste upgrade from time to time.
How To: 11 Amazing Hacks You Should Know for Your Next Summer Beach Trip
Next time you go to the beach, stash a bottle of baby powder in your beach tote—even if you're not planning on changing any diapers. Before you head back home, dust your hands and feet with baby powder to remove sand particles quickly and easily, so you don't track any into your car or home.
How To: 7 Home Remedies for Growing Healthy, Strong Nails
How important is it to have healthy and strong nails? Strong nails are better for manicures and are also more pleasing to present in public. Regular nail growth is also an overall indicator of good health, while discolorations and indentations on your nail beds, or even just slow nail growth, can be a sign of underlying health problems.