The Secret Yumiverse Features
How To: Your Ultimate All-Nighter Survival Guide
Pulling an all-nighter for school, work or an important project is never fun. That being said, if you take the time and effort to prepare an ideal work space, minimize your distractions, and stay physically and mentally stimulated, you can maximize your productivity level without making your pre-dawn tasks too miserable or exhausting.
How To: Grow an Avocado Tree at Home
While it is convenient to buy avocados from the local supermarket, you can also start investing in the long-term goal of having free avocados coming from your own backyard by growing an avocado tree straight from the pit.
How To: 8 Unexpected Uses for Elmer's Glue
If you miss the weirdly satisfying sensation of peeling dried Elmer's glue from the surface of your skin, you can relive this childhood tactile memory by using it to remove splinters from your skin. Simply apply a thin layer of glue to the affected area, wait for it to dry, then peel it off, which will also pull the splinter out.
How To: Turn a Plastic Garbage Bag into a High-Flying DIY Kite
Where one sees plastic garbage bags, I see living creatures soaring high in the windy skies—and you can too. The choice is completely yours. But, wouldn't it be nice to spare one trash bag the indignity of holding waste?
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: Deal with Toxic and Belligerent People
Unfortunately, toxic and belligerent people are not as avoidable as we would like for them to be. They show up in our work place, schools, neighborhoods—sometimes even within our own circle of friends and family members. The best we can do is minimize our interactions with them and plan for exit strategies to cut the conversation short. If an interaction is avoidable because the person is your boss or family member, then arm yourself with a few verbal defense moves to keep yourself from getti...
How To: 15 Super-Practical Uses for Petroleum Jelly
In 1859, 22-year-old chemist Robert A. Chesebrough accidentally discovered petroleum jelly when he visited a working oil well in Titusville, Pennsylvania. Oil workers complained of a gooey substance referred to as "rod wax" which kept getting into the machinery and slowing them down. Chesebrough noticed that oil workers also smeared this same substance on their burn marks or dry skin to help speed the healing process.
How To: 5 Easy Tips for Keeping Your Smile Pearly White
Keep your smile pearly white without buying a teeth-whitening kit or making an expensive visit to the doctor's office. One popular home remedy is to add a little bit of baking soda to your tooth paste on a weekly basis when you brush your teeth. (Do not do this more than once a week, as too much baking soda can permanently erode the enamel on your teeth).
How To: 12 Nifty Ways to Reuse Plastic Grocery Bags
If you are like most people, you have a lot of plastic grocery bags lying around the house. Most of us end up reusing them as trash bags for small trash cans, doggy-doo pickup, kitty litter box liners, or plastic versions of a paper lunch sack.
Home Remedies for Dogs: Treating Fleas, Bad Breath, & Skunk Smell
They don't refer to them as "man's best friend" for nothing. Your dog can be your best pal and least judgmental confidante, so make sure you take good care of him or her! When the occasion arises (which is hopefully never), follow the three home remedies below for treatment of fleas, bad breath, and skunk smell—you may even save a few pennies in the process.
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: Open a Wine Bottle Without Using a Corkscrew
What do you do when you have a bottle of wine ready to uncork, but no corkscrew on hand?
How To: Make a Non-Toxic, Reusable Air Freshener to Keep Your Car Smelling Awesome
If you want to keep the inside of your car smelling awesome, don't buy commercial air fresheners. They contain toxic synthetic chemicals which can be harmful to your health.
How To: 10 Weird Ways to De-Stress
We've all heard that deep breathing exercises, calming music and a good night's sleep help relieve stress, but what are some other unconventional tips to help you feel more calm and relaxed during hectic times?
How To: 15 Surprising Things You Can Make in a Crockpot
While crockpots are commonly used for making soups and stews or for slow-cooking meats, they are also surprisingly useful for making other foods that you may not associate with a slow cooker, such as brownies, bread, cheesecake, fruit butters, and even yogurt.
Chill Out & Get Enlightened: A Newbie's Guide to Meditation
Want to increase your creativity, attention span, intuition, self-knowledge—maybe even your sense of oneness with the universe? Start meditating on a regular basis. In addition to improving your concentration, mental health, and capacity to handle stress, regular meditation practice has also been scientifically proven to have numerous physical benefits such as lowering your blood pressure, improving your immune system, and adding more life to your years.
How To: 12 Handy Hacks for Your Next Camping Adventure
A ziplock freezer bag full of raw egg yolk and chopped up vegetables in a pot of boiling water may not sound like the most appetizing way to make an omelet, but this technique definitely works when you're camping and don't have a stove.
How To: 10 Ways to Make a DIY Bird Feeder Out of Random Household Objects
Want to attract more birds into your backyard for your viewing pleasure? With a simple household objects and bird seeds, you can easily turn your backyard or outdoor balcony into a bustling destination for your neighborhood birds.
How To: 9 Mind Hacks for Avoiding Procrastination
Are you dreading a big, tedious task on your to-do list? Commit to only doing 10 minutes of it or only the very first minimal step. By lowering the hurdle for getting the task started, it is very likely that once you start doing it, you won't feel so bad about getting the rest of the task completed.
How To: 11 Easy DIY Home Remedies for Dandruff
If your shoulders are starting to look like a white Christmas in the summertime, then you might have a chronic dandruff problem. Thankfully, there are numerous DIY home remedies at your disposal, which use cheap and common household products that are probably already in your kitchen or medicine cabinet.
How To: 12 Things Plastic Wrap Is Good For (Besides Just Sealing Food)
Don't you hate it when the ice cream in your freezer loses its soft, smooth textures and has ice crystals all over its surface? Prevent this from happening by covering the ice cream in the carton with a sheet of plastic wrap before closing the lid tightly.
How To: 9 Ways to Increase Your Focus for Getting Things Done
What would happen to your productivity if you had a way to block Internet access to your favorite time-wasting websites like Facebook, Twitter, Wikipedia and trashy celebrity gossip blogs? If you are like most people, you would probably get a lot more work done.
How To: 11 Clever Things You Can Use an Ordinary Bar of Soap For
Hate the feeling of dirt beneath your fingernails after gardening? Rather than digging out the dirt afterwards, take a preventive measure by digging your fingernails into a bar of soap, which will keep them clean and wash out easily afterwards.
How To: Tips for Keeping Your Flowers Fresh & Long-Lasting
Someone just gave you a bouquet of freshly cut flowers... how do you enjoy them for as long as possible before they start wilting and drooping?
How To: Make a Heart-Shaped Hardboiled Egg
Add a little love to your next bento box or afternoon snack with a heart-shaped hardboiled egg. Other than one freshly cooked and peeled hardboiled egg, all you need is one milk carton, one round chopstick and rubber bands. Perfect for brightening up your special someone's day (and much more original than a dozen red roses!).
How To: 12 Tips for Quitting a Bad Habit
Quitting a bad habit is not as straightforward as simply quitting cold turkey and getting it right the first time. So what to do if you really want to quit doing something that isn't good for you?
How To: 8 Additional Home Remedies for Relieving Common Cold Symptoms
Have you come down with the dreaded common cold during the holiday season? While it is always recommended to rest your body, drink a lot of water and eat chicken soup, some of the less common home remedies listed below may also help expedite the recovery process.
How To: Survive Deadly Bites and Stings from Wild Animals
As a follow-up to an earlier post on surviving deadly animal attacks in the wild and another one on relieving a jellyfish sting, listed below are things you should do (and shouldn't do) if you are ever bitten or stung by potentially poisonous wild animals.
How To: The Secret to Keeping Cake Fresh
You just baked a yummy cake, but who can eat it all? If you're lucky, you don't have a gang of family members gobbling up your leftovers—it's just you and one delicious slice a day for the rest of the week. But you don't want your cake getting stale on you. The secret is all in the way you slice it—and a spare apple doesn't hurt, either.
How To: 18 Amazing Uses for Essential Oils
An essential oil is a concentrated hydrophobic liquid containing volatile aroma compounds from plants. Commonly used for aromatherapy purposes, essential oils can also be used to remove sticker gunk, make your room smell nice while vacuuming, concoct DIY toothpaste, deter rodents from hanging out in your house, and more.
How To: 9 Things You Can Throw in Your Dishwasher Besides Dishes
Not only does a dishwasher save you the manual labor of physically washing your dirty kitchenware, it can sterilize your make-up brushes, launder your favorite baseball cap, and even cook up your next dinner.
How To: Fake Confidence
Do you feel like you need a confidence boost in social situations? Fake it 'til you make it—and in the meantime, try incorporating a couple of body language and posture tricks to appear confident before others. Appear verbally confident by speaking only when necessary, acting decisive, and make a point to say the other person's name.
How To: 7 Extraordinary Uses for Aluminum Foil
It turns out that the silver crinkly material traditionally used for wrapping leftovers and making funny hats to block out messages from extraterrestrial beings is pretty darn useful for a number of other random but handy tasks, such as sharpening your scissors and keeping bugs away from your vegetable garden. What can aluminum foil not do? Seriously.
How To: 11 Amazing Ways to Reuse Used Coffee Grounds
Do you drink a lot of coffee? Before you toss your used coffee grounds into the trash or compost bin, see if you can use them to deodorize your freezer, cover up your wooden furniture scratches, and help clean up the grease and grime from your pots and pans.
How To: Throw the Perfect Punch
Marital arts master Bruce Lee had his famous one-inch punch technique. He knew that putting all of your weight and energy into one inch of movement had far more power than moving your arm one foot.
How To: Make Colored Snow Spray & Other Cool DIY Winter Weather Tips
Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow! So you can make some awesome stuff with it. Yes, snow is icy cold and a pain to shovel, but it's also what classic holiday memories are made of. Build a snowman or a snow penguin. Or if you're feeling ambitious, build a huge snow cave you can hang out in with your friends.
How To: 4 Ways to Make a Christmas Wreath Out of Paper Waste
Forget those boring evergreen wreaths with the thick red ribbon and the pine cones that everyone else has hanging in their homes. Make your own DIY upcycled wreath using newspaper, paper shopping bags, cardboard coffee cup sleeves, toilet paper tubes, or even that trashy paperback novel you bought for a dime at the local thrift store that you're probably never going to read.
How To: Your Guide to Lazy Baking, Part 2: How to Make Mini-Pizzas in Muffin Tins
Continuing the theme of using a muffin pan to quickly whip up super-simple and super-delicious baked things (see Part 1: how to make mini-pies in muffin tins), how about making yourself a savory snack in the form of a pizza cupcake?
How To: 10 Super-Practical Uses for Dishwashing Soap
Bored of using your bottle of dishwashing soap for just washing dishes? You're in luck. Not surprisingly, the soapy liquid commonly used for removing stubborn food build-up from your eating utensils can also be used as a general cleaner for washing windows, removing clothing and carpet stains, and cleaning your blender without taking it apart. For more unusual uses, dishwashing liquid is surprisingly useful for prepping your nails before a manicure and can even be used to kill fleas.
How To: 11 Cool Ways to Reuse Old Jeans
Do you have a bunch of old jeans that no longer fit you or are too outdated to wear in public? If you are handy with a sewing machine, the possibilities for upcycling your jeans into something crafty are endless. You can update your old denims into a jean tote bag, yoga mat bag, quilt, or a super-handy utility belt (or mini-apron).