Rinse your dishes after eating. This Kris6 the food shmutz from turning into a crust you’ll have to scour off and won’t wash off completely in the dishwasher.
Dish detergents actually need some food schmutz to work properly. I rinse stuff if it’s particularly dirty or caked on, but only enough to get the big stuff off - I always leave a little schmutz. All my dishes come out perfectly clean.
I used to live with people who actually refused to rinse their dishes when they were done.
One time, they tossed their salad Tupperware in the sink while it was sealed closed, and literally had like half the salad left in it. They didn’t bother trying to throw it away when they were done with it at work, or when they got home. It was sitting there for a couple days by the time I went to do the dishes. Also they’d regularly invite friends over, cook them dinner, and then leave the dishes for me to do the next day.
Getting a Shavette. The prospect of it being sharper than a straight razor makes you think that you will slice your face off, but in my experience at worst I had a nick or 2. The blades are dirt cheap and perform better than multi bladed razors.
I’ve been getting ads for Henson razors -Not an endorsement! I know nothing about safety razors- . But the idea of not buying razor cartridges anymore is attractive, provided I’m not cutting myself all the time. But supposedly this sort is less likely to cut me, even if I’m a klutz?
I started with a $15 double edge safety razor that I used for years. I bought the $70 Henson razor because I wanted a better shave, but the results are about the same as the $15 razor I started with. The Henson razor glides better so I can get the same quality shave with less time. I can also shave twice (one across the grain once against) if I want a better shave, but it still isn’t the smooth shave I was hoping for. The henson razor came with 100 blades, but you can also get 100 blades for $10 on amazon.
Take one end in each hand, hold it “like a frown” in front of you.
Bend it in half downward and bite the peak of the bend with one of your canines.
when it snaps open, shove one half of the banana into your mouth, (chew if needed, then) swallow.
Shovel the other half into your mount, (chew if needed, then) swallow.
Bananas are the way they are through millenia of selective breeding, so there’s no reason to think that monkeys know anything we don’t. If pinching the bottom is easier than bending the stem, your banana isn’t ripe yet and doesn’t want to be eaten until later.
Yes. Every time, it’s gone less well than opening a banana from the stem end, unless the banana was horrendously underripe. I’ve never had the problem the alternative approach is claiming to fix unless I’ve intentionally opened the banana badly on purpose to prove a point about the problem really being people opening from the stem end incompetently.
While I can concede your point that it’s feasible and possibly even more practical to open from the stem, I gotta say that since switching to the other end years ago(because I saw a similar thread on reddit), it’s been super easy and I’ve had zero issues. The stem just has a higher rate of fucking up, but it’s not like either end will fully decimate the banana. Peeling properly after it’s opened is an easy fix either way.
A) that seems backwards: an under ripe banana will be stiff inside so you can snap the peel around the stem when you bend it, while a riper, softer banana will mush inside when you bend the stem. And,
A) The peel becomes easier to tear faster than the inside gets softer. You don’t need to snap it, it doesn’t need nearly enough tension to count as a snap once it’s ripe.
B) The banana’s been selectively bred to want to be as delicious as possible. It only wants you to be happy.
My partner hates when I open bananas like this because there’s a little dark part of the banana under that end of the peel that she calls “The Ban-anus” and thinks it’s gross even if I pick off that part and don’t eat it.
If you want to open a padlock and don’t have the key, you can almost certainly break it open with 2 big wrenches.
I only had 1 opportunity to try that yet, when removing a 20 year old lock some stupid kid left on my stuff and then forgot where I put the key, but man did it feel empowering.
You can practice this trick at any romantic bridge. Do you really think whoever etched their initials on the lock is still together and would notice? Please
You can shim a surprising number of them with a cut up soda can. If you’ve got the time, lockpicks are pretty easy to buy and a novice can pick most locks in less than an hour with a “raking” technique.
If you can’t defeat the lock, attack the mount. A lot of doors/drawers/cabinets use thin punched steel, or mild steel for the hasp/lock point. You can get through those in a few minutes with files, saws, pliers, etc.
My landleech padlocked the basement and attic of the house I rent. I keep a large screwdriver for exactly this eventuality. Something goes wrong in the basement and that lock point is done for. Just slip it in the gap around the padlock and pull. Will only take about 200N to rip the thing off the door and I can get way more than that with a little bit of leverage.
With so many places now taking credit over cash, I’m not sure how relevant this is anymore.
I actually tried doing the opposite for a while. I’d leave my phone home and just leave the house with cash, keys, and a notebook. Lots of places gave me the stinkeye paying with cash and some places refused to accept it. I wish this weren’t the case. The percentage every business pays per credit card transaction hasn’t helped with inflated prices.
When a business is busy, they don’t like having to stop what they’re doing to figure out the change. I’ve seen people stumble trying to figure out what bills and coins add up to what the POS is telling them. I feel like I should be apologizing for paying with tangible currency.
Right. Be it plastic or digital, it’s still credit. It still goes through a point of sale system. Visa or Mastercard still get a kickback.
I was in London last month and everything was Apple Pay / Google pay. You can of course use a card to tap but I rarely saw anyone use anything but their phone.
Safety razors - I’ve got thick growth and I was spending more and more on expensive multi-blade razors trying to find a decent shave without the blade going dull after 3 uses. The answer was to have less, better quality blades rather than the expensive trash in the market. A safety razor multipack costs a pittance and has lasted me over a year. Each blade is 2 sided and can be flipped. And when you’re done with it, it can be recycled with no plastic waste. There’s literally no down side if you wet shave.
Electric screwdriver - it doesn’t matter how much DIY you do or how rarely you make IKEA furniture, you still need an electric screwdriver.
Brain hacks - your brain and body are predictable physical objects that are programmed a certain way. If you take the time to learn how they work, you can use that to your advantage. e.g. If you know that procrastination isn’t a time management problem, but rather an emotional regulation problem about the task that’s due; then you can start addressing the cause. Or if you want to build a new habit, you can combine it with something you like, to make you look forward to it (e.g. pick a TV show you really want to watch and only allow yourself to watch it while you’re on the treadmill). Or realise that discipline and motivation are finite resources in the day. There’s too much info to cover here, but I learn about these things from podacsts mostly:
“Good enough” tech - You will save a lot of money if you define your use case for tech and then buy a product that is good enough to do the job (and preferably secondhand). I’m currently writing this out on a laptop I bought last week for £150 from eBay, brand new condition Dell, Intel 8th gen i7, 16GB RAM and half TB NVME drive. My gym TV is a £30 IPS Dell monitor with a Fire TV stick.
Facebook Marketplace - make a dummy account for a facebook marketplace. I have bought tons of “like new” things in brand new condition (e.g. a whole home weights gym setup) for a fraction of brand new price. Also if there’s anything I want to get rid of, then I just post it for sale. I have had a completely worn out, cosmetically destroyed desk that I posted online for £1. Someone came and collected it the same day. It saved me a trip to the junkyard by having someone come collect it and saved the waste by going to someone who will use it. 2nd pro tip: never post anything for free. Scumbag entitled people monitor facebook for free deals and you will have a bad time. Post things for £1 and you’ll get serious people who will be grateful.
Accept what you can’t change - your life will be much better if you stop spending energy pushing against things you can’t influence. Traffic cop walking away after giving you a ticket? Accept the hit and walk away. You took a risk not paying for parking, it didn’t work out. Go home and tell your spouse about it; then move on with your life.
I have given away things I state are broken but if someone wants to try and fix them it’s free on Marketplace. I did not have to take one thing to the dump when I moved last time this way. The guy messaged me later and said he was able to get a new pump for my old espresso machine and get it working nicely, so good for him.
I fully agree on the safety razor! I got so frustrated with the multiblade razors. Since I tried the safety razor, I never looked back. And as a woman, I don’t have a beard or super thick hair, they work their charm just the same :)
I bought a 50 pack of feather blades and a 12 pack of arko sticks in 2014 and I’m still going through them. I’ve been shaving for a decade on like a $30 expense.
I’ve got a pre-paid, burner sim card for bullshit like this so I don’t have to use my real number for anything.
Keep a bullshit number, bullshit email address and keep bullshit name/DoB. The pro-tip there is to start valuing your privacy and stop giving companies your data.
One time I was in Mexico with my wife while our daughter was still a baby and the lady at the front desk of the hotel where we were staying offered us a crib we could borrow. It was a kind gesture, but I was a little concerned because the crib seemed wobbly. I realized there were some screws loose but though I had a multitool on me, the holes were stripped.
So later, I was talking with a local and he’s like “I can fix that.” He comes over and pulls a pack of toothpicks out of his pocket. He sticks one into each hole and breaks it off so that it’s not sticking out anymore. Then he drives the screw back in. I shook the crib after that and it was rock solid!
Now I always keep some toothpicks handy. Fast-forward to just this year. My daughter is now an adult living in a condo, and was complaining the screw popped out of a kitchen cabinet door when her roommate yanked on it too hard. “I can fix that.”
Another adjacent life hack is when assembling flat pack furniture, use a quality wood glue on all the joints and connectors, but especially those little wood dowels. It won’t make it indestructible, but it’ll hold up far better over time.
I’m so glad you posted this - my integrated fridge door has dropped slightly after being taken off and put back on when installed. Can’t really screw back into mdf/chipboard/whatever and I’ve been stressing about getting it fixed for months because whilst it’ll get worse over time, it technically works and no doubt the fitter would say I need to take the whole thing out and replace the side panel.
Sometimes fridge doors sag because the bushings on the hinges break or deteriorate. I’ve fixed them before by adding washers in place of the bushings, or cutting a new bushing out of a hard plastic cutting board.
Well the toothpick shifts to one side as you put the screw in.
The problem with a stripped hole is that the hole is now as wide as the screw, so the screw has nothing to grip anymore. Conventional wisdom in this case is that you should get a wider screw and try again, but that’s not always something you have on hand, especially when travelling.
But the toothpick hack takes it the other way. It’s effectively narrowing the hole again by taking up space in it, and now your same screw can work again.
You can do something similar with damaged metal threads, instead of toothpicks using copper wire strands. Project Farm has a video on the technique comparing it to other fixes: youtube.com/watch?v=jknMrFOGMOQ
Start reading the nutritional facts on food packages. In the beginning it will make little sense. But as time goes by, you start understanding it a bit more and to notice patterns.
Eventually you start doing wiser choices. I’ve learned pretty quickly that the “healthy options” (e.g. low sugar cookies) are as bad for you than the regular ones.
Be sure to look at what they consider a serving size is when you do this. I’ve seen cases where you have something that is packaged as a single serving, but the nutritional facts say the serving size is half of that. I think this is just criminal. Like anyone would eat only half an instant ramen or whatever.
In the USA, this was supposed to be fixed in 2016 when the new nutrition facts label was introduced (the redesign that increased the font size of the calories).
By law, serving sizes must be based on the amount of food people typically consume, rather than how much they should consume.
Started really paying attention when my health imploded some years back. Would add that food content literacy tends to drive me to the outer edges of the grocery, and out of the middle where there’s more junky, processed crap.
People wonder why I’m an optimist. I’m not really. What I do is expect people to disappoint me. After all, none of us are perfect. When they don’t I’m surprised. When they do, I’m not mad, as just met my expectations.
I find people who don’t like other people expect them to not disappoint them and when they do they get angry and upset. It’s really just a mindset change.
Well to be fair it probably is pessimism. That doesn’t make you a pessimist in the same way that me expecting to wake up every morning doesn’t make me an optimist.
Yours is a somewhat more cynical way of writing it down, but the underlying mindset is one I share.
I prefer to see it as not expecting anything from anyone, rather than expecting them to disappoint you. It’s basically the same, but doesn’t feel as cynical.
It truly changes your life though, no matter how you see it. I can’t remember myself having been, in real life, angry or disappointed in people in great many years. Life is just so much better without those feelings, which seems obvious, but you can’t really emphasis that enough still.
It took me years of self-reflecting and “finding myself” in the process of overcoming a years-long bout of clinical depression. It’s not easy, but I do believe everyone can find that mindset, given enough effort and perseverance. Sisu.
And to not linger on something negative.
Missed the train? Damn. Shit. Oh well shrug
Got 360 no scoped from across the map and now are mad? Idk, slap you thigh and carry on.
Fucked a chore up (or might not even be responsible for the fuck-up) and now your parent is mad? Apologize (if applicable) and carry on. No need to cook in madness.
A ton can change just based on your mindset. There’s a lot of that subject in stoic and (secular) Buddhist philosophy. It’s not sticking your head in the sand, but rather practicing being more in control of your mental state while processing the things you need to process.
For instance in Buddhism one of the three poisons is attachment, or sometimes called greed. Having high expectations of other people and relying on their actions to inform your mental state is just setting yourself up for failure.
For water stuck in your ear after shower or swimming, what works for me is tilting your head to the side that is plugged and bending/unbending your knees (making your body bounce) until the water comes out.
Easier method, tilt your head towards the clogged side, and then pull down gently on your earlobe. This will let an air bubble past the water, and it all drains out almost instantly. No weird hokey-pokey dance required.
You can often get a Pre Purchase Inspection (PPI) for about $200 from a mechanic that will tell you everything in depth about the health of a car before you actually buy it.
Way too many people out here purchasing cars and then bringing it to a mechanic only to realize they’ve been ripped off or bought an expensive repair bill.
You should do it with any used car you have a strong intention to buy whether it is a private sale or from a lot.
Usually lots will want to negotiate the price first because any used car will have some wear and tear.
But the point is that you’ll know for sure it there’s any critical issues with the vehicle. If it’s a lemon, you can say no and walk away. Don’t think of it as losing $200, think of it as saving several thousand on a broken car.
If you use the same mechanic on a fairly regular basis, they will generally do this type inspection for free. They don’t want to deal with a lemon any more than you do.
Defective, having several major issues. Relates to the US lemon laws, which stated manufacturers had to fix, replace or refund the purchase price of any defective vehicles sold.
US lemon laws, which stated manufacturers had to fix, replace or refund the purchase price of any defective vehicles sold.
I wish something like this applied to everything in the USA.
In Australia, the consumer law states that products must last for as long as a reasonable consumer would assume they last (eg at least 10 years for a large appliance like a fridge). If it has a major failure (breaks down) during that period, the manufacturer or store must repair, replace or refund it, regardless of the warranty period. The manufacturer also has to cover the cost of picking up and delivering the item.
In the USA, if your $3000 appliance has a 1 year warranty and it breaks down in 1.5 years? Too bad, so sad, go pay for a new one. Some manufacturers will offer a discounted or free repair but it’s not legally mandated.
I don’t know where you live, but in hcol areas mechanics won’t even pick up the phone for that much. So you have to get dealer/private seller to agree to take the car to that mechanic for inspection.
In a hot market if the car is priced reasonably there’s 5 other people in line to get it without inspection.
And then even if you can get the car inspected, mechanic offers you no guarantees. What do you think will happen if your engine explodes a week after you buy that car? You think that mechanic will replace it for free because he missed a big issue?
Your suggestion is awesome if you have a mechanic in the family or as a close friend you can trust. Otherwise just money down the drain really.