On the topic of Excel, it’s one of the few programs where the scroll lock key does something. It allows you to switch between moving the cell selection and scrolling with the arrow keys
I miss real keyboards for the numberpad and the Home and End and the Pages Up and Down. Plus all the satisfying noise they made. Had no idea I needed this, too.
Look into mechanical keyboards. They aren’t cheap but there have been serious improvements and you get all the real keyboard features you want. Plus clickyclicky.
thanks. I only have it on my work laptop but I will check that out. Given they did that with cut and paste I guess I should have looked harder at the other icons.
I can use a plunger and knock a turd loose in less than 10 seconds. Getting a bucket and filling it with hot water is at least a few minutes of effort.
If you need to remember something for the next time you go out, put your shoes somewhere odd. When you go to leave, you’ll remember you moved them, which will remind you why you moved them.
Even just a couple inches over is enough to remind me. Or just a separation between them instead of them touching. Or turn them backwards. Though, this only works if it’s relatively uncommon for you to do it. And if you live in a household that does indeed take their shoes off, some don’t. But it’s a surprisingly effective reminder if all that.
On the original topic, shoes last a lot longer if you don’t wear the same pair day after day. The continual dampness from foot perspiration breaks down the materials much more quickly. Giving each pair of shoes a couple of days to dry out between wearings will greatly extend their lives.
This effect may not be visible to many people, but if you have a physical job, it can save you a lot of money.
Changing how we vote can do away with the spoiler effect, making third parties viable.
Then democrats wouldn’t have to yell at people online who don’t feel represented by the Democratic party. I wonder what they would do with all that free time?
Just how much cheaper and longer lasting keeping thing like rice, dried beans and flour can be. It’s amazing to me that no matter how empty my cupboards/fridge is I can always make fresh tortillas, refried beans, and rice in like an hour.
My wife’s Italian. Replace your items with always having a bottle of sauce and a packet of pasta in the cupboard, and there’s always a meal to be had no matter how empty the fridge is.
My GF is Italian too. One of the most important things I learned from her is literally this. Also, as long as you have any kind of vegetables in your house, you are always one step away from a pasta sauce.
100% For us, a passata, an onion, and some garlic is the minimum needed.
Probably helps that the FIL delivers us boxes of homemade passata all the time - we never have less than a dozen bottles on our storage shelves in the garage. But even if we were to ever run out, a couple of store-bought bottles in the pantry is our fallback option.
Amen to that. But I can’t do jar/bottled sauce so if I want easy noodles, it’s cook noodles, leave some pasta water after draining, throw in some butter at the end to make it thicc, then serve topped with olive oil/red pepper flakes/salt/pepper/parmigiano Reggiano (all things I make sure I always have in stock always)
I also keep a stack of cans of San Marzano tomatoes to make a red sauce any time I want, but that takes a couple hours instead of 20 minutes.
There are good sauces you can make from canned tomatoes in 20 minutes (depending on your prep speed).
My go tos are Putanesca & Vodka sauce, but there’s a lot more you can do. Mark Bittman’s How to Cook Everything has a simple recipe and then a big list of variants, most of which can be done in 20 minutes.
To stop infinite scroll on social media, quickly scroll 2-3 screen lengths down without looking at the posts. Now read the posts scrolling up. Eventually you’ll reach where you started and most probably the laziness to go all the way back will prompt you to exit the app.
I changed the icon location, and my muscle memory still was trying to open them from the previous location, basically in a complete auto-pilot mode. That led me to a realization of how fucked up the situation was, and eventually helped me uninstall/reduce screen time of those apps.
For some reason I always have a habit of scroll to the bottom of any list and reading up. Like I wanna confirm how long the list is before working my way up
If you’re looking at a used car, enter the vin number into Google. It will often bring up photos from any auctions it went through and you might see that it had been in a wreck and fixed without being reported to Carfax.
It’s a reporting system for vehicles so that the next owners of a vehicle know its repair history. It will also tell you if any loans or leins are placed against the vehicle, so you don’t get screwed.
Learn to cook the base of meals in different cultures. Like a Sofrito.
Most of the best classic dishes in the world really start with three or four ingredients and are just variations. You shouldn’t overthink it or buy rare ingredients. You’re better off picking one and mastering the basic steps. Learning to cook isn’t about learning to recreate a chef-cooked meal. It’s about learning to cook simple, cheap ingredients.
Hey that’s a quality life changing hack right here. Food is the most important thing with sleep.
Would you have a list of those base meals maybe ?
@dephyre mentionned refried beans with rice in the thread. @DeltaTangoLima responded with bottled (canned) pasta sauce. I’d say learn how to make ratatouille and store (can) some when you can get the ingredient (green bell pepper, zucchinis, eggplan, tomatoes) at the right time of the year.
It’s usually just to take a small amount of delicious oil or fat — whatever you have on hand — and saute diced onions with diced bell pepper (or local equivalent) until the onions are slightly transparent. Keep going if you want the onions start being brown and have a sweet flavor. That brown is just the natural sugars coming out of the onion and is what “caramelizes” means. Caramel is sugar. And then add garlic and/or ginger and whatever spices you like.
If you want to, add meat. If you don’t, do not. (Often, that very oil step is done from browning meat and not wasting the fat.)
If you want soup, add a lot of liquid and whatever and cook it slowly. If you want paella, jambalaya, jollof, biryani, or equivalent — every culture has a rice dish — use the rice recipe on the bag as if it were water. (Use stock if you have any but water works fine.)
There are dishes that are different. Like fried rice and French Toast use old rice and toast respectively. Baking is a science. But anyone can make a pot of delicious with a few ingredients and it’s a 10 minute, one pot meal.
Is it even a life hack, or an essential life skill. Most us didn’t formally learned, but have seen/helped our parents from an early age and one day, we ended up in a student room meaning it was time to cook
When the pandemic happened, there were people who didn’t know how to make the easiest meals. I was shocked. So, my rule on recipes is that nothing is too basic.
I started watching Babish & Weissman’s channels on YouTube during the pandemic. Both of them put out easy to follow videos, but they also include links to recipes in the video description, so you don’t have to write it all down.
The Basics with Babish videos are great because they show multiple dishes with a given protein.
Weissman does get a bit snooty & high priced at times. He also gets a lil too juvenile for my taste, but that’s my taste…
With his higher priced dishes, he does typically offer cost cutting options as goes through, which is nice.
I really like that both Babish & Weissman tell you why they’re using certain ingredients. That little bit of why helps me with substitutions if I ever don’t have or don’t like something used.
I just found a japanese comfort food staple: Ochazuke - green tea rice. It just needs a couple of ingredients and is super quick. I was blown away by how good and comforting it was. Its Comfort in a quick bowl. And it’s super adaptable. You can basically add anything as tipping.
Whenever you are loading the washing machine, or hanging the laundry to dry/loading the dryer, don’t put the socks straight away. If you get one sock, set it aside, and wait to have the other sock before putting them wherever they need to go. This way you drastically reduce the amount of odd socks/ socks with no pair.
If you find a single sock when you’re at the dryer, look for it in the washing or on the floor; you know it has to be there because you make the habit of always loading the pair. If you have a single sock at the washer, don’t wash it; wait until you find the other one, keep it in your basket.
I wash all my socks together in a mesh laundry bag and then dump it out into the dryer. Much faster than trying to match wet socks when moving the load.
I have a specific bag that lives in the hamper and I put socks straight into it so no chance of running out of mesh bags or losing socks in the hamper :)
Keep a set of swimwear in your car. If you go to a place and forgot your swimsuit? Got the backup. Go to a hotel and find out they had a pool you didn’t know about? Backup in the car. Accidentally shit yourself? Got at least something on you. Do I shit myself enough to worry about it? Not since I was a baby but now I know I got swim trunks in my car just in case.
This works for so many occasions too. At a watermelon eating contest? Backup in the car. Going to a funeral? Backup in the car. Need to bury a body? Backup clothing, right there.
Not recommended for lycra or spandex suits, or any suit that has elastic closures, particularly during the summer months. They will rapidly degrade in the heat of the car. My wife left hers in the car after a vacation (never used it). It was tucked in the trunk. Found it a month later and it disintegrated in the wash.
Not exactly life hacks, but shortcuts that can help computer users:
holding CTRL and pressing the arrow keys will move the text cursor whole words, instead of 1 character at a time. Also works with Delete and Backspace
CTRL + Home will move the cursor to the start of the file, CTRL + End to the end of the file or textbox.
Windows 10 users can use the Xbox bar to record their screens. By default, the shortcut is Windows button + Alt + R
For anyone that uses the sink to wash dishes, have a net/grid to cover the hole. Once it’s full, just pick it up and dump the contents in your food trash.
You can use any type of soap to create barriers that ants will avoid. If you plug a hole with some soap (try a piece of soap bar that’s wet/soft), the ants won’t reopen it.
Cinnamon works wonders against ants. Just put a little down where they are coming in. They won’t walk on it, and it messes up their ability to follow pheromone trails.
If you absolutely want to kill them for some reason, the liquid borax baits seem to work the best in my area. Just make sure they cannot be reached by pets or small children.
Create a tentative schedule working backwards from that date. Include dates for completing main tasks.
Give extra time in the schedule for minor setbacks between tasks.
Give extra time in the schedule for a potential major setback overall.
For example, let’s say the goal is to paint a house:
I can say I want it painted in 2 months, so I set it for the date of 9/17/24.
I figure I can paint a room every other day, so since the house has 5 rooms total, I think I can start painting 10 days before on 9/07/24. However, I need to consider that finding and purchasing paint and equipment will take time too. I think about it and consider that paint shopping can take me 2 days since I want to try out several stores, so the newer date is 9/05/24.
Now, I add some room for minor setbacks between each task. Rather than assuming I will paint every other day, I add two days in between. That means starting on 8/30/24. This allows me to take my time with rooms, skip a day if I feel tired, or adjust if I the rooms take longer to paint than I had anticipated for whatever reason. I also increase the time allotted for acquiring materials because so many things can happen: traffic, tired, unhappy with selection, need time to test samples and ask people, etc. Rather than only include 2 days for this, I include a whole week so I can see the paint samples on the walls and see which ones feel the best. We are not starting on 8/23/24.
Lastly, maybe something major could happen, such as getting sick, the store runs out of paint stock, my car breaks down, or I change my mind on one of the paint colors after seeing it up on the wall. I might even realize that I completely overlooked tasks, such as rearranging furniture, painting over errors/accidents, and clean up. I would then add a cushion of 2 weeks to the schedule to allow for that should it happen. So the actual start date is 8/9/24. This is much sooner than if we had gone with the original start date of 9/07/24, almost an entire month!
With this style of planning, I can take my sweet time, enjoy the process, and not get stressed out if something unexpected comes up. If I finish early, then I have extra time to work on details or enjoy the rest.
If you have a goal to find something (eg. buy a car), write your goal down, including details like make and model. You’ll start to see adverts, special deals and cars of the model you want parked with for sale signs. There’s nothing mystical about this - you’re surrounded by things like that, but the specific act of writing it seems to tell your unconscious mind to bring it to your attention when you pass them.
An easy way to wear out cloths is to wash them too often. Some rules I follow:
If it’s smelly or visibly dirty, ignore all other rules and wash
Rotate jeans and hang to air out. Cotton will naturally drop smells this way. Wash approx every 4 wears
Sweaters/Jumpers can be worn many times if a shirt is underneath. Hang and rotate to air out
If socks are merino wool, use nikwash and wear until they no longer smell like the wash (or get dirty). Lay out to air out. Any other material, wear only once
Dress shirts, if not wrinkled, 3 times, hang to air (only if you wear t-shirts underneath)
Wash t-shirts and underwear every time unless your backpacking. Basically, anything not wool that comes into constant contact with sweaty bits
Agree with all this except jeans. Store them in the freezer and wash them even less than you’d like to. They’re barely cool when you put them on…
unless it’s a July 17 heatwave and you wore them in 7000% humidity before tossing the salty, sweat-drenched denim into the freezer, in which case they’re like cold tortilla chips. Just wash them if you were swimming down the sidewalk in mid-summer muck.
Anyway. Makes them last at least a couple years longer.
Merino wool is a very different material then “classic” wool. Backpackers like it because it wicks sweat and it’s naturally antimicrobial so the smells dissipate over night. It’s also not itchy due to the finer weave.
My favorite is Darn Tough socks. They’re merino wool, warm when they need to be and cool when not, and if you get them on sale (only way to buy them) they’re worth the price. Lifetime warranty, so if you get holes, you get new ones. Last socks you’ll ever buy.
I’ve started doing this when I noticed the space savings. First, I’ve done it with underwear, then with my undershirts. Now, only those shirts I need to be ironed (and immaculately folded) don’t get rolled.
Depends on whether you’re folding them in neat squares or hanging them from hangers. The rolls are useful for putting them in luggage, they can be compressed better that way
I do squares and if packing a suitcase, lay out dress shirts alternating, trousers alternating, put t-shirts/underwear in the middle (folded) and roll the trousers and then dress shirts around them. Keeps the wrinkles down.
Because T-shirts are somewhat irregularly shaped when folded. If you stack them with the same orientation, one side is higher than the other. You can alternate the way you lay them but that’s also easier with rolls.
Rolls allow you to take advantage of the efficiency of the honeycomb shape, as well.