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Week 5 [18.04 - 24.04] - LIFE HACKS



LIFE HACKS



(source: http://i.imgur.com/3WvFg.gif)

Ultimately each of us finds some interesting non-obvious solutions to problems but some people are masters. Lately I have become interested in life hacks – ideas and things that make our life easier. Life hacking refers to any trick, shortcut, skill, or novelty method that increases productivity and efficiency in all walks of life. The term was primarily used by computer experts who suffer from information overload or those with a playful curiosity in the ways they can accelerate their workflow in ways other than programming (source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life_hacking).

Some time ago I was looking for a solution to one of the problems I was struggling with and I surfed on YouTube. It appeared that many vlogers tend to create their own life hack videos presenting amazing solutions to all problems you can only imagine. Starting from tips for lazy people through beauty tips for women ending with tech tips.

Here I will present some tips that caught my attention and might be interesting for you




(source http://myfridgefood.com)



I guess a lot of students struggle with lack of food problem. If you have almost nothing in your fridge and you are too lazy to go to the store you can visit the website http://myfridgefood.com

Here you can check ingredients that you have in your fridge and you will find out all recipes that contain only these ingredients. This shows how many different things you can cook when you think you can’t do anything.



(source: http://cdn-media-2.lifehack.org/wp-content/files/2013/02/22.png)


A lot of us like coffee and during summer we change traditional coffee for iced coffee. To make iced coffee, we need ice cubes but they melt quickly and our drink becomes diluted, unsavory and does not taste like coffee anymore. To solve that problem, we can use coffee instead of water to make ice cubes.




(source: http://coscowichan.ca/wp-content/uploads/2016/02/cell-phone-light-225x300.jpg)


When you are in a dark place or just in your room when lights are off and you need light, you can use your phone and a bottle of water. Turn on lighter in your phone and put a bottle of water on it. Your surrounding environment should immediately become much brighter, thanks to the bottle's light-distributing qualities. The bottle will send your phone's light beams out in a wider range, helping to illuminate a larger-than-expected sized area around itself.

Another frequent problem appears using a permanent marker which by accident makes things dirty.

  • For clothes use hand sanitiser
  • For walls use toothpaste or hairspray
  • For wood use alcohol
  • For carpet use white vinegar
  • For furniture use milk
  • For white board use dry ease marker or pencil rubber eraser
  • For ceramics or glass use toothpaste with baking soda



(source: http://cdn-media-1.lifehack.org/wp-content/files/2013/02/6.jpeg)

Use binder clips to fix a broken keyboard stand. This should keep your keyboard titled slightly downwards.


(source: http://cdn-media-2.lifehack.org/wp-content/files/2013/02/89-how-to-waterproof-your-shoes-450x1024.jpg)


Waterproof (or any shoes). Take beeswax (the lubricating type), and rub it over your shoes. Make sure you cover every part on the outside, and regularly touch up if the beeswax is coming off. Use a blow dryer or any type of heat to melt the surface of the wax, therefore making it invisible.

Obviously there are hundreds of similar tips and this is just an example of a few interesting tips but I hope that it made you interested in them a little bit to do your own research.


Questions

  1. Do you find above tips useful or not at all?
  2. Do you have any own tips to share with us?
  3. Do you like vlogers that make life hack videos? Could you recommend any?

Sources:
  1. http://youtube.com
  2. http://coscowichan.ca/life-hacks/
  3. http://lifehacker.com
  4. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life_hacking

Comments

Unknown said…
Great tips! I don't know any life-hacking but I think my grandmother or grandfather could know something like that for example making cleaner with baking soda and vinegar :P Now it comes to my mind only the recipe for fast brownie from microwave (http://ervegan.com/2014/10/minibrownie-w-2-minuty/) Bon Appetit! :)
Marcin Konarski said…
You made my day :) I heard about some tricks that people do, especially Polish guys have unlimited imagination. The first thought was about England and how they deal with double taps and how Polish guys found solution for this. (http://demotywatory.pl/uploads/1262524697_by_mmvenez_600.jpg)

Secondly I though about people in our university and their’s life hacks for surviving every semester. But finally your examples are very good and I will for sure look for new ones. There is some cuisine tips like using little bit of baking soda when you boil eggs this will help in easier peeling shell. I found multiple blogs and vlogers so there is multiple sources to learn from.
Every advice is helpful :) I really recommend to watch few movies at YouTube, they are really great. For instance as owner of iPhone I always had problems with touching screen during winter with my gloves but I found that I can use Aluminum Foil.
Yeah you’re right I also heard about great ideas of people in England. In general when there is need to find substitution of original method a lot of ideas come to mind. I guess that’s how the greatest inventions happen. In general there is the great majority of cuisine tips but that is good because it helps a lot of people. The sources are unlimited but I found that not everything that is written or told is true.
Unknown said…
“Ideas and things that make our life easier.” I like it despite I impeding my life all time :P
Myfridgefood is a great idea. I have never before heard about it. I think that I will try it. Idea with the phone light is simple and great as well.
Of course I think above tips are useful.
Soda, vinegar and lemon juice are good cleaners.
Vinegar is also odor absorber.
Soda can eliminated moth in your wardrobe.
I don’t know vlogers that make life hack videos.
Michał Pycek said…
To answer the first question, it is always nice and useful to get to know something new, sometimes seemingly irrelevant facts which may actually help in solving or avoiding a problem. But generally speaking, I don't find such topic very interesting and I don't look for such information on the internet. If one of my things breaks and I don't know how to fix it, I look it up on YT at that exact moment when I need it. However I don't watch vloggers and follow the life hack topic at all, since I don't see the point of it.
You should definitely look for some vlogers there is plenty of them, just type life hacks in YouTube. What I love the most is when I found something new by myself by accident. When I need something I am trying to find out new solution and always something crazy comes to my mind :)
Sooner or later those tips really are useful. Well I understand your point of view, if it is not interesting for you there is no point to spend time on it. But if you have some problems you are looking for solutions and YouTube almost every time helps with finding solution.
Unknown said…
thank you for the interesting article. Sometimes it amazing how people can solve their "problems". Such tips are very useful and inspiring. if you want to save some time such tips are very helpful. Everyone alive today in the rush. The examples that you present are very useful and surprising.
Some of this tips can be really useful and I think that I should try few of them, for example this trick with waterproof of your shoes, it's really smart :P I don't have any tips which I can share with you, but if you have some problems, looking into the internet is very good idea, you can find there almost anything.
I am happy that you liked it. I am not specialist in women cosmetics and makeup but during research for this article I found crazy amount of beauty and makeup tips that for woman might be very interesting since I observed how much time sometimes it takes ^^
Yes You are absolutely right internet is full of tips, and before the internet I don't know how people dealt with problems, only neighbours could advice them, not it is much easier to find solution.
I think that everyone of us know some lifehacks. Usually they are related to cleaning, like using cold water for blood stains and so on... some apply to cars, like using cockpit cleaning spray to start older Diesel engines after they ran out of fuel. I think its good to learn such things, because it saves you time and money, which can be used for other activities.
Unknown said…
Very interesting article. I think that many such tricks to make your life easier know our grandmothers and grandfathers :) It seems to me that these are not great disoveries but a certain brilliance and ingenuity of people who are able to find a secondary use for products intended solely for one purpose. For me such tricks are interesting facts and often I like to verify whether in fact make it easier my life. Some of these ideas proves useful but unfortunately a lot of it requires too much time and because of this reason I believe that more functional are things which directly satisfy my need. Often I'm looking for technical tricks when I've got a problem with my computer e.g. once I didn't know how to open Excel in two windows on computer (because Excel make it impossible) and I found trick in Google: shortcut shift+right click of mouse on Excel on bar at he bottom of main window. For me it's very useful in my work to comparison databases localizeted in two files.
I like this type of solution. Often they are the only solutions which nobody uses but me such a solution very inspired. Encourage to "open our minds" and use the things that we have in hand. They make life easier and encourage independence. I like things that you can do yourself. These items are gaining in value in my eyes. I noticed that this type of solutions is more looking for people with technical interests, who always want to modify reality. I like this ;)
That is good point, we can save a lot of money, because usually we don't need special products to deal with problem. Our everyday used products can have multiple unknown applications.
There is a lot of computer tricks of course. I focused on daily usage of products since not everyone study computer science here. I found a lot of tricks with tumble dryer sheets and I had no clue what it is. When I was in Germany I bought some of them and it occurred that they use this products to make laundry smell good instead of liquid that is so popular in Poland.
I like them too. It is especially cool when I desperately need to fix something and I have to find out how. That's interesting that people with technical interest are highly probable to look for such solutions. But I know a guy that is very good in it.

https://www.youtube.com/user/CrazyRussianHacker
Unknown said…
Do you find above tips useful or not at all?

I really like the one with coffee, when making iced coffee at home i always get watery thing that kind of looked and tasted meh. I am looking forward to trying it out.


Do you have any own tips to share with us?

Well I can recommend good way to always get fresh french fries in fast food restaurant. Just order fries without salt on them (they will have to make a fresh batch just for you) and order some packaged salt to season them yourself :)

Do you like vlogers that make life hack videos? Could you recommend any?

I dont really watch vlogs at all. I can recommend subreddit dedicated to lifehacks

https://www.reddit.com/r/lifeprotips

Unknown said…
Thanks a lot for the article, especially the recipes website! I've been meaning to look for something like that for ages now. Life hacks are the best although it's funny because I always forget about them, no matter how useful they are :D I suppose doing things the hard way is so ingrained that we stop thinking how to make life easier, which is weird. People always find the way; MacGyver was the best example of that. Maybe we started to rely on technology too much, believing it offers us the easiest solutions, and got a bit lazy...
I tried to recall some of the lifehacks I know, but nothing came to my mind. Figures :D
Unknown said…
I love these kind of clever solutions.

I once tried to use binder clips with my keyboard, but unfortunately they wouldn't fit. My keyboard was to thick for the clips I had at that time, but I plan to buy bigger ones some day and try this again. I knew about the coffee ice cubes for some time, but I never had a chance or reason to use this idea. Summer is coming so maybe this year I'll try this out.

As for my own tricks, I've learned that soda and lemon juice are a very effective cleaners. Every now and then I make a liquid with these ingredients and keep it in a bottle. Comes in handy. :)
And coffee beans are a great odor remover.
Unknown said…
It looks like obsession :P
I find some of these tips useful. I actually may use myfridgefood.com in the future, though I suspect my food rations maybe too low to assemble anything interesting from them.

I don't really watch vloggers that do these kind of stuff, so I can't recommend any. I don't recall any specific life-hacks I use on daily basis, but I also think everyone has them. Some people just do some ordinary stuff in a creative way and don't even notice that untill someone comments on it.
I also make a lot of iced coffee and it makes a difference. I also know about the tips with fries, but nowadays there is so many customers that they have to make fries all the time so we don't have to worry about that.
I found this website useful and in hackaton in our university people came up with the same idea if I remember well they won :)
Oh I am surprised with coffee beans as door remover, I only heard about putting things to refrigerator but it didn't work :(
Hahah You are right, not everyone share their's hacks because they don't know that it is something that other people don't know about.
Unknown said…
It's really cool, how great imagination people have. I seen a lot of this tricks online, but i've never try this by myself, maybe i've never found somethind that i need to use :P
Moode said…
And who doesn't like to hacks :)? It makes our life easier.
i would recommend this link if any one interesting in more hacks [http://www.lifehack.org/articles/lifestyle/100-life-hacks-that-make-life-easier.html], some of them are really mind blowing.

Do i have my own tip?
if you have pain in your stomach, You could drink some Coca Cola and the pain will disappear. ))

Unknown said…
The ones with coffee ice cubes and beeswax are really nice. I know also a tip with binder clips. When we have a lot cables in a desks we can use those “binder clips’ hands” to hold them together. When it comes to vloggers I watch CrazyRussianHacker sometimes. There are also many useful life hacks on instructables.com
Unknown said…
this site myfridgefood seems so awesome! Sometimes I just need something like that :D I wonder if these recipes are tasty :> But all those hacks are great :D And in general, making life easier with so simple stuff like this is so fulfilling :D
My favourite lifehack is to use paper clips for chargers ;)
Pat said…
I believe paper clips are ultimate tools of life hacks. Some time ago I came across this video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rqpYPgLEC0I

Some of the presented hacks are really useful, in my opinion. :)

I like the fact that nowadays there is such a wide access to the Web. Whenever you stain clothes with something (like the markers you've mentioned in the article), you can instantly google the type of stain and get rid of it. Recently my boyfriend spilled some red wine on his white shirt - I wouldn't have any idea what to do with that, so we googled it and used salt + lemon juice. Worked perfectly :)
OlaScislewska said…
It is unthinkable that exist so easy solutions of ours everyday problems. Theoretically dead easy ways of solving problems which can help us a lot and just make our lives pleasanter. I have never watched this kind of videos before but it was my mistake ;) That's great idea to share our little discovers about things we were sure are not to change. I unfortunately do not know any tricks which i could reveal but i hope it ll change soon.
My mind works in a special way (maybe some people can relate): I don't remember any important things like historical facts but my head is always full of little trivia and life hacks. I don't need them very often, but sometimes they come handy. There are a lot of sites offering life hack methods, but some of them are SO unnecessary that I can't believe that someone wants to spend their time on something like making a shelf out of popsicle sticks or preparing home-made cleaning wipes. I think that everybody has their own life hacks and may not even be aware of it. One of the handiest tricks I found out recently is that if you need to zip a zipper on your back and can't put your hands so high, just put a piece of dental floss through the zipper hole and pull it up. Another one is that if you want to get rid of a piece of gum stuck to your clothes or a smell of mustiness from clothes, put them in a freezer for some time.
Unknown said…
Very nice, I actually used two of these life-hacks in real life. The one with wax (candle wax) and the one with keyboard. Many of such life-hacks are quite useful in life although lately it seems that people run out of ideas as both ingenuity and usefulness of new life-hacks seems to decrease.
Unknown said…
An interesting article. I found the idea to use a bottle and a phone as a lamp the most interesting seems simple but I would tough of it myself. The myfridgefood.com website is a great idea one that I had myself, but of course I never got to actually making a website like that. I already knew some of those ideas, like coffee ice cubes for example, you can prepare ice cubes from various other stuff like juices (I dont recommend cola tho they turn into a disgusting slush). Back in the old times hacks like this could be passed down by grandparents now we just Google it, what makes life way easier. I cant think about any other life hacks right now but Im sure I use some stuff like this in my daily life how to ripen an avocado maybe I heard that wrapping it up in papers or putting it on apples works best.
If you haver had any problem probably you never tried to hack :)
Of course everyone loves to hack :) That's little bit unhealthy tip, but it is working. Cola is miracle when it comes to stomach pain.
That's true, binder clips can be used in multiple ways, you can also clip one of them to your desk and use to keep your phone charger cable. Another great link with tips, thank You :)
I like mostly tips for food and cleaning stuff, that make my life much easier. I recommend also some computer tips, that can make our work done faster.
Wow, video just about paper clips :) I guess it is the best thing that can help in so many ways. That's good to know how to deal with stain on your favourite clothes.
No problem, you should definitely watch some videos about that. Even if You think that You don't it any, when you see something interesting it occurs that there is easier way to achieve some goals.
Of course there is a lot of things that are not useful at all. I have seen in tv program about beauty masks made from salt oils and many other weird things that we are eating. I think that buying normal one that cost few zloty is better than experimenting like this.
Well I am not sure, at least at YouTube there is many new videos about that subject. Of course many of tips are repeated because they are copying someones ideas.
This site is so simple to implement but great idea in general. I like also frozen grapes, especially during summer when you don't have ice-creams this is great.
Unknown said…


I'll show you how to deal with life hacks to make easy your daily life on today How to make a wireless charger at home.

You're gonna love these ideas! With these tricks you can turn any simple things to a very interesting part!

How to make a wireless charger at home.

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