TiB Tips and Tricks

I broke a lightbulb the other day and as I was about to dig around in the socket with my fingers, the boyfriend grabbed a potato, cut it in half and shoved it into the light fixture, pulling out the bulb remnants. Apparently this was common knowledge to him, but not to me. It got me thinking about all the other tips and tricks in our house.

We always use white wine to remove red wine stains - pour white wine over the still-wet red wine stain and blot the hell out of it. It does a wicked job of getting out the red.

We put a piece of bread into our brown sugar to keep it from hardening. If it does harden, we put it in the microwave with a little dish of water and hit it in 30 second intervals until soft.

We use coffee filters or newspaper to clean mirrors and windows instead of paper towels, to eliminate the lint problem.

Focus: From "lesser known uses for a tennis ball" to "Great Aunt Bessie's cure for the common cold" to "how to keep your soufflé from falling", I'm sure everyone has a few tricks up their sleeve. Share your sure-fire fixes for everyday life.

 

Spray the inside of tupperware containers with non-stick spray before putting anything tomato based (red sauce, etc) if you want to keep them from turning that color.

Get labels and a sharpie and label anything you put in the fridge with the date, particularly half-filled bottles of stuff like marinade or sauces/salsas. Those are great things for growing bacteria. Better to look at the date on a sticker than take the chance on massive diarrhea.

If your new puppy pees on your carpet, blot it and clean it with COLD water. Heat makes the smell in pee bind to the carpet.

 

If your running shoes are wet from running in the rain, pull out the footbed liner and stuff them with newspaper to dry them out over night.

If your ski gloves are wet from sweat, stuff them with newspaper and set them on top of the fridge (where the gentle warm air blows up) to dry them out.

If you want your rep points to increase, post photos in the boobie thread.

 

Feeling stuffed up and want to buy some Mucinex? Save money, and just drink a ton of water. It does basically the same thing (thins the mucus stuffing your sinuses down, making it easier to cough up or sneeze out). I know this sounds obvious, but if you're sick, staying very well hydrated will cut down recovery time immensely.

Before you go to sleep after a long night of drinking, be sure to drink at least one (if not more) glass of water or a full bottle of water. Hangovers are usually worsened by extreme dehydration. The hangover may not go away completely, but it won't be nearly as bad. My wife swears by this, and she hasn't had a hangover in a good four years. She was the hangover queen in college, so she knows. All those 'cure your hangover' pills you see don't do shit, except get you to drink a glass of water before going to bed, which is what really does the trick.

Are you a student? Then here is an easy tip to getting good grades on papers: most professors and teachers who assign large papers know within the first two paragraphs whether or not you're getting an A or an F. It is those middle of the road papers (B, C, D) that are tough to grade, and come under more scrutiny. If a professor or teacher assigns a long paper to a lot of students, focus on writing a really strong introduction and first paragraph. If it is good enough, your professor will skim or may not even finish reading it, and you'll get an A. Most people write intros as an afterthought, and this is a mistake. Keep this in mind: for every 10 page paper you write, your professor/teacher has to read at least 30 (maybe more, depending on how many he assigns the paper to). Professors and teachers are human, they want to get through the grading fast, and they KNOW within the first paragraph whether or not you're a good writer and know what you're talking about. Take advantage of this.

 

Do sex tips count? Because I've collected kind of a lot recently.

Here's one: Next time you're going to use your hands in a sexual way (whether with a partner OR alone), try wrapping a cheap pearl necklace around them. It can be mardi gras beads, costume jewelry, whatever, as long as the beads themselves don't have seams.

It's an effective way to create a different textural sensation. I'm sure anybody who's seen a Rabbit probably gets the idea, though it's not just for genitals. The light rolling sensation created by the orbs feels really nice on a back, or an arm, or a thigh as well.

 

Rubbermaid's Premier line is designed to be resistant to tomato stains. I make a big batch of kickass tomato sauce in a stock pot once a month and store it in a bunch of the premier containers in the freezer. Easy sauce at any time.

 

You can dump pretty much any cleaning product you have and replace it with baking soda, borax and/or vinegar. Just google "make your own ______" and you'll find recipes for just about anything at a fraction of the cost and more importantly without all those nasty chemicals.

Or you could just buy glassware. Plastic storage is for the birds.

 

Sciatica bothering you?
Sit down with a baseball under the affected side, and grind on it. It's a pain that hurts so good you want to beg for mercy while never stopping.

Ladies - if you're the makeup wearing type (I am), Skindinavia makes a spray you use after your application that holds the makeup in place. They've got several different formulas, but I like the one that keeps it in place in the heat.

Lube = coconut oil. Lube/lotion/hair conditioner/cuticle cream. AMAZING.

 

Speaking of sports related injuries:

To effectively rehab an ankle sprain (after the swelling and bruising have gone down), get a 25 pound weight plate and balance it on a golf ball if it has a small hole or a baseball if it's for an olympic bar, and balance yourself on the bad foot on the plate. Then rotate around in circles, both directions.

When disassembling anything with small parts, screws, etc, put them in an egg carton in order from left to right, top to bottom. When it's time to reassemble, rotate 180 degrees.

 

Also works with ice cube trays.


If you desperately need to see through a pane of frosted glass, put scotch tape on it.

 

If you find a crack in a porcelain sink, get a bottle of nail polish remover and apply several layers over the crack. It'll keep sinks from leaking,

 

Easy way to clean a toilet: dump a full can of Coke in the bowl, let it sit overnight, flush it in the morning.

To keep pests out of your garden, use hair from your hairbrush. Seriously, animals hate our scent and won't touch your shit.

Cheap-ass snow pants: take your lousiest (but comfiest) pair of jeans, and simply Scotch Guard the piss out of the outer denim surface. Boom. Waterproof. This works better than it sounds.

Ant hills/hornet's nest but no bug spray: If they are out of harm's general way, simply boil up a large pot of water with a handle (it just has to be bubbling) and let 'em have it Straw Dogs style. The water will kill them instantly, all at once. Just be very careful and wear gloves or mitts just in case.

To wake up a friend in a hurry: Touch his bare feet with a hand-held bug zapper. Wear a Halloween mask while doing so.

 

I wasn't aware you were from New Jersey...

FOCUS:
When using Vapor-Rub for a cold or congestion, rub some on the balls of your feet. Don't ask me how it works but it sure as hell helps.

Hummus makes an amazing dressing substitute for salad.

 

I always have to get up and take a piss at night. Getting to the bathroom is no problem, but after pissing and turning off the light, I always have to grope my way back to bed, often bumping into things. A neat little trick to eliminate this problem is when you get up to go to the bathroom, cover one of your eyes with your hand. Then when you are done in the bathroom and shut off the light, switch your hand to the other eye. This way, the eye that was covered on the way remains accustomed to the dark and the eye that is exposed to the light gets covered up so doesn't make it hard to see.

For an added bonus, after you get back into bed, keep switching which eye you look through. It's pretty trippy.

 

If you're on a budget or just don't appreciate waste, tape your grocery receipt to the refrigerator. Every time you consume something, cross it off the list. That way you'll always have a list of what is left in your pantry/fridge, and you'll see what gets eaten and what gets ignored. Really cuts down on impulse buys at the grocery store.

 

Phone/Ipod/Camera got wet? Stick it in a bag of rice and close it up. The rice will absorb the moisture, hopefully saving your device.

Put a tiny flash drive on your keychain. I use mine about once a week.

Scuffs in boots (and sometimes scratches in cds/dvds) can be removed with plain old white toothpaste, a good brushing and a final layer of shoe polish.

Buy a leatherman tool. Carry it around. Fix shit indefinite.

Car won't start? Pour a little soda on the battery terminals (if they are very dirty). Also, turn your lights on and try and start it. Sometimes the lights can coax a bit more juice out of the battery.

 

Given the large percentage of alcoholic degenerates on here, this might either be hailed as a godsend or dismissed as common knowledge, but...

How to Open a Bottle of Wine with Your Shoe

Stuck at a party with a kick-ass bottle of Pinot Noir, but no corkscrew? Craving that sweet grapey goodness but lacking a cutlass to hack the bottle's neck off pirate style? Well, no problem!

All you need to open a corked bottle of wine is your shoe (trainers are the worst for this. The harder the shoe's sole, the better it works) and a wall. Make sure you choose a supporting wall or you're gonna go right through it which, while hilarious, is also expensive and will probably get you kicked out by the host.

Step 1. Remove tin foil thingy from around bottle's neck, exposing the cork.

Step 2. Remove shoe. Insert bottom of bottle where your foot would go, so it is resting over the heel of the shoe.

Step 3. Place against wall and FUCKING WHALE on that sucker like you found it in bed with your wife, slamming the shoe-muffled bottle against the wall repeatedly. You gotta go all out here.

Step 4. You should see the cork begin to stick out a little, but be aware this is a fairly lengthy process that can take several minutes.

Step 5. Once about half the cork is sticking out, grab between your teeth and pull.

Step 6. Wine! (And the many bitches which will doubtless have been impressed into arousal by your manhandling of the wine bottle and your ability to overcome your host's retarded lack of basic household implements).

EDIT:

Since people wanted to know "why not slam it against the ground", it doesn't work. I assume it's because of gravity and the way force is transmitted to the cork or some such (I'm terrible at physics, what do I know). By extension, against a ceiling would probably work best of all, but it seems like way too much effort.

 

I don't question this trick but what I do wonder is how you don't know the layout of your own house.

 

Alternatively, wear an eyepatch:


Fun fact- pirates wore those for the exact reason described above, so they could move above deck and below deck without have to adjust their eyes too much.

Alt-alternatively, learn how to walk in the dark and stop touching your eyes with piss hands.