"STOP Shaking Your Shaving Gel": People Are Sharing Life Hacks They Learned Later In Life And I Didn't See Some Of These Coming
Reddit user felis_disapproves recently asked, "What's something you did 'the hard way; for the longest time, because you didn't know there was a much easier way?" and the answers are unexpected and useful.
1."If you hold down the “0” (zero) button on an iPhone, it will bring up the “°” degree symbol."
2."I kept shaking the shaving gel and struggling to get more than a quarter of the can out...till it dawned on me that they are pressurized and every shake causes it to decrease in pressure, therefore, making it harder to get any out. I've now used many and actually got the bottom of every can by simply not shaking them. I'm 40 and also an engineer."
3."I've been opening pistachios with my thumbs for 30 years until I saw my wife use half a shell to wrench her next one open and then my mind exploded."
4."Cleaning the damn microwave. I struggled to scrub all the dried-up bits off then a friend told me to just put a small dish of water in it and turn it on for a couple of minutes. Everything wipes right out. I was such a dumbass."
"Add half a lemon to the bowl to make it smell nice and fresh, too."
5."CTRL+backspace will delete entire words instead of deleting only one letter at a time."
VH1
Note: If you're on a Mac, it's a little different. You'll need to do Option+Delete.
6."We had a pool when I was a kid and swam at the public pool all winter. So there was a lot of water time. The worst thing was having to get out and go pee. Wearing my one-piece suit, I'd have to pull it all the way down and sit there cold and naked to do my business. Then I'd have to pull on a cold, wet suit and it was sticky and icy and awful. I’d hold it until I absolutely had to go. It occurred to me as an adult you can just pull the crotch part to the side, and it stays put while you pee."
"I swam competitively in high school and have been a lifeguard for almost 10 years. I learned this last year…"
7."My dishwasher is across the kitchen from my utensil drawer. For years, while unloading the dishwasher I would stuff as many utensils as I could in my hands. I’d inevitably drop some, and there are a few dents in my hardwood floor from dropping forks and spoons. One day at work, a coworker unloaded the dishwasher and removed the utensil basket and carried it over to the utensil drawer. I never felt so dumb."
"Go one step further. My dad insisted on putting each type of utensils in the one section of the basket. That way when unloading you can grab each type in one go."
8."Up until the end of high school, every time I'd take a shower, I would turn on the water while standing in front of the shower head, and brunt the cold. I was later informed by a friend that he turns the shower on first, then steps in once [it's a good] temperature. I truly made his day when I told him I was dumbfounded at that advice."
9."For dusting things like baseboards, windowsills, and picture frames, the best tool is a clean paintbrush. I always used either a cloth or something made specifically for dusting, but the paintbrush is much faster and easier. I keep a cheap 2-inch paintbrush exclusively for dusting now. It also works great on cobwebs."
"I use paintbrushes on anything that has an uneven or awkward-to-reach surface. I learned this working in a recording studio (a long time ago) and we always had paintbrushes for keeping dust off of all the knobs and faders."
10."If you hold the space bar on your cellphone it's way easier to move the cursor where you want it to be. Write some random word in a text message. Hold space bar for a second or two. Slide thumb back and forward on the space bar and the cursor will move. Makes it easy to just remove one letter in a long misspelled word."
11."When I was a kid I was bad at nail clippers. I knew to put my nail in the chompy bit at the end, but I didn’t realize that the handle/lever folded out. So I would just squeeze really hard until I broke my nail off in the blades. This went on for an embarrassingly long time before my mom saw me and taught me how to open the lever."
12."After taking a shower, you can dry yourself off (after turning the water off, of course) while still in the shower stall to prevent the bathroom floor from being wet."
13."As a kid, whenever my bicycle wheels got warped (I crashed into stuff a lot), I would fix them by smashing the rims with a hammer. It mostly worked. Eventually I learned that you can just tighten and loosen the spokes to straighten warped wheels. So much easier, and much less destructive."
14."I used to copy and paste on a computer by meticulously highlighting, right-clicking, then selecting the copy option. Didn’t know about CTRL+C/V for way too long."
"Now, double-click-drag to highlight by word, not by character. Try it and thank me later."
"Never knew that and I am quite clever with shortcuts. Also, you can triple-click-drag to highlight an entire paragraph."
15."Parchment paper. No more scrubbing off baked-on cheese and sauce. If it goes in the oven, I use parchment paper."
"Not to be confused with WAX paper do NOT use wax paper in your oven."
"Do not use wax paper in your oven unless the thing you're making happens to be a FIRE."
16."Here's how my basic coloring and shading in Photoshop went from 4 hours to 4 seconds. As a digital artist, I started out coloring inside my lines with my stylus, meticulously not missing any blank pixels inside the lines. Then on a new layer, adding the shading, doing the same thing but being careful to make it look like a shadow on the figure. Three years later, I learned there’s a toggle on the magic wand tool so when you select a space, it selects only that contiguous space and not jump across lines so select the same color (or lack of color) space on a layer. I could basically fill an entire drawing and then go back and just fill in the details where the lines touched so the selected area didn’t reach those crevices."
"Four years after that I learned about increasing or decreasing your selected area by N pixels. Somewhere in there I also learned about layer clipping for shading (only colors on the occupied space of the layer it’s clipped to) and layer masking."
And finally...
17."That you turn the deodorant to lift the hard plastic off. Learned this about 5 years ago. I'm 36 years old. I struggled needlessly for so long trying to pry that damn thing off."
What a life hack that you learned later in life? Comment below!
Note: Submissions have been edited for length and/or clarity.
