Life hacks are awesome. They are simple, handy, and are DIY solutions to everyday problems you didn’t know existed. They increase productivity and efficiency and provide some fun and a new outlook on everyday things.
With the increase in the popularity of many life hacks, people are coming up with new ones every day. Let us look at a few you didn’t know existed:
- Preserve your photos up to eternity
Silica Gel is known to absorb moisture from the hair. That is why so many manufacturers of leather or several food products use silica gel packets extensively. Using silica gel increases longevity by reducing the oxidation of the substance surrounding it.
Photos are sensitive to moisture, especially old photos that were made out of films. Silica gel in its amorphous form can be used to keep moisture away from the photos. This is why you can easily use it to store your photos.
Silica gel uses are not only limited to photos, but you can also preserve a whole lot of items using silica gel including your documents, your jewelry, your clothes, and even food and pharmaceuticals.
But Silica gel is a toxic element, so NEVER swallow them and keep them away from children.
- “Un-highlight” your notes
If you are one of those people who have the habit of highlighting way too much and regretting it later, this hack is for you. If you, seemingly to highlight the only “important” stuff made all of your book yellow (or pink) you can use a lemon to remove the highlighter from your notes.
It will not completely erase it, but make it undetectable enough for you to not see. The best way to do it is by slicing a lemon open in half, taking a q-tip, rubbing the q-tip on the lemon, and gently removing the highlighter. The trick here is to not rub, simply dissolve the highlighter in citric acid that the lemon contains.
- Two for one sealable bags
Sealable bags are ones that have a ziplock at the top, they come in very handy during packing. They keep the oils in place, make sure the water doesn’t get to your clothes, and also keeps things dry. But what is worse than not having a sealable bag, having one that is too big.
Yes, we all know how irritating it is when something is too small for a sealable bag. The trapped air either ruins the material inside or keeps swinging it around.
What you can do is, simply take a butter knife, heat it up, and cut the bag in half. Now the knife cuts the bag into two halves and the heat melts the plastic and seals the deal.
- Lampshade Cleaner
When you bought the fabric lampshade and thought it would look aesthetically pleasing, did it ever occur to you that unlike other lampshades it cannot be cleaned with a cloth or duster? It is frustrating cleaning a lampshade!
You cannot clean it with a cloth, liquid sprays, brushes, nor can you clean it in the washing machine. What you can do is use a lint roller. The lint roller will attract all the dust particles, dirt, dog hair, human hair, and any lint and make the lampshade appear cleaner.
When you use the link roller though make sure you are very gentle as lampshades are very fragile and can get torn easily if cleaned with too much force.
- Freeze the gum
Gum getting stuck anywhere except flat surfaces is very frustrating. You cannot clean it with hands, water soap, or even strong brushes. It especially gets irritating when it gets stuck in areas like carpets.
Gum is very stretchable and sticky when at normal temperature but is extremely brittle and breakable at low temperatures. You can easily use this to your advantage.
If the material it is stuck in is small in size, you can place that material in the freezer and after a few hours, the gum would be hard and brittle and can be removed easily. If it is in a big area, place a zip-lock bag with some ice cubes on it to reduce the temperature and make it hard.
- Dry your phone without heat
One more silica gel hack! If your phone falls into a bucket full of water, don’t use heat to remove the water stuck inside.
Instead, what you can do is simply collect some stored silica gel packets you have (if you haven’t been storing silica gel packets you should start today!), place those packets and your wet phone in the zip-lock bag and keep it overnight.
The silica gel will absorb water from all corners of the phone including the phone’s small circuits and make it dry and ready for use again without any damages