Toothpicks can be surprisingly handy when it comes to woodworking and fixing small household problems like stripped screw holes and scratched furniture. They can also be used as a quick fix for a hard-to-close door that has to be forced or slammed shut.
Amazon.com has been around for a long time now, but there are still a few things most people don't know about when it comes to buying products from them. Here's a quick roundup of tips to help you get the most out of Amazon and save some money in the process. The holidays are the busiest time of year for online shopping, but these tricks will work all year around.
Sick of the same boring, holiday-printed, gift wrapping paper for packaging your presents? Using spare cardboard, make a pyramid-shaped gift box for your unusually-shaped item. Or, transform your spare empty cereal boxes into fancy custom-made gift boxes.
In addition to making homemade ice cream in an empty coffee can and ziplock freezer bag, you can also make your own ice cream very quickly by using dry ice.
Even if you never plan on visiting a golf course for the rest of your life, it's still a good idea to have a few golf tees lying around the house. You never know when you might need to replace a small cap, stake a picnic blanket to the ground on a windy day, and (assuming that they are clean and new) hold a thick sandwich together.
Every time you Google something or click on an ad in a YouTube video, Google gets paid. They are estimated to make well over $100 million a day, and I honestly think that's low-balling it.
Need to give yourself a super-cheap back massage? Place a few tennis balls inside a long sock, tie the end, and place the sock on the floor. Then, lie down and roll your back against the sock to relieve your sore back muscles.
Gardening hose starting to leak? Don't throw it out just yet. Cut it up into smaller lengths and slice it open to use the hose as a protective barrier for outdoor electrical cords, or as added grip on a metal paint can handle.
Back in the '80s, NASA and the Associated Landscape Contractors of America did a study where they discovered which houseplants were the most effective in purifying the air in space facilities. Though you may not be living in a rocket ship, you can definitely benefit from having one or more of these plants in your home.
Converting from iOS to Android doesn't have to be a particularly difficult process, but people make it that way anyways. Transferring contacts becomes a big deal, dimensions and hardware become an issue, and most importantly, features that were once loved become sorely missed.
Sometimes, it's very useful to be able to use more than one app on Android phone or tablet. For example, if you want to watch a movie while surfing or if you need calculator, find some contact, write a note, search web or wikipedia for some facts, etc.
Using an empty Gatorade bottle, empty 5 oz. food container, power drill, string, and some red nail polish, you can easily construct your own DIY hummingbird feeder in less than 10 minutes to attract hummingbirds to your own backyard garden.
If you don't have the backyard space to make a Japanese rock garden where you can spend long afternoons meditatively raking ripple-like patterns into the sand below your feet, settle for the next best thing by making a simple, miniature zen garden that can easily fit on the corner of your desk or nightstand.
Originally invented by the Shaker community in the 1700s, clothespins are incredibly useful for hanging wet clothing on a clothesline, but also can be used to organize your cable cords, keep your pair of socks together, hold down the used end of your toothpaste tube, and decrease the possibility of you accidentally hammering your finger while pounding down on a nail.
The airline is not your friend. It will do anything it can to gouge your dignity, time, and most of all, money. One of the biggest scams to get a few extra bucks out of you are those dreaded baggage fees. If the lines, security, "random" screenings, and unwanted fondling aren't bad enough, you have to pay them to check your bags (which, most of the time, is done poorly). Flying truly is the most inconvenient way to travel.
If you don't have a lot of counter space in your bathroom, even something as small as a toothbrush can seem like it takes up a lot of room. Hanging a toothbrush holder on the wall helps to declutter your counter, or you can hang it inside the cabinet to hide them from sight. Photographer and Instructables user Andrea Biffi used one mini-pack of Sugru to make a really simple wall-mounted toothbrush holder. All you have to do is roll the Sugru into a cylinder, then press the toothbrushes into i...
However much you love cooking fried fish for dinner, there's no need for your kitchen to smell fishy for days afterward. Keep your post-cooking funky kitchen smell to a minimum by boiling cloves in water, simmering lemon peels, oven roasting coffee beans, or leaving bowls of white vinegar on the kitchen counter overnight.
Glow sticks, a popular favor at parties and outdoor events, and a must-have on Halloween, can be traced back to the United States Navy in the mid-1960s. The military desired improved visibility during night operations, and glow sticks, with their small-size portability and lack of batteries, were a perfect tactical solution.
Cottons balls may not be the most exciting bathroom product in the world, but there are some surprisingly useful things you can do with them.
Approximately 380 billion plastic bags are used in the United States every year. That’s more than 1,200 bags per U.S. resident and more than 54 times the number of people who live on the planet. That's why here in Santa Monica, thanks to a city-wide plastic bag ban, you won't find a plastic bag at any of the major retail stores.
Bobby pins are great for pinning down flyaway bangs, but they're also great for pushing up the unused gel in a tube of toothpaste, marking the end of a transparent tape roll, opening the plastic seal in food jars, and even removing the pits from ripe cherries or olives.
If you are like most people, you probably have a discordant mess of cable and computer cords in your workspace or living room snaking all over the floor or against your desk. Though you can buy various cable organizers at the computer store, you can also organize them the DIY way with bread twist ties, binder clips, cardboard tubes, old credit cards, Velcro tape, or even your old hair clip.
Wax paper, a moisture-proof paper commonly used in the kitchen to keep food from sticking, can also be used to preserve maple leaves, keep bathroom fixtures spotless, line your refrigerator bins, funnel spices into small spice containers, and make re-corking unfinished wine bottles a cinch.
Office binder clips, commonly used for binding together thick stacks of computer paper, can also be used as a bookmark, money clip, picture hanger, boots hanger, cable organizer, and more.
DIY foldable table for small apartments and workshops. It has unique way of folding. This one is made from old computer desk. It is an easy do-it-yourself project, even for woodworking beginners. See whole tutorial here: Foldable table, recycling of old table.
I like to use a row counter as it saves me the trouble of counting rows when increasing, decreasing, or working a cable pattern. All I have is a small needle mounted counter that is hard to keep track of when it is not mounted on a knitting needle. When knitting on circular or double pointed needles, or crocheting, I have to count rows ever so often. This is time consuming, and I have to admit to sometimes being inaccurate. To solve this problem I threaded a piece of fishing line through the ...
Lens caps are one of those necessary evils that serve a very useful purpose while still creating tons of headaches for users—who hasn't lost at least a few? Sure, you can always buy a holder for it, or just shove it in your pocket, but if you have some LEGOs lying around from your distant youth, you can make your own in just a few minutes.
This guide will explain how to configure a USB Flash Drive / Memory Stick so that you can run a keylogger within just a few seconds of plugging it in any computer.
There are many ways to make a lightsaber. You can turn a flashlight into a steampunk lightsaber, you can make a lightsaber from junk, and you can make one that looks totally real (if you've got the money and time). Heck, you can even make one in Photoshop. And now you can make one using an infographic! Who doesn't like infographics? This infographic by Herbert Pocket, which may or may not have been inspired by this lightsaber infographic, will show you the quick route to making a Star Wars wo...
Getting a new phone is like getting a pair of new socks—you can't wait to try them on and when you do, they feel totally awesome. Maybe that's just me, but for many customers that have already received their highly anticipated iPhone 5 in the mail, awesome is definitely not the word they are using.
Bored of using your bottle of dishwashing soap for just washing dishes? You're in luck. Not surprisingly, the soapy liquid commonly used for removing stubborn food build-up from your eating utensils can also be used as a general cleaner for washing windows, removing clothing and carpet stains, and cleaning your blender without taking it apart. For more unusual uses, dishwashing liquid is surprisingly useful for prepping your nails before a manicure and can even be used to kill fleas.
In this tutorial, you will learn how to make a miniature origami book. It is very simple and cute. You will be able to turn the pages of this book, and write in it. The books are small and cute, depending on the paper you use. You will not need origami paper for this project, but you might want to use glue just in case. You can give these cute mini origami books as birthday gifts, but I mainly use them to fill spaces in my bookcase. Comment below if you have any questions!
It can be incredibly frustrating to take closeup shots with an iPhone camera—or any smartphone camera for that matter. Even if your phone's camera is top of the line, you'll still get a fuzzy picture if you get to close to your subject.
A bike rack that's lightweight, small enough to store in your car, easy to build at home, and only costs 50 dollars sounds to good to be true, right? It's not. This guy built a suction-based bike rack in just two hours with only his jigsaw and a drill. He built the contraption using off-the-shelf suction handles, plastic cutting boards, and a commercial fork mount. All-in-all, it cost him just $44 for one mount and less than $100 to add in a second mount and a rear holder. You can find his fu...
Did you know that there's a way to start a fire by squishing air? In this project, I'll show you how to build a tool that does exactly that—and I'll give you a sneak peak into the principals of how a diesel engine operates!
A friend of mine sent me a link to the work of Laura Bifano, and I was totally blown away. She has a whole gallery of Minecraft-inspired art of various animals, and it's just the coolest thing in the world! Check out this one, small example: I don't want to repost all of them here, because you should definitely go check them out at her gallery. However, if anyone wants to make any (or all) of these for our current Mythical Creatures challenge, I'll allow it!
A small, pointy wooden stick normally used for picking at your teeth after a meal can do many other things. Use the humble toothpick to aid you in microwaving your potatoes, marking the end of clear packing tape, applying glue onto sequins and plugging the hole in your garden hose.
Changing light bulbs that are high up can be scary! You're always in danger of falling victim to a bulb explosion! Check out this tutorial to show you a MacGyver style way to make a device to help prevent this. ShutterSparks: High Light Bulb Changer.
Anonymous U.S. officials are quoted by the NY Times stating explicitly that a Hezbollah suicide bomber attacked the Israeli tourist bus yesterday. While this is entirely possible, I think we should remember the bizarre bombing plot of a few months ago in which a small-time Iranian drug dealer was alleged by the Justice Department to have direct links to the Revolutionary Guards, and to have plotted the assassination of the Saudi ambassador. By the way, this is the same person, Bandar ibn Sult...