21. Drink Cartons
Best Place to Purchase: N/A
Average Product Price: N/A
Whether you’re pouring milk on your cereal or a glass of juice, it can be a struggle to deal with those boxes they come in. Undoing the cap and pouring out the contents can sometimes result in the fluids coming out too fast and creating a mess.
Drink Cartons @mercedescares / Pinterest
Nevertheless, what you may not realize is that you’ve been holding the carton all wrong. You’re supposed to hold the box so that the spout is at the top, not the bottom, so you have a more controlled pour. No more messy clean-ups while you’re trying to make breakfast.
It might seem to go against everything that you’ve been taught about pouring cartons you buy at Walmart and beyond, but trust us when we say it’s worth it. Relearning this habit will save you spills, and ultimately, make the product last longer.
22. Stapler Removers
Best Place to Purchase: Amazon
Average Product Price: $6.99*
In the digital world, very few places actually use stapled papers anymore, but some businesses like to keep paperwork of everything that’s done. Staples are great for keeping all those papers together, and staple removers do the perfect job of removing those staplers if the documents need to be reorganized.
@inforum/Pinterest
However, staple removers are also great at saving your fingers when you need to take keys off your key rings. Work the teeth into the keyring to work the metal away from each other. That way, it’s easier to get keys on and off your keyring. No more broken nails or bruised fingers.
We all know just how tight keyrings can be, so this hack is a complete lifesaver. No more frantically trying to use a pen or a knife to do the job when you’ve had the perfect tool lurking on your desk all along. If you don’t have one yet, you can pick one up on sites like eBay for next to nothing.
23. Vegetable Peelers
Best Place to Purchase: Walmart
Average Product Price: $11.76*
Many of the devices we have in our home, we believe, have only one purpose in mind. One of those devices is a vegetable peeler; we think that they’re only suitable for removing skins from potatoes and carrots, but they’re great at other things.
Vegetable Peelers @gewcygin / Pinterest
For example, a vegetable peeler is pretty great at cutting onions up extremely thin, for when you want less onion flavor in your soups or other savory dishes. It’s also a lot safer than trying to cut thin slices of onion with a regular knife. You’ll wonder why you never tried this before.
You may not see cooks on Discovery’s Food Network using peelers like this, but even the professionals may not be privy to this insider info. Now you know, you can save yourself cut fingers and change the way you work in the kitchen. Everyone’s a winner!
24. Apple Laptop Chargers
Best Place to Purchase: Amazon
Average Product Price: $35.99*
Apple laptop chargers provide power to laptops so that the batteries can be recharged once they’re empty. That’s not the only thing they’re suitable for, however. On the small white brick are plastic wings you can flip up.
Apple Charger r/apple/Reddit.com
These were added to the power brick so that you could wrap your power cord around it so that it’s easier to transport. It also prevents your cable from becoming a tangled mess when you place it in your bag for transportation. Then when you’re done using it, flip the wings back down so that they don’t get in the way.
Little details like this are perfect examples of why Apple reigns supreme as a true titan in the technology industry. Who cares about the latest screen specs when you can avoid a tangled wire every time you work on the move?
25. Soda Cup Lids
Best Place to Purchase: N/A
Average Product Price: N/A
Eating out can save you a lot of time on having to cook and cleaning up afterward. Fountain drinks are left up to you after you’ve collected your meal; pop on a top and grab a straw. Well, turns out there’s more to it than that.
Soda Cup Lids @rcga / Pinterest
What you might not have known is that the lid itself can serve as a coaster for when you get home and don’t want to get water stains on your tables or countertops. Just remove the top, and the drink itself can be pressed onto it to hold it into place, providing you with an easy coaster that you can recycle once you’re done.
It’s such a simple little switch that Coke drinkers should be savvy to it, but it’s not something that’s ever widely used. If you don’t have coasters at home or just don’t want to leave a wet ring on a friend’s coffee table, then this is the hack for you.
26. Bread Tags
Best Place to Purchase: Amazon
Average Product Price: $10.49*
Those little plastic tabs on bread bags are great for keeping the bag sealed with freshness. You can even write on them when you buy your bag of bread so that you can tell if it’s time to throw it out before it becomes moldy. However, after that, what else can you do with them?
Bread Tags @Popsugar/Twitter.com
It turns out that bread tags are ideal for keeping your wires and cords organized so that there are no more tangled messes at your computer desk. Just bundle the cables into different ones and write on the tags to know what each line is attached to.
Not only is it a great way to organize your office space, but it’s a brilliant solution to needless plastic waste. Why throw them away when you can repurpose them and turn your set-up into a corporate space Amazon’s Jeff Bezos would be proud of?
27. Cola
Best Place to Purchase: Amazon
Average Product Price: $19.05*
Everyone swears by the refreshing taste of a Coca-Cola. However, more and more people have been using the classic beverage for more than just quenching their thirst. And this hidden purpose of a popular product has to do with cleaning!
Coke Cleaning Hack @bobsweep/Twitter.com
Cleaning pennies, unclogging toilets, or scrubbing porcelain tiles, customers swear that the soda helps them with all of those problems. It has even been used to remove rust from old tools sitting in a shed for years.
So if you’re on a budget and need a fast way to clean the things around your home, consider Coke instead of some fancy, expensive product. And maybe consider what it might be doing to your insides next time you go to take a sip!
28. Cupcakes
Best Place to Purchase: N/A
Average Product Price: N/A
There’s nothing more enticing than a cupcake after a hard day of work. If you’re lucky enough, you may even have one of those deluxe bakeries near your home that makes everything from scratch.
Cupcakes @tryberg / Pinterest
The tall mountain of frosting on top, however, can be a challenge to eat. Instead of getting frosting on your nose and cheeks, consider making a sweet sandwich out of the whole thing. Break your cupcake in half and place the bottom on the top, squishing the frosting in the middle. Voila, no more mess, and you’re not losing any frosting in the process.
29. Self-Serve Applesauce
Best Place to Purchase: Local grocery store, Costco (in bulk), Walmart
Average Product Price: $5.78/18-count*
Applesauce is a sweet, savory snack that you can eat on the go. And that includes times when you forgot to pack a spoon. That’s right, there’s a little life hack to applesauce that you might not have realized. Applesauce’s packaging is actually set up to be self-serve.
Self-Serve Applesauce @u/IRunOverThings / Reddit.com
The tin foil lid atop cups of Mott’s applesauce (and pretty much every other brand in existence, as this is the preferred packaging) is malleable enough that you can make it into a spoon. Just meld the tinfoil into the desired spoon-like shape and voila! You have an easy-to-use utensil for your sweet snack.
30. Tape
Best Place to Purchase: Dollar stores, Walmart, Staples
Average Product Price: $0.99/roll*
Tape is a quick-fix for most problems, especially if you’re not handy. However, it can be such a pain to try to find where the tape ends when you’re trying to pull off a piece. This is doubly-true for clear packing tape. Folding the tape isn’t the best option, as that wastes tape and can cause even more annoying knots.
Tape Hack @benriwaza/YouTube
However, there’s a simple solution. Place a paper clip underneath the tape after you use it. That way, you can easily find the beginning each time you go to grab a piece. The paper clip won’t cause knots, nor will it dry out the tape. Problem solved!