18 Hidden Features That Make Everyday Objects Awesome

If you ever find yourself stuck in the trunk of your car, stay calm. All cars are supposed to be equipped with an emergency latch to help open the trunk from the inside in the unlikely case it happens. These latches are so well thought out that they can be opened by people of all ages. More so, handles are designed to glow in the dark, too. You can even pull them with the mouth if there’s not enough wiggle room to use your hands. Never mind how you got in the trunk in the first place. Moving on...

If you’re ever working with needle and thread, remember you don’t need to stick the needle directly into the spool. You may end up losing the needle altogether, not to mention you can easily hurt your fingers. A lot of modern sewing sets these days come with a designated place for safeguarding the needles. It’s located at the bottom part of the thread spool. You’ll just need to pull it out. It’s even made to hold multiple sewing needles at a time.

Disposable ballpoint pens come with a little secret of their own. Did you ever notice that in some of them, there’s a small hole in the plastic part? It’s actually a rudimentary ventilation system. It’s supposed to let the ink easily make it to the tip of the pen.

Ok, I know it’s in the name, but you don’t really need to shake the seasoning shaker to get any product out. Don’t believe me? You’re not the only one. Go grab your favorite seasoning bottle out of your pantry. If it has one of those removable plastic caps, it’s perfect for the experiment. Instead of shaking the bottle, try holding it from the plastic cap, while it’s upside down. Now gently twist the bottle from side to side, and before you know it, you get some gorgeously flowing seasoning without having to wiggle the shaker and make a mess all over the stove.

On the same note (laaa!), most salt and pepper shakers should have ridges on the bottom of the glass portion. In case you get any seasoning stuck in there, place the bottom of the salt shaker against the bottom of the pepper shaker and wiggle it around, so the ridges click with each other. The seasoning should easily pour out now without you having to open the bottle.

In colder weather, you often have so many clothing layers on that you can hardly feel the purse or backpack straps on your shoulders anymore? Not to mention how fast they can slide off. Some jackets come with a built-in solution for that, in the form of a small tab on the shoulder, with either a hook or a button. It’s meant to be opened and closed comfortably so you can keep your purse in place at any time.

You’re most likely using it merely to peel the skin of potatoes, carrots, or cucumbers. But you can use your vegetable peeler for chopping fine strips of onion as well! Just cut the onion into quarters vertically, and then start slicing. This might also help out with those embarrassing onion tears.

Most people miss this one, but should you ever have a closer look at your toothpaste tube. You will surely see some sort of coloring there, either a dot or a block. Colors can vary. They can be black, green, red, or even blue. These colored spots are actually meant to help the assembly machines back at the toothpaste factory. They recognize when and where these machines need to cut the toothpaste tubes and proceed to fold them for packaging.

For most types of footwear, if there’s anything that seems a bit out of place, always know that it’s there for a reason. Most manufacturers don’t put extra items on shoes just for fun. It would definitely be a waste of time and resources. For footwear like boots, for example, there’s often a small loop at the top back of the shoe. It’s there to help you when you need to put the shoe on since you can quickly pull on it. Plus, you can also hang the shoes somewhere, most likely to dry, since most boots are meant to be worn in the colder weather.

I’ve been guilty at least once of over-dressing with a bunch of layers just so I won’t need to jam everything in my checked-in bag. But it does become a problem when you actually have to get seated. What do you do with your coat or your jacket? Have a closer look next time you board a plane on the seat in front of you: the hook that keeps the tray table upright can double up as a jacket hook. As long as you don’t need to have any meals while in the air, you’re good to go.

Most mascaras expire within three to six months, I’m told, depending on the manufacturer. But you can help speed up that process if you’re not careful enough. Continuously pumping the mascara wand trying to mix in the product actually pushes more air into the tube. This can make it dry much faster, and you evidently won’t get the desired results with it anymore. There’s an easy way to check if your mascara is still good enough to use. If you don’t hear a popping noise whenever you take the brush out, you may very well need to go get yourself a new mascara tube.

I know we’re living in the era of Bluetooth-connected devices, but for better quality sound, they still recommend using headphones that connect via audio jacks. Remember seeing black ridges on these jacks? They aren’t there just to make them fit when you plug them into your phone or laptop. Made out of a special insulating material, these bands are meant to guard the wires when sound is being transmitted. Based on the number of bands, you can figure out which end goes where.

Some empty space under noodles in a cup doesn’t mean the company producing them wants to cheat you out of a full portion. No no! It’s a manner of keeping the noodles intact during their transportation. It also helps with the circulation of hot water that is poured over the products before you can enjoy them.

The V-shaped neckline was initially designed to serve a bunch of objectives. First, as a way of prolonging the life of the garment that would maintain its shape over the years. It’s also there to fit your head through the shirt in case it needs some stretching. This way, it ensures a snugger grip around the neck. Lastly, it helps absorb sweat in case you’re wearing the shirt while exercising.

It’s not necessarily a custom anymore, but you may have stumbled upon a dinner jacket with an additional mysterious pocket on the right side. Turns out, this pocket was used by men to easily reach their train tickets since most of them had to travel to work every day. It helped them keep their jacket buttoned up but also benefited from the use of a pocket. Now it’s only added as a decoration, and it doesn’t serve an actual purpose anymore.

Speaking of things we don’t use these days, or at least for their initial purpose, did you know Play-Doh was originally a cleaning product? In the 1920s, the market was in need of a product that could help them wipe the wallpapered area around coal-burning furnaces. The recipe for what we now know as Play-Doh was thus invented. It was manufactured in white only and was supposed to clean wallpaper by being rolled back and forth over the dirt. It was only later in the 1940s that new products for cleaning wallpaper were brought up, and Play-Doh was redirected towards another area of the market.

While I always enjoy a nice piece of toast for breakfast, isn’t it pesky to have to clean out the toaster? Well, not anymore, since I recently found out that toasters have a slide or a panel at the bottom that helps get rid of all those annoying bread crumbs easily.

There used to be a time when you could only have access to video games by inserting cartridges in your console of choice. These tiny objects gave many doctors a lot of headaches. People soon started popping up in hospitals after having swallowed small game cartridges, especially the younger generation. Nintendo — the company that manufactures the majority of these devices — had to come up with a creative solution to prevent these accidents. So, these days Nintendo Switch cartridges are purposely coated with specific chemicals that can leave a really bad bitter taste in the mouth. Not that I’d recommend you ever to try and taste for yourself.