19 Secret Features I Wish I Knew Before I Was This Old

Remember moving around on these scooter boards during gym class? Or, more accurately, bashing your fingers repeatedly while holding onto the handles?

Somehow they managed to be designed perfectly to cause the most finger damage as possible. But it turns out that we all missed the actual use of these handles on the sides. Guess what? They’re finger guards. Not handles at all.

The plastic loops on the sides of the boards are designed to protect your fingers from the exact walloping that we all gave ourselves by using them wrong. See, the correct way to hold on is to slide your hands through the hole and grip the base of the board itself. This way, you’ll block your knuckles from knocking into other boards and obstacles while you’re having the time of your life scooting around.

When you’re getting out of the shower and wrapping yourself in a cozy bathrobe, which way are you supposed to tie it? This way, right? With the belt through all the loops, tied around your waist. I mean, that’s how all belts work. Is it a trick question? Yup! Bathrobes actually work better tied like this. Slide the belt through the first two loops on the front and pull it tight. It’s so much easier to wrap it nice and tight.

Look at this division symbol. I bet you’ve never put together what the little-known meaning behind the design is. It’s a fraction, but with the numbers represented by dots. Makes perfect sense, right? Why didn’t any of us notice it?

If you slice open an avocado but don’t use it all, there’s a way to keep it from going brown. Store it in a glass of water in the fridge. It’ll last 2 to 3 days longer.

When you’re microwaving some popcorn for movie night and are about to pour it from the bag into a bowl, stop! There’s actually a useful feature built into the microwavable bags that barely anyone uses. Once it’s all popped, the end of the bag will have a slight opening. Before you tear it open wider, tip the bag upside down and shake it! It’s designed to let the pesky unpopped kernels fall out. Shake ’em all out, and you’ll have a perfect bowl of popcorn every time!

Sunblock has an unknown use that could come in handy if you ever have a permanent marker on your skin and a can of sunblock spray nearby. Just spray it on the marker and rub it off. There you go! It also works on hard surfaces like your kitchen tiles. So the next time you unleash your artistic talent with a Sharpie somewhere you shouldn’t, you’re covered.

If the batteries in your remote run out of juice, there’s a hidden feature to give them a bit more life. Take them out and rub the ends together on both sides. This cleans off the connectivity points and gives the chemicals inside time to redistribute. This means you’ve got more time to run to the store to buy more batteries.

Look up! See your ceiling fan? Okay, if you don’t have a ceiling fan, just go with it and imagine you do. Well, it has a hidden feature that you probably don’t know. It might be a switch on the fan itself or a button on the remote, but most fans have the ability to change directions. And there’s a reason you actually really want it to. In winter, you want it to spin clockwise, which pushes all the hot air from the ceiling down. In the summer, you want it to spin counterclockwise, to pull the cool air that pools around the floor up to circulate around the room.

This next one’s a huge deal. Your microwave probably has a silent mode. Yeah, that’s right. All your 3 AM burritos that you heated up with your finger hovering over the stop button to hit it one second before the timer went off could have actually been a lot less stressful. It depends on the brand, but by either pressing and holding the 0 or 1 button, you should be able to activate the silent mode. Now you can microwave to your heart’s content anytime.

Those springy door stops at your baseboards that make the “boing” noise aren’t just doorstops. They’re also door holders. By holding them down and opening the door over them, the spring latches onto the bottom of the door and locks it open. Yeah, we all missed that one.

Did you know you’ve probably been putting on your running shoes wrong? See, there’s a small hole at the top of where the laces end that’s called a “heel lock.” Can you guess what it does? Yeah, it locks your heels. That way, they don’t slip around and give you a blister or slide your sock down — which is just the worst feeling, isn’t it? So what you’re supposed to do is loop each lace into its heel lock hole, which creates a small loop. The opposite lace then goes through that loop. Tie your laces tight like you normally would, and whoa, your heels are secure!

Speaking of shoelaces, if you accidentally knot them so well that even you, with your incredible muscles, can’t undo them, there’s a common baking ingredient that has a hidden feature that can help. Yeah, you heard me right. A baking ingredient. Corn starch can make your gravy thicker, or it can untie stuck knots. It’s so talented! Just sprinkle it on any knot, coating it completely, and it will slide free easily. It works on necklaces, ropes, yarn, etc. It doesn’t work on knots in your muscles, though, unfortunately. But hey, you could always give it a try.

Uh oh, did you put on your friend’s ring without thinking about how much smaller their hands are than yours, and now it’s stuck? Just grab a bottle of Windex, my friend. Yup, Windex cleans your windows, of course, but it also has a neat little secret talent at removing stuck rings. A little spritz and that bling will slide right off. Cool, right? Why has no one ever taught us that?

Let’s say you’re writing something in pencil, like an exam, but whoops, you forgot your eraser. Strangely, you didn’t forget to bring your bread to your test. So you’ve got that, which is all you need to clear up that mistaken answer you just wrote down. Roll the bread up tight until it has a texture best described as...well, eraser-like. Then go at it, erasing like you normally would. Why have the bread-makers been hiding this from us? This could have been useful in so many situations when I brought bread to my school exams.

If you wear leather jackets, first off, you’re cool. Second off, you’re probably missing out on using a hidden feature that’s not so hidden and is actually in plain sight. The straps on the tops of the shoulders of your jacket aren’t just for decoration. If you unbutton them while you slide on the straps of your bag, you can clip them shut again, over your bag’s straps, locking them in place. No matter how many jumping jacks or cartwheels or breakdancing head spins you do, your bag is not going anywhere.

When you need to wrap up some leftovers, tin foil is your friend. But it also has a place in the laundry room because of this secret use. Imagine you run out of dryer sheets. Your clothes come out of the dryer full of so much static that they make your hair stand up straight like a cartoon evil scientist’s. Here’s what you need to do. Crush up two sheets of tin foil into tight balls. Throw those clothes back in the dryer with the balls and give them another round. They’ll come out static-free.

After you make hard-boiled eggs, they’re in hot water. Some would say boiling hot. So how do you get them out easily without reaching in? A whisk! Push it over the egg, and it will pop into the wire cradle. Now you can pull it right out with ease and comfort.

The colors of the clips on bread bags actually convey a secret meaning. They’re showing you the day of the week that the loaf was packaged. Blue means Monday, brown means Thursday, and white means Friday. Yeah, it’s not just random colors. And most bread brands follow the same system because there’s one company that supplies a lot of these clips. So when picking out the perfect loaf, you can gauge the freshness by the color.