20+ Simple Yet Brilliant Hacks From People Who Are the Ultimate Problem Solvers

Every person possesses their own unique skills that help ease their life and save time. It’s not necessary to be a college graduate or an accomplished scientist in order to come up with little life hacks. People go about their lives and find simple and quick solutions to various tasks.

We at Bright Side are always happy to share with you how to make our life easier and more comfortable. That’s why we dove into the internet and found 20+ of the most interesting life hacks for you from all over the world.

Food

• I could never understand why a grater has that side with the tiniest holes. I had the following options in my mind: to make lemon zest or to grate nutmeg. Do you really need zest that often? Do you regularly grate nutmeg? Once my neighbor told me that this side is perfect for removing scales from fish. I had my doubts, but I tried. The result was a perfectly clean fish without a single scale and it took me only 2 minutes to do it. That’s what we need that side of the grate for!
• If you want to open a glass jar (like jam or pickles) and the lid won’t move, place a spoon with the tip under the edge of the lid and pull the spoon upward. The lid will budge and you can open the jar. © kpssble / Reddit
• When you are at a restaurant, wash your hands after ordering. The menu is generally one of the dirtiest things you can touch! © Jyotish Robin / Quora
• I use an old ketchup bottle to pour oil. The thing is, ketchup bottles have a little plastic rubber valve/film that only releases its contents when you squeeze the plastic bottle. So it helps you to not overpour oil when you’re cooking. © desinica / Reddit
• Always better to microwave for longer on a lower power level, especially for leftovers. Trust me on this one, it heats up way more evenly. © little-lion-sam / Reddit

Computers and work

• You can add bold, italics, and even strike-through in your WhatsApp messages. To bold up, you need to put an asterisk on either side of the word, like *this*, while italics needs an underscore on either side of a _word_, and for a strike-through, you need tildes just like ~this~. © Jyotish Robin / Quora
• When writing an email, leave the recipient email field blank until you’re ready to send it. This prevents accidental emails. © Santosh Singh Dagur / Quora
• If you’re a person who likes to listen to music in the background while working, but who finds it distracting, you can play music from your favorite video games since the music in them is designed specifically to not distract you. © Roma Amarnani / Quora

• If you accidentally have caps lock on, instead of deleting it and starting over, you can highlight the caps and hit shift & F3 to switch it back to lowercase. Sadly, this method is not universal, I know for sure it works in Office, Outlook, and some other internal systems. © Glitch_in_the_pink / Reddit

Home

• After using a blender, immediately put a little dish soap and hot water inside and run it for a minute. This method might be common knowledge, but personally, I spent years setting it aside and then struggling to hand wash it later! © enchantingcat / Reddit
• If you think of something at night when you’re already in bed and are worried that you will forget it in the morning, throw something on the floor that isn’t supposed to be there, or turn your clock upside down... anything that is out of the ordinary. When you wake up in the morning, you’ll notice the thing and it’ll trigger your memory. © ThatTriciaGirl / Reddit
• I keep my laundry in boxes underneath my bed, organized by color. That way I won’t forget anything in the laundry basket, I just empty the whole thing into the washer. This also makes it easier to see what I have to wash first. © polaroidbilder / Reddit
• If you put something down temporarily, say out loud, “I put the screwdriver by the microwave,” or whatever. This engages many more areas of the brain (particularly the language centers), which create a richer memory, making it less likely that you’ll forget where you put it. © MakesTypos / Reddit
• Every time you go to the beach, you are worried about if someone is going to steal your wallet while you are in the water. This problem can be solved — wash out an old (large) bottle of sunscreen and put your cell phone, keys, and money in it... Well, who would want to steal sunscreen? © Nurav Baruhan / Quora

Saving money

• I try to add things up as portions of better, or more fulfilling things, like a coffee is 1/10 of a new game. 10 meals out is a weekend away, etc. © _mexicola / Reddit

• Or another good one is “how much does x cost in workable hours?” When I was making $10/hr I pretty much stopped buying things because nothing I could buy was worth an hour or more of my time. © Annonimus / Reddit
• I don’t have bad habits, but I live my financial life as a person who has them. Meaning every Monday I transfer the sum of one week’s worth of money that I would spend on my bad habit to my savings account. If people that earn less than me can afford bad habits, so can I. © kebabhue / Reddit

Beauty

• If you want your bra to be invisible under a white shirt, you have to pick one that is close to your skin tone. For me, I usually will wear beige, light grey, or lavender. Basically, any color that minimizes the difference in color between my skin and the bra. © cheshire06898 / Reddit
• Always have a hairband attached to your key ring. You can use it to hold your keys around your wrist and it comes in handy when you need a hairband and forgot to bring one with you. © netflixanddeal / Reddit
• Dollar store baby wipes are a cheap alternative to makeup remover. Literally, they are so gentle on your face and they get rid of the toughest makeup. © desinica / Reddit
• Sometimes changing your pillowcase daily can help with acne. I use a clean t-shirt or a towel over my pillow to get the same effect. © Annonimus / Reddit

Life

• Whenever I got sick in my childhood and started to feel sad, my mother would always say that there were 3 of us: my mother, me, and the illness. And that I am either on my mother’s side or on the side of the illness. The side that has 2 units wins. It worked well — I would stop being naughty and feeling sad right away and would help my mother to win against the disease by patiently putting up with all the inhalations and the not-so-tasty medicine. © Overheard / Ideer
• Every time I am getting an injection, I ask them to tell me in advance when they are going to start. At this moment I take a deep inhale and the injection is not painful at all!!! All because our brain perceives breathing as a more important function than pain. Thank you to the Department of Physiology at my university. © Overheard / Vk
• The best way to make bullies in your neighborhood leave you alone is to start kicking the wheels of parked cars to activate the alarms. I witnessed this situation myself: someone kicked my car and a lot of people looked out of their windows, checking to see whose car was making the alarm sound. It made the bullies disappear and the smart girl who kicked the car hurried back to her home. © Overheard / Vk
• Always be nice to receptionists. They are the gatekeepers. Whether you’re there to interview for a job or to attempt to sell something to the owners, if you are rude to the receptionist, you can kiss your chances goodbye. This applies doubly over the phone where body language and facial expressions are non-existent — make sure your tone isn’t condescending or else your message is going in the trash if it isn’t mission-critical. © MrsTruce / Reddit
• In the summer, I pour water with fabric softener into my car’s glasswasher tank. It works much better than any anti-rain agent cleaner. © Overheard / VK
• Whenever I am in a taxi and want to drop by a store to buy something tasty, and at the same time I don’t want the taxi driver to switch on the waiting mode, I say that I need to exchange a $100 bill for smaller bills. It works perfectly! © Overheard / Vk

Do you have anything you could add to this list?