Share Your Life Hacks!

[workathome]

Jacob's system makes sense to me in contrast with mainstream procedure (e.g. Spring Cleaning-type method). I see this in people collecting too much stuff, dumping it, then just using the excess space to acquire more stuff. The new method would be to never allow "too much stuff" to happen.

[jennypenny]

I can see a place for small hacks for one-time or infrequent obstacles. I can also see it for when you're forced into something because of family/work/social obligations and its easier to hack a solution than to try and change the nature of the obligation.

@BecaS-- Try taking a step back. Why do you even have all of those cleaning products for your bathroom? Why not just bleach, baking soda, and vinegar? And why is daily cleaning and organizing required? It all seems so...complicated. I have found (in my own life) that when something is really complicated, it usually isn't ERE-compliant

[C40]

I also share the belief that many truly good "life hacks" are merely simplification or setting things up to be mutually beneficial. I believe that they'll nearly all fit into certain categories of improvement types. Some examples:
- 5S principles for organization and simplifying,
- SMED or similar principles for reducing 'wasted time' (maximizing location to reduce travel time, doing things in better order or at better frequency
- Living in accordance with nature for improving health

I think it might be more interesting to discuss these principles in detail (in other threads **). The actual application (deciding on the details and how we actually do things) is often better left to the individual. By optimizing things myself, I get good at optimization and creative thinking (on top of the actual improvement)

That said, it is still interesting to hear about small execution details, and seeing examples I haven't thought about myself can help with my own creative thinking. I think I'll try to make a list of some to post later. I can have difficulty recognizing some of my own 'life hacks' (it's hard to recognize/remember how the things I do are different than "normal" when these things seem normal and at times obvious to me (after having gotten used to them myself and them becoming normal for me)

** I've already been meaning to make threads on certain principles (Pareto, root cause & action level, others) and now I have some more to add to the list

[BecaS]

JennyPenny, you've made a good point- you really don't need a product for every task.

I am product-intensive in the bathroom because of some minute details:

1. I prefer Windex to clean glass over anything else. This is a personal preference from years of experience: Windex simply wastes less of my time. I buy it in bulk at Costco.

2. I prefer Lysol because it kills some percentage of germs including blah blah blah germs yadda yadda. I spent years coming home from work, taking my shoes off at the door, walking straight to the washing machine, stripping down to my skin and throwing everything I'd worn for however many hours straight into the washer before I even sat down on a chair. The truth? Vinegar might kill all of those same germs and more, for all I know, but that's one area where I'll pay to have some relative peace of mind vis a vis what's on the product label. Ditto bought in bulk at Costco.

3. Dow Scrubbing Bubbles: the cleaner that's approved by the company that re-glazed our 54 year old iron bathtub, plus it kills mold/mildew and I can spray it quickly over the entire tub/shower surround/glass shower doors. It rinses clean without streaking. Ditto bought in bulk at Costco.

I could potentially use one of those products for the entire bathroom but for various reasons I don't: expense, streaking, ease of use, germ killing properties, blah blah blah. Notice it's only three products- it just happens to be be a different three products than bleach, baking soda and vinegar.

Otherwise, I use Bona hardwood floor cleaner on the refinished floors in the house we've renovated, ditto warranty. It works and it's easy. With a dog, a cat and two humans in residence in 1400 sq ft, the floors need to be "soapy cleaned" occasionally. Most of the time I just use water but sometimes I need a little something more on floors we use, really use, every day. If there was a DIY "soapy hardwood floor cleaner" recipe that wouldn't bomb our warranty or the actual finish on the floor I'd use it. I use just hot water on the wood floors in the other house as that is what's recommended for the finish on those floors. I *wish* Costco sold Bona floor products in bulk. I do keep old school lemon Pledge on hand, ditto in bulk at Costco, because it shines many many things up so well while imparting that signature lemon smell. We don't use it all the time- a damp cloth works as well for simple dusting.

Otherwise, we use liquid dish detergent, ditto bulk Costco, for hand soap dispensers and almost all other cleaning.

Why do I have to clean so much? Because, wow, I wish I knew the answer to that one. What the heck do we all do in here, anyway? Actually, I'm looking for people's "tiny tips" for whatever makes your life easier. Doesn't have to be about cleaning. Was it Arrrrgon DUUUUUDE, SELL A CONSONANT, MAKE SOME MONEY! who asked about cleaning tips? The thing is, I hate cleaning too- and yet due largely to discipline and life's blessings I typically clean two houses each week like I MEAN IT, because we LIVE in both spaces. I clean a LOT. Push the "How do you keep both houses clean?" button and I'm gonna go off in 14 different directions..

Workathome- AMEN about the stuff. We don't. I was considering, at the beginning of this thread, posting a semi-humorous remark that everybody needs to sell half of what they own on Craigslist and then give half of what remains away, then avoid compulsive/recreational shopping. I was afraid of sounding preachy.

I believe you would all be surprised at how UN-cluttered our home is, despite all of the things that go on in here.

Gotta run- back later. Love the input!

[C40]

And Jenny - that reminds me of a cleaner recipe to share - I finally made the recipe my grandma told me for glass/misc cleaner. (1/2 cup vinegar, 1/2 tsp dish soap, 2 cups (warm) water). Seems every bit as good as Windex (it's not magic, you know ..

Grandma rules!

[Ego]

I think of (life) hacks as something one uses to solve problems that are caused by a bungled system. In other words, it's a patch/band-aid applied to a systemic problem.

Rather than hacking something that's broken, I prefer to redesign the whole thing. As such, I don't really pay much attention to life hacks. In a sense, they remind me of couponing, which is a way to buy what's usually bad food at cheaper prices. I'd rather redesign my diet.

.......

An ERE lifestyle is one big life hack w/o internal contradictions. As such it does not need to be hacked further.

I need pants. I wish I lived in a world where I don't, but right now the world I live in requires that I wear something covering the lower portion of my body. I could buy a series of ten-wash-and-trash pants from Walmart or I can get one pair made of Schoeller Dryskin fabric that will last five years but cost the same as 10 of the Walmarts. What if I found a way to get the Schoeller pants for the price of one pair of Walmarts. Is that not an ERE hack?

[vivacious]

@Ego, if possible then do it.

I think there are plenty of ERE hacks. Lots of ways to simplify different parts of life or little tips or tricks to make things easier etc.

@Jacob, I don't know why ERE has to preclude that. So you set up your system but you can fine tune plenty of details in it etc.

[jennypenny]

I guess my point wasn't really the cleaning products. My point was that I already have baking soda and vinegar because I use them in the kitchen and bleach because I keep it for water purification, so the 'hack' is using products I already have to clean the bathroom. Add to the list dish soap, bar soap, borax, and washing soda (which I can make from baking soda) and I can clean anything.

@C40--I missed your post before. It's easy, right?!

[BecaS]

I want to know how akratic opens a bottle of wine with a SHOE!

JennyPenny, you are right about cleaners made from baking soda, vinegar, etc., items that you already have on your shelves, that have multiple uses. Fewer products = simplicity, and I'll bet that you save money on your homemade cleaners as well.

I've incorporated the cleaners above into a cleaning system here and it works for us. The Scrubbing Bubbles is a recent addition secondary to the bathroom renovation/tub re-glazing. Before that, it was Lysol (diluted in a spray bottle) Windex, Bona for the hardwood floors, liquid dish detergent, and the occasional Pledging of the house. (Pledge shines up quartz countertops LIKE A BOSS.)

I fought off Scrubbing Bubbles until I started using it. Now, I have to admit, I'm pretty hooked.

In order to give the visual of more space and to compliment the clean lines and light reflective surfaces I wanted in that small bathroom (with no window, no natural light) we installed a semi-frameless, totally clear tub/shower enclosure. The white subway tiles, the white tub, and everything we put in the shower in terms of hygiene items is on full display. *Nothing* is hiding behind a shower curtain, and water spots will show. Not only will they show, due to the relatively small footprint of the bathroom, they'll be right in your face.

I know, I know, we could have chosen surfaces/finishes/items in which water spots, the occasional mold/mildew/dirty tub, weren't as visible. We could have, and from a maintenance and even a financial perspective (bathroom cleaners) that might have been the smarter choice.

We have one full bath and one half bath in this small house. When this house was built, the half bath was a huge luxury! The full hall bath is small by today's standards (but HEY! it has a LINEN CLOSET in its envelope/footprint, again, a LUXURY when this house was built) and we use it EVERY DAY. In fact, we reserve the half bath (attached to one of the bedrooms) for guests and the occasional OMG emergency, so we do not have to clean it all the time.

I wanted to give that hall bath the visual aspect of shiny, light filled (even though there is no window) and a bit modern with a nod to the vintage of the house. We kept the perfectly good cast iron tub- it has the right lines for the house and it is cast iron. I wasn't going to re-surface it because it was basically white- although the original grout lines were visible around the tub because the new tub hop didn't extend as far onto the tub surface. We have a new grandbaby, however YOU MAY CALL ME GRANDMAMA, THANK YOU! and our vintage cast iron tub tested mildly positive for lead. We had it re-glazed, and I said goodbye to my old school and much loved Comet and hello to Scrubbing Bubbles.

Hopping in the tub and spraying the interior of the tub/shower down with Scrubbing Bubbles a couple of times a week keeps everything shiny and clean and so far has completely prevented mold/mildew.

I don't mind paying a reasonable price for a product if it delivers on its promises. Bonus round, Costco carries Scrubbing Bubbles, and Costco puts Scrubbing Bubbles in multipacks on sale a couple of times a year.

If I wasn't buying this stuff in bulk at Costco I'd probably be all about the homemade recipes as well. The cost at Costco isn't much more than the cost for buying ingredients to make my own, especially when Costco puts this stuff on sale.

C40, you are so right, GRANDMA RULES! My grandmothers taught me so much!

And yes, please, everyone, let me see your "systems," the parts of your systems that you like the most, the parts of your systems that you wish you could improve, the parts of your systems of which you are most proud- heck, your entire system if that's what's appropriate. I love the input!

[anomie]

I agree with @Jacob, though hardly able to articulately support my position.

A lifestyle thoughtfully designed should not require workarounds.

That's the point --> to construct a life that you do not need to build shortcuts in to survive or thrive.

Maybe my issue is with the term "life hacks".




(though am curious and searching for a reddit post on the term recently posted....)

[anomie]

This may be more in the "what to do with all the sh*t in your house" category than in the ERE life hack category, but this is latest Reddit.com Life Hack that I found:

http://imgur.com/a/zyii8


I used the 'toilet paper tube as computer cable caddy' idea from a similar type picture collage ....

hth.

[Triangle]

I agree with anomie that the problem is the term "hack". It's a popular term right now, just like people like to call everyone, and especially themselves, hackers. Often times they just mean "different from the norm", in which case ERE itself is a "hack".

[BecaS]

P.S. We renovated the bathroom because it was 54 years old, and because the full wrap tile surround was cracked, the grout on the tile floor was shot and the tiles were loose, and there was a leak behind the tile tub surround. We had to pull the bathroom down to the studs and the floor joists, replace a floor joist and some flooring, and build back out. While I appreciate the aesthetics of the renovation it wasn't all about fashion.

[Ego]

I agree with anomie that the problem is the term "hack". It's a popular term right now, just like people like to call everyone, and especially themselves, hackers. Often times they just mean "different from the norm", in which case ERE itself is a "hack".

I had to look up Life Hack on wikipedia. I always thought it referred to beating or finding a way around the system. Learned something new.

[BecaS]

Yeah, maybe I chose the wrong term.

Or, referring to Ego's comment and the Wikipedia definition, maybe I chose the right term.

[anomie]

hmm, certainly a sexy definition ...


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life_hacking

Life hacking refers to any productivity trick, shortcut, skill, or novelty method to increase productivity and efficiency, in all walks of life; in other words, anything that solves an everyday problem in a clever or non-obvious way, variably a Juggaar, might be called a life hack.

Coined in the 1980s in hacker culture, the term became popularized in the blogosphere and is primarily used by computer experts who suffer from information overload or those with a playful curiosity in the ways they can accelerate their workflow in ways other than programming.

"Life" refers to an individual's productivity, personal organization, work processes, or any area the hacker ethic can be applied to solve a problem. The terms hack, hacking, and hacker have a long history of ambiguity in the computing and geek communities, particularly within the free and open source software crowds.

[Matty]

I stopped washing my hair. It seemed like a pointless process to continually wash out my natural hair oils and then have to apply various petroleum based oils (hair products) to keep my hair from being frizzy and generally dry. I stopped washing and now the oil from my head provides all the hair product I need. Saved myself the "need" for 2+ products and 10-15 minutes per day in washing/styling time. I also started cutting my hair at home. Another option would be to shave your head. Some people say they could never do this becuase their hair would get too oily, smelly etc. I think in general your hair will adjust. My hair feels alot nicer than it did with products in it and has a faint nautral smell of hair.

Also, pretty standard but one of my favourites is batch meals. An hour or two in the kitchen on Sunday and you can have lunches, dinners and snacks set for the week. Much more efficient than cooking up individual meals.

[BecaS]

Matty, I don't wash my hair all that much any more either. I have naturally curly hair and the less I wash it, the better it behaves. I rinse it well every day in the shower and let it air dry naturally. I use a non-sulfate shampoo about once a week now, even less in the winter. My hair changed as I aged and accumulated some gray. I've been lucky; the gray is really pretty, but gray hair is dry and it has a different texture. I finally figured out that sulfate shampoos were stripping it of its natural oils, just like you said.

To date I've bought sulfate free/argon oil products at Sally Beauty Supply for the price point, but I'm beginning to see sulfate free/argon oil products at competitive prices at discount retailers.

I find that for my hair, you are right, the best treatment is no treatment at all, just rinsing it out daily.

Batch meals are awesome.

I also like to cook once/eat several times with basic ingredients. If you are going to use both the purchased utility provided energy and your own energy and time, fill up the pot/oven/grill. If I have to boil water to cook pasta, for instance, I cook the whole box. One half of the pasta makes one recipe, the other half makes another recipe. Ditto rice, etc.

Speaking of food, one of my favorite food hacks is powdered milk. We don't mix it to drink it, but I do use it for cooking, and occasionally for coffee/tea cream if needed. It is shelf stable for a pretty long time (it typically has a "best if used by" date on the package.) I make homemade yogurt from powdered milk.

Oatmeal- plain old rolled oats in the big box from Costco. Great as oatmeal in the morning, great as binders for other foods (salmon cakes with oatmeal are AWESOME, so moist) meatloaf, etc. Can be used to stretch ground beef in just about any form. Also awesome in oatmeal chocolate chip cookies.

Mayonnaise- a great source of fat for so many things. Mayonnaise in a jar may be one of the best inventions of the modern world. Again, works in so many recipes. Add your own herbs and spices to make flavored/specialty mayonnaise. Make your own salad dressings. I think mayonnaise may be its own food group.

One of my goals (I keep not getting to this one) is learning how to make mayonnaise from eggs, olive oil and lemon juice. I believe that there is some concern about salmonella and raw eggs... so a good pasteurized jar mayonnaise is really quite the "luxury" convenience item that most of us take for granted (at least I know that I do!)

[jacob]

Windex --- try recipe #3 (or #4 which = #3 + denatured alcohol)
http://www.crunchybetty.com/battle-of-t ... s-cleaners
Seriously, this concoction is ten times better than the commercial stuff. We used it in the RV (lots of windows all the way around!) Make it on a need basis. You can flush the rest down the drain. Always at hand. No need to go get something.

The way I understand hacking in the hacker sense---and I may be wrong---is a clever change of an existing system to somehow improve that system. For instance, a software hacker takes existing source code and adds/modifies a feature to solve a problem.

I see this as different from computer engineering which is the construction of a solution to a problem from scratch.

In hacking, the solution is obtained by modifying (hacking) an existing solution to another problem.
In engineering, the solution is obtained by building the solution from first principles/scratch.

I find myself objecting to the "hacking" because ERE is an engineering approach. Thus it should not be necessary to hack it by construction. That is, if you need to hack it, you built it wrong.

On the other hand, if you have a solution that's wrong for you, you can hack it.

But I'd rather rebuild it. I think it's better to build a lifestyle that fits than taking an existing one that doesn't fit and hacking it until it does fit. Like sewing clothes. Better to make it right than tailor it to change the size/fit.

I'm not really trying to define what's kosher as much as I'm trying to make it clear how I see it; also in case things weren't completely clear. In my opinion, engineering is far superior to hacking. The only reason to hack something is due to time/resource constraints. Hence, I rarely think in terms of hacking my life.

So just a philosophical point.

Hack away ...

[Triangle]

@jacob: The way "hacker" is used in Silicon Valley is like you describe, hacker vs. engineer. But the focus here isn't on modifying vs. creating. An engineer takes a systematic approach to solve a known problem. A "hacker" (in SV) skips important steps, doesn't think about all the details and is therefore a lot faster. The point of this is that (according to SV mythology) you can't engineer a solution if you don't know what the problem is exactly, so "hacking" let's you throw together a quick solution to test if you're down the right path or if you're wasting your time. Later, you'll get an engineer and to it right, once you've got paying customers and such.

So if used like this, a "hack" is really an experiment.

But there's a lot of different definitions of the word "hacker" out there..