Buying lots of identical pairs of socks massively reduces the amount of time you need to find matching pairs after drying them.
I did this, and it was great at first. Then I needed more socks, so I bought another batch. Then I had a mix of worn socks and brand new socks. They might look the same at first, but if you take a closer look, the older ones are a little lighter in color and the texture isn’t the same. I later bought a third batch. So now I have a mix of new, old, and really old socks. It actually takes more effort to match socks now than when I had many different socks.
I see this advice posted all the time, so I guess most people don’t care if their socks on each foot are a different level of worn, but it bothers me.
I’m at this point too. I think the next step is to just declare sock bankruptcy again and throw everything out and start over.
In that case you could buy very visibly different socks from all the ones you have every time, eg blue vs white vs black vs beige. That also makes it easy to find matching pairs.
Yeah I just buy about 20 pair at once and throw away or donate all older socks.
I had the same problem as you with different states of wear/color over time. So the last time I bought a whole bag of matching socks, when I first took out each pair I put a matching mark on the inside surface of each sock (like 1 dot, 2 dots, 3 in a row, 3 in a triangle, different color mark, etc). So then I can easily pair them all up correctly after I do the laundry.
I buy the same pairs from Costco. Problem is every year they change the pattern on the bottom. 2 gray bars next year solid next year 3 bars.
Same sock but dammit I have to get the matching bars.
Is it just me or did the Costco socks used to last way longer?
I’ve never gotten Costco socks, but when I was researching the best pair of socks to get for my dad, everyone was raving over them, comparing them to the Darn Tough brand. If they’re not holding up like that anymore, then that’s unfortunate because I was really looking forward to trying them out some day.
I scrape CVV number of my credit card and save it on my smartphone because if I lost my credit card nobody will be able to shop on line
You can just pinch the end of a banana to start peeling it. The effort required is far less than trying to overcome the ripping force of the stem.
My partner hates when I open bananas like this because there’s a little dark part of the banana under that end of the peel that she calls “The Ban-anus” and thinks it’s gross even if I pick off that part and don’t eat it.
Monkeys peel bananas also like this.
Exactly. The professionals showed us the way.
Bananas are the way they are through millenia of selective breeding, so there’s no reason to think that monkeys know anything we don’t. If pinching the bottom is easier than bending the stem, your banana isn’t ripe yet and doesn’t want to be eaten until later.
A) that seems backwards: an under ripe banana will be stiff inside so you can snap the peel around the stem when you bend it, while a riper, softer banana will mush inside when you bend the stem. And,
B) like I give a fuck what a banana wants
A) The peel becomes easier to tear faster than the inside gets softer. You don’t need to snap it, it doesn’t need nearly enough tension to count as a snap once it’s ripe.
B) The banana’s been selectively bred to want to be as delicious as possible. It only wants you to be happy.
I’d like to apologize for my remarks regarding banana
Have you ever tried opening a banana from the bottom like described in the comment?
Yes. Every time, it’s gone less well than opening a banana from the stem end, unless the banana was horrendously underripe. I’ve never had the problem the alternative approach is claiming to fix unless I’ve intentionally opened the banana badly on purpose to prove a point about the problem really being people opening from the stem end incompetently.
While I can concede your point that it’s feasible and possibly even more practical to open from the stem, I gotta say that since switching to the other end years ago(because I saw a similar thread on reddit), it’s been super easy and I’ve had zero issues. The stem just has a higher rate of fucking up, but it’s not like either end will fully decimate the banana. Peeling properly after it’s opened is an easy fix either way.
I love how it skillfully peels the banana and then eats the peel anyway. Amazing.
But not the stem!
That’s way too slow.
Take one end in each hand, hold it “like a frown” in front of you.
Bend it in half downward and bite the peak of the bend with one of your canines.
when it snaps open, shove one half of the banana into your mouth, (chew if needed, then) swallow.
Shovel the other half into your mount, (chew if needed, then) swallow.I was today-years-old when I learned the ideal way to eat a banana.
And that’s only the oral method.
Fuck you, I’ll keep peeling the banana stem-first!
I don’t get the banana trick. What do I do after pinching? I just end up ripping through the skin of one while trying it out.
And then you have a handle to hold it by when you get to the end (beginning?)!
This also prevents those weird banana strings from forming!
People peel from the stem? What?!
Why even peel at all? https://youtu.be/L1QVp55ehvs?si=W1vfyguSovNK7SmG
Just reposting without the tracker: https://youtu.be/L1QVp55ehvs
Put $20-50 behind your phone in the phone case.
If you ever forget / lose your wallet, you’ll have a little cash.
With so many places now taking credit over cash, I’m not sure how relevant this is anymore.
I actually tried doing the opposite for a while. I’d leave my phone home and just leave the house with cash, keys, and a notebook. Lots of places gave me the stinkeye paying with cash and some places refused to accept it. I wish this weren’t the case. The percentage every business pays per credit card transaction hasn’t helped with inflated prices.
Not sure why someone would downvote your opinion and relevant story there…
It still seems relevant enough though for the time being. Getting the stink eye isn’t a no, and maybe you’ll have to be a little picky on where.
Still better than not having it at all though.
When a business is busy, they don’t like having to stop what they’re doing to figure out the change. I’ve seen people stumble trying to figure out what bills and coins add up to what the POS is telling them. I feel like I should be apologizing for paying with tangible currency.
So apologize if you feel you need to and use the cash you put behind your phone in case of emergency if need be.
That’s their problem not yours.
The more modern version of this is to use Apple or Google pay or whatever the fuck those are called.
note: I do not use those services
Right. Be it plastic or digital, it’s still credit. It still goes through a point of sale system. Visa or Mastercard still get a kickback.
I was in London last month and everything was Apple Pay / Google pay. You can of course use a card to tap but I rarely saw anyone use anything but their phone.
Will $2-$5 do given I’m not a millionaire yet?
Could throw a couple quarters in there just in case as well
To stop infinite scroll on social media, quickly scroll 2-3 screen lengths down without looking at the posts. Now read the posts scrolling up. Eventually you’ll reach where you started and most probably the laziness to go all the way back will prompt you to exit the app.
That’s amazing!
Now give me a tip to prevent myself from opening the same app immediately after hahaha
I changed the icon location, and my muscle memory still was trying to open them from the previous location, basically in a complete auto-pilot mode. That led me to a realization of how fucked up the situation was, and eventually helped me uninstall/reduce screen time of those apps.
Instead of closing an app, shutdown the phone. Now it’s a pain to reopen the app.
With how fast phones start up nowadays, that’s hardly a pain
New tip: Install bloatware to make it slower
Using a rubber band around the lid of a jar to open it effortlessly.
Wrestle the pig first, every day. Whatever is your worst, most unpleasant, annoying task for the entire day, do it before you do anything else. It minimizes your stress and worrying and puts it in the rearview mirror.
For a second I thought you were talking about masturbation.
Well yeah crank your hog first of course
SPEAK UP BROTHER, I CANT HEAR YOU OVER THE SOUND OF MY CRANKED HOG
AROOOOOO
Alternatively, if you’re neurodivergent you may have a better time doing the easiest tasks first to build momentum and motivation.
Yeah, everyone’s neurochemistry is different and should be experimented with.
I didn’t know this for so long, that I needed a few easy wins to set the pace, that I feel like I could have been way more productive throughout my 20s haha
I feel like saying “I have to do this before anything else” might very well end with me doing nothing
My former mentor said: 80% of the deliverable is the 20% of the scope you really don’t want to do
Human memory is bias towards most recent things in a group set. If your set is a “workout” or a “workday”, doing the fun stuff last will affect positively all the memory items in the same group set. This works even if you know that your memory is doing this.
We don’t live in a “present now”. We live in a mental image constructed from memory of recent past.
Trick is not to do unpleasant stuff first, but to do pleasant stuff last.
I don’t think “waking up early” counts, but it’s definitely the most unpleasant and annoying task of my weekdays, followed closely by actually getting to work.
I have some paperwork to do that will likely result in $2000. It’s been over a year and i cannot just sit down and do it. I stress over it every day but continue to put it off.
Today. Let’s both finish our paperwork today. The sense of freedom and achievement will be good.
Ok. I have a 2 hour car ride this afternoon. I will get everything ready this morning and do it in the car. Thanks! Good luck!
Excellent. I hope you did OK. I got mine done! It wasn’t as bad as I thought. If you haven’t finished yet, don’t give up, pick up the pieces and carry on. Thanks for being my Internet buddy on this.
Congratulations! I didn’t finish, but did get a good start on it. Thanks for the encouragement!
Well done. Starting is the hardest part. Are you going to do a bit more today?
I’m on vacation until Wednesday so I will finish it on my flight home. Getting started really was the hardest part. Now it’s just putting numbers into boxes and adding them up. By gathering info and starting on it, i find that the expected $2k gain is closer to $10k. That’s some great motivation to get it done!
I know this as ‘eat your frogs’.
Ok, I wrestled a cop and pinned him. What’s step 2? Please respond before his backup arrives.
I think you’re supposed to tickle his balls now.
But where will I find a pig?
They’re easy to spot. They’re typically wearing cute little uniforms & driving fun little cars with lights on top.
Best advice ever.
Switching off your phone. It changes everything.
Drink water instead of soda, alcohol, other sugary drinks. Eventually you’ll find yourself to be an expert water connoisseur and prefer water over pretty much all beverages.
Almost all bottled water is loaded with microplastics. Ideally, drink water from a filtered tap.
I have a water filter at home. I never use bottled water. Almost every public space also has clean and safe water so if you bring a reusable water bottle with you, you’ll have free water everywhere.
It’s okay, there storednin my balls for later
Filters are usually made out of plastic :)
There’s a difference between high quality plastic performing filtration while it’s cold plastic and cold water vs crap plastic that’s regularly exposed to high temperatures during transport and storage with the same water contained the entire time.
Maybe, I’m no expert. But, I’ve seen a test showing a consumer water filter increasing microplastics by 1000%. Could just be only that specific filter or filter type. I believe it was a Zero filter, which I think uses resin beads for ion exchange.
Interesting, I used ZeroWater for a while … and know others that do. But yeah, searching around it seems it’s only ConsumerLabs.com that came up with that result and all other filters were removing (at least some percentage of) microplastics.
I’m not sure how much I trust that ConsumerLabs.com test: https://www.consumerlab.com/methods/water-filters-review/water-filters/
Repeatability isn’t really established by testing one device, one time. I’m not an expert either, but that result seems quite surprising.
I have a reverse osmosis system now personally…
Or Tea with little/no sweetening (my personal favorite is hibiscus with a little lemon in there).
Sometimes I indulge in tea with a bit of honey for the occasional caffeine fix.
Nah, I’m all about the kombucha now.
Edit: fuck, y’all really hate probiotics
Sometimes I indulge in a coke but I usually prefer tap water now.
Same. Often finish the can with a feeling of disappointment and thirst.
Not like that for me. But there is a certain lack of satisfaction if I had to define it.
I love water so much I always add a splash to my whisky!
in the uk old timers would order “whiskey and threat” - like just threaten it with water
Start reading the nutritional facts on food packages. In the beginning it will make little sense. But as time goes by, you start understanding it a bit more and to notice patterns.
Eventually you start doing wiser choices. I’ve learned pretty quickly that the “healthy options” (e.g. low sugar cookies) are as bad for you than the regular ones.
Be sure to look at what they consider a serving size is when you do this. I’ve seen cases where you have something that is packaged as a single serving, but the nutritional facts say the serving size is half of that. I think this is just criminal. Like anyone would eat only half an instant ramen or whatever.
In the USA, this was supposed to be fixed in 2016 when the new nutrition facts label was introduced (the redesign that increased the font size of the calories).
By law, serving sizes must be based on the amount of food people typically consume, rather than how much they should consume.
https://www.fda.gov/food/nutrition-facts-label/serving-size-nutrition-facts-label
Of course, there’s still companies that skirt the rules.
Or just always look at the 100g column.
Started really paying attention when my health imploded some years back. Would add that food content literacy tends to drive me to the outer edges of the grocery, and out of the middle where there’s more junky, processed crap.
One time I was in Mexico with my wife while our daughter was still a baby and the lady at the front desk of the hotel where we were staying offered us a crib we could borrow. It was a kind gesture, but I was a little concerned because the crib seemed wobbly. I realized there were some screws loose but though I had a multitool on me, the holes were stripped.
So later, I was talking with a local and he’s like “I can fix that.” He comes over and pulls a pack of toothpicks out of his pocket. He sticks one into each hole and breaks it off so that it’s not sticking out anymore. Then he drives the screw back in. I shook the crib after that and it was rock solid!
Now I always keep some toothpicks handy. Fast-forward to just this year. My daughter is now an adult living in a condo, and was complaining the screw popped out of a kitchen cabinet door when her roommate yanked on it too hard. “I can fix that.”
Wood glue and/or toothpicks are probably stronger than the particle board most furniture is made of nowadays, it’s repairing and strengthening.
Another adjacent life hack is when assembling flat pack furniture, use a quality wood glue on all the joints and connectors, but especially those little wood dowels. It won’t make it indestructible, but it’ll hold up far better over time.
You can do something similar with damaged metal threads, instead of toothpicks using copper wire strands. Project Farm has a video on the technique comparing it to other fixes: https://youtube.com/watch?v=jknMrFOGMOQ
It works a bit better if you put a little bit of wood glue on the tip of each toothpick before driving it into the hole. Definitely a great trick!
I’m so glad you posted this - my integrated fridge door has dropped slightly after being taken off and put back on when installed. Can’t really screw back into mdf/chipboard/whatever and I’ve been stressing about getting it fixed for months because whilst it’ll get worse over time, it technically works and no doubt the fitter would say I need to take the whole thing out and replace the side panel.
Thank you!
Sometimes fridge doors sag because the bushings on the hinges break or deteriorate. I’ve fixed them before by adding washers in place of the bushings, or cutting a new bushing out of a hard plastic cutting board.
I still don’t understand how this works. Maybe a video or image would help. How would he drive the screw in to the toothpicks if it was stripped?
Well the toothpick shifts to one side as you put the screw in.
The problem with a stripped hole is that the hole is now as wide as the screw, so the screw has nothing to grip anymore. Conventional wisdom in this case is that you should get a wider screw and try again, but that’s not always something you have on hand, especially when travelling.
But the toothpick hack takes it the other way. It’s effectively narrowing the hole again by taking up space in it, and now your same screw can work again.
The hole is stripped not the screw head. The toothpicks give the screw something to grip.
Ohh ok that makes much more sense
Gratitude makes you live longer, feel better, and it’s free.
Thank you!
“Gee I’m so grateful for all this trauma.”
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Or soda. Or sugary drinks in general.
I hate the talk about soda. It’s a flavored carbonated drink and carbonation isn’t killing people. When schools banned sodas from vending machines, they replaced them with yoohoo and other drinks that had as much or more sugar than the carbonated drinks they removed. -stepping off my soapbox-
Fruit juice is notorious for this.
‘but its fruit juice! Its 100% natural!’
Most still have added sugars on top of the fact that most of the fruit has been squeezed out only leaving… Sugars.
Even on their own, the natural fruit sugars aren’t enough to make drinking fruit juice “healthy” when all the fiber has been squeezed out.
But the one two punch of sugars is just as bad as any other sugary drink.
Same with cans of Arizona or Snapple or anything else. It’s all terrible.
People don’t realize that ultra processed food is basically everything they eat and drink. There are very few things that aren’t, and they’re mostly whole food adjacent.
If it’s not straight up water and plain vegetables, fruit, and grain equivalents, it’s more than likely ultra processed no matter how healthy it claims to be.
So much of non-genetic cancers comes from what we ingest willingly. A large portion of it would stop if everyone ate a well rounded whole foods diet. But shit is expensive, takes time and kwh to make, and people are busy trying to enjoy life.
Conventional Cereal? Terrible. https://www.livestrong.com/article/13774827-is-eating-cereal-every-day-bad/
Certain processed fiber gives you liver cancer Ffs lol.
I try not to drink calories at all, but if I do, it’s considered part of the meal.
I strongly recommend this, as strongly as reading the news everyday. Don’t watch or listen to it, READ it. It makes you conscious of your participation, makes it easier to remember, and over time, will sharpen your critical thinking skills
If you’ve ever thought ‘holy fuck some people are dumb’, well, if they read the news on the reg, they’d be less and less dumb, everyday.
Depends on the person. I’m content only have 1 at a time. I don’t have an addictive personality though. For some people this is great advice. Others, it doesn’t affect.
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I feel like there’s a subtlety here. Ocassional Glass of wine with dinner versus binge drinking.
Of course the problem is that the first drink makes then next one more attractive and degrades impulse control… so YMMV.
One is too many and a thousand is never enough.
Edit: I do get the irony of someone with my username posting this. I understand what’s wrong with binge drinking and me in general, I’m just not ready to fix it.
You and I are in the same place.
Well, I’m not in Texas, but I’m with you otherwise.
I’ll fix it sometime. Hopefully soon.
We’re gonna be alright, buddy.
Thank ya. We definitely are. My problem is, drinkin’ makes everything SO MUCH FUN. If it just wasn’t so damn fun, it wouldn’t be an issue
Wow. This thread got pretty real, pretty quick. I feel you though (you too, Texas).
You’re gonna be alright, too.
Having a glass of wine every day is not healthy.
I drink pretty much only on the weekends and that’s pretty seldom.
Is one glass of wine really that bad though? Like compared to a glass of grape juice? Because of the sugars and calories and is alcohol in this percentage range (approx 14%) enough to cause damage to your liver over time?
Again I’m talking about one glass
I’m going on holiday to Greece next month, so have decided to forgo my usual weekend ales until then. Partly to be a little more comfortable in my swimming shorts, but also because £10/15 a weekend adds up to a few cold pints of Mythos by the beach.
But I was amazed at how fresh I felt last Monday morning after not having drunk any beer over the weekend.
I had better seafood in Greece than anywhere else in Europe. Fresh grilled octopus with a squeeze of lemon, fried sardines, squid salad, everything just perfect. (Note: I haven’t done Nordic countries, and they might do cod/coldwater-fish/etc. better, but that’s be a different style.)
Set up automatic bank transfers to chop your income into % parts: 5% play money, 20% savings, bills etc. do what works for you. Get rid of unnecessary subscriptions.
So many people need this.
Privacy.com is your friend. Free and makes ‘uncancellable’ subscriptions a thing of the past
I don’t have enough to chop my money into anything other than 75% rent, 20% car payment, 5% food for my dog.
But I do put that rent and car payment in a savings account and pay from that. Those fractions of a penny per month add up; after 5 years I have 77 cents in my savings account!
20% to a car payment is stupid
Yes, the used car market is full of predators charging 200% more than what a junker is worth because there’s nothing stopping them. And I also agree that keeping the minimum wage literal decades behind productivity breeds an environment where people are assigned a made up number that tells banks it’s ok to gouge this person on interest rates. Full agreement with you there.
And necessary in many situations.
It’s more expensive to move somewhere a car isn’t necessary.
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Have you seen the prices of used cars lately?
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Dude you could have just answered “no, I haven’t seen the prices of used cars lately.”
Hey, it’s your brother. Can I borrow 76 cents?
Sure, since we’re under capitalism I’ll have to check your imaginary number and then require a minimum monthly payment of 11 cents for the next 4 years.
When given the option, read the instructions, and save for future reference. (A URL / bookmark doesn’t count as saving unless you control the hostname (including DNS).)
I have a plastic container where I put all instruction manuals plus hardware that comes with it that I don’t need right then. It was very useful when I decided to mount my soundbar a decade after I bought it and knew exactly where the mounting clips and template were. Any time I need to check the manual for specs or something, I just need to look through a pile and will find it.
Agreed. I also paraphrase the instructions in my own words to make them easier to follow later on.
