ESL Blogs

Most of my life hacks came from my Mom which sometimes can be viewed as 'old wives tales'. However, later on, I gathered more reasonable life hacks through articles and friends. In here, I want to share both life hacks; the 'old wives tales' kinds and the reasonable ones.

1. Use Unmatched/Unusable Socks As Wiper

Most of us are always facing with large collections of unmatched/unusable socks. We always ended up throwing away those socks. I learnt those socks are the best wiper ever. Just use those socks like glove. For an example, use them when you want to wipe the rail of your staircase, washing your windows and such.

2. Seal A Plastic Bag With The Top Of A Plastic Bottle

When you are left with some uneaten crackers or cookies in a plastic bag/cracker bag, sometimes you have to throw them away because you have no jar to keep the leftover. A very simple solution to keep the plastic bag/cracker bag under tight wrap is using a top of a plastic bottle. Before you put the plastic bottle in the recycle bin, cut off about three centimeters from its neck. Then slide the end of the plastic bag into the neck of the plastic bottle. Then, tighten the cap of the bottle. Viola! No need any jar anymore.

3. Dry Your Clothes Inside Out When Drying Under The Sun

Drying your clothes under the hot piercing sun can make the colour of your clothes fade away. Though it is inevitable, but you can slow the process a little bit by making sure that when you dry your clothes they are inside out. 

4. Sharpen Your Knives Or Scissors Using A Glass Bottle

We often face with dull edge of a knife and have no sharpening tools handy. The easiest sharpening tool around is a glass bottle. Just sharpen the knife against the neck of the bottle. Be careful though. Do not put too much pressure on the bottle. The same can applies to scissors. Just glide the scissors through the neck of the glass bottle for a few times.

Here comes the 'old wives tales' version of my life hacks.

5. Waste Not Your Food

When I was growing up, whenever I or even my siblings started to acting up and picking on our food, my Mom always reminded us not to waste our food, other wise; either the rice will cry because we did not eat them, the beautiful chicks that we adored will die, or we will not meet our kind hearted husband/wife in future because the last food was the one that will decide our future. 

I don't know how we always ended up eating all our food considering that the reasons were always changing.

6. Do Not Gobble Your Fruits

Another 'life hacks' that always been reminded to me when I was growing up was always to be careful when eating our local fruits like rambutan, dragon eye (longan), and other fruits with seeds. I think Mom always knew that we won't listen to her advice without putting some 'scary' factor into it. Thus, we always been reminded to eat slowly, do not gobble our fruits otherwise we will accidentally swallow those seeds. And those seeds will ended up growing up inside our stomach. OHMY! Because I was so afraid of becoming a fruit tree (LOL), I always ended up eating those fruits with care. Hmm.. looking back, why on earth I never think that those seeds will end up being dispersed in other ways, only God knows. 

Bonus: Use Drinking Straw To Store Your Jewelries

I heard this life hack through the radio. I never try it before because I don't have too many jewelries. When we put our necklaces or bracelets, they will ended up tangled within each other. To avoid such occurrence, try to slide those necklaces or bracelets into an individual drinking straw. Then just clip it at the end of the straw. To make it more colourful, try to use colourful straws. I don't know how effective it is, but I guess there's no harm in trying it.

Thank you for reading my life hacks. The blog is supposed to be written using the base form (imperative) of a verb. Even though I've read through the example of base form (imperative) of a verb, I am not sure I use it correctly.