Things You Do Wrong Every Day

Everyone has a few bad habits, but some of those habits make everyday tasks much more difficult than they have any right to be. And because of them, there are so many things we’ve been doing wrong all this time without even knowing! From peeling sticky notes to charging your phone and even using the bathroom it’s time to find out what you’ve been doing wrong all this time!

How Often Should You Shower?

You might have hit that snooze button like 4 or 5 or 20 times, but you’re finally up! Although, nothing gets you ready to face the day quite like getting squeaky clean in a nice hot shower. But hold the soap because spending too much time under the hot water actually isn’t all that good for you.

Showering too frequently can wash off some of the skin’s good bacteria and oils, which upsets your body’s natural balance, causing dry and cracked skin. Not only that, but according to the Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology, showering too frequently can also lead to serious skin problems, such as eczema!

So, to avoid that incredibly itchy future, all you have to do is reduce the number of days you take a shower on. But if you really can’t get by without bathing daily, just keep to scrubbing the essentials!

Deodorant Before Bed

Once you’re nice and clean, you reach for the antiperspirant. But should you really be applying that deodorant now? Because if you take a look at the label of most antiperspirant deodorants, they’ll tell you to put it on right before you go to bed! How can that be right?

As it turns out, because you’re less active at night, you sweat less. So, your skin absorbs more of the active aluminum based ingredient of antiperspirant, which sinks in and blocks those sweat ducts overnight! Plus, the active ingredient will generally last for about 24 hours, so its effect won’t wear off overnight.

Peeling Bananas

After all those hygiene hijinks, it’s time for breakfast! Bananas are a perfectly healthy start to any morning then again, if the stem is soft or the top is a bit mushy, they can make your morning messy. But did you know that tearing the stem is not the way to go?

According to monkeys, also known as nature’s banana eating aficionados, it’s easier to peel that delicious yellow fruit open from the blossom end! Simply pinch the brown stub until the peel splits, and just keep peeling away!

How To Peel A Banana Like A Monkey by Crazy Bananas

Not only is it easier, but peeling it that way can also help remove all those weird banana strings that sometimes stick to the fruit after you’ve peeled it. Now you can literally enjoy the fruits of your labor!

The Correct Pea-Sized Toothpaste Amount

Regardless of whether you brush your teeth before or after you’ve eaten your breakfast, there’s still a good chance you’re doing it wrong. Over the years, commercials have made it look like you should be squeezing out long layers of toothpaste onto your toothbrush to keep the cavities at bay.

But that just isn’t true! Commercials use those long ribbons of paste to make their product look a little more appealing and make you use more toothpaste. But the reality is that a single, pea sized blob is enough to keep your teeth looking and feeling squeaky clean!

Fold A T-Shirt In 3 Seconds

Even though it’s a simple task, it feels like putting away the laundry takes forever. Scrunching things up and cramming them into drawers leaves creases in all the wrong places. But trying to make your closet look like a super neat department store showcase is less of a hassle than you might think. As it turns out, it takes a grand total of just 3 seconds to fold a shirt following the hack in the video below:

Fold a shirt in 3 seconds! by FunnyFunDay

First, you lay the shirt out flat and pinch it halfway down just off the seam with your right hand, and off the collar with your left. Then, still pinching the shirt, you fold your left hand over your right so that the collar section now meets the bottom of the shirt.

Pinch that section into your left hand as well, and then raising the shirt up pull your right hand through. From there, you briefly shake it out, lay it down, flip it over and voila! A fast and fancy shirt fold. It may take a little time to get the hang of, but once you do, putting away your laundry will become a lightning fast task!

Eggs In The Fridge

Next on the list of chores is to help put away the groceries, which contains a fresh carton of eggs! But if you’re thinking of storing them away in the egg compartment of your fridge door, then here's some bad news for you.

Eggs should be kept at a constant temperature below 68°F to maintain their freshness, but the refrigerator door is actually the warmest part of the fridge! Being opened and closed throughout the day exposes the eggs to more frequent temperature fluctuations, compromising the eggs overall quality.

And annoyingly, despite being the perfect space for it, milk shouldn’t be stored in the door either. Like eggs, temperature fluctuations can cause the milk to go off quicker!

So, where should you keep all your milk and eggs, if not in that one refrigerated basket? Experts suggest storing quick to spoil foods like those towards the back of the main body of the refrigerator, as it’s a cooler area that’s more resistant to temperature fluctuations.

Condiments In The Fridge

Just because you’ve got room in the fridge door doesn’t mean you should be shoving every condiment under the sun in there. Some naturally preserved condiments like jams and sauces will work well in that space as they don’t need to be kept at a constant temperature. But what about ketchup? Some people have an age old habit of putting it in the fridge, but doing so is totally pointless!

Commercially made ketchup typically contains tomatoes, sugar, and vinegar, which give the sauce a specific acidity. It’s that that keeps the condiment preserved and safe to eat in room temperature conditions, even if it’s not been refrigerated! Meaning you can free up that precious fridge space for something that really needs it. Unless you’re one of those people that enjoys their ketchup chilled.

Crass Crossing Out

While striking a line through it is satisfying, it doesn’t exactly conceal what the original words you had written down were. What if it had been something secret, personal, or even embarrassing?

While you could furiously scribble over the words or reach for the white-out, there’s a much simpler solution that’ll keep your secrets safe from prying eyes. Instead of striking a straight line, write a series of random letters over the words you want to erase. The jumble of letters makes the original word much harder to make out, let alone read! So, no one else has to know about your mistakes or your deep dark secrets ever again.

How To Peel a Post It Note

You’ve just remembered something else you need to get done today and grab a sticky note to quickly write it down. But when you peel it off and stick it up, the note just curls up and falls off! Most of us just accept that as a limitation of using post-it notes, but it’s actually because you’ve been using them wrong this whole time!

When you peel the notes up from the bottom, the sticky line bends the paper in the direction it was pulled, leaving you with a bent memo. But if you peel a post-it from the side or pull it straight down the notes stay flat! Finally, you can say goodbye to missing memos and notes lost behind the back of your desk!

How To Properly Peel A Post-It Note From The Stack by Funky Frank

Bobby Pin Hack

If you have long lustrous hair, you’ve probably used a bobby pin or two to keep stray wisps out of your eyes while getting all those tasks done. But a lot of you will find that those little hair grips slip out almost as quickly as you put them in! What’s the deal with that?

As simple as they look to use, you’re putting them in wrong! Even though it seems like the wavy side should face up, it actually designed to act as a grip on the underside of your hair. So, when you slide it in, that should face down, with the flat portion facing up! That saves the amount of time you spend fiddling with your hair and the amount of bobby pins you use.

How To Use Bobby Pins and Hair Pins Correctly by Sam Villa Hair Tutorials

Stretching Before Or After?

With all that life admin done, now’s as good a time as any to get some exercise! That could be a quick run or a trip to the gym, but whatever you prefer, you should do some stretching first. After all, most of us have been told since our school days that stretching before exercise helps prevent muscle injuries and can even be beneficial to our performance.

But that’s not strictly true! While stretching sure feels good and helps promote flexibility, there’s no concrete scientific backing that it helps to reduce injury when done before exercise. Large scale studies have shown that in high intensity training, like army exercises stretching beforehand made no significant difference on injury rates or muscle soreness.

What’s even more amazing is that some studies into sprinting and jumping found that peoples performance was actually reduced on average when they stretched beforehand! But a few studies alone aren’t enough to cement those findings into facts. So, whether you want to stretch before exercising or not is really up to you! Though it might not be as important as your old high school gym teacher made it out to be.

Microwave Hack

Maybe you’ve worked up an appetite from all that exercise, so it’s time to heat up some leftovers for lunch. After zapping your meal in the microwave for a couple of minutes, you take it out only to find that the food on the edge is scorching hot, but the middle is still horribly cold!

That is because the radiation produced by microwaves doesn’t travel very far. And, depending on how dense your meal is, those waves will only penetrate a limited amount of the food! Most people solve that problem by stopping and stirring their food several times.

But who really has time for that? What you should be doing to reheat your leftovers evenly and quickly is leaving a hole in the middle of your food so that it forms a ring. That way, everything is on the edges and gets cooked quickly without leaving an icy center! And if it’s in a bowl, just dig a little hole in the middle to achieve an evenly heated meal every time.

Ceiling Fan Hack

It’s feeling a little bit chilly out, so you turn to your trusty household heater to warm up the place! But have you ever considered using your old ceiling fan to help heat up your house? It does sound a bit backwards. After all, you only really use the draft from those fans to help cool you down in the summer!

And yet, they have a little known winter function as well. Typically, ceiling fans run counterclockwise in the summer so that the angle of the blades pushes air down towards you. That creates a wind chill effect on your skin, making you feel cooler.

But in the winter, reversing the fan’s direction and dropping its speed actually draws up cool air and pushes down warm air that’s risen to the top of the room! That small change can help you save as much as 15% on your heating bills, leaving you with a warm, fuzzy feeling inside and out!

Ceiling Fan Direction by Del Mar Fans & Lighting

Do We Lose Heat Through Our Heads?

Maybe you have to run a few errands, but since it’s cold outside you should probably wear a hat. After all, your mother and your teachers always told you that you lose most of your body heat through your head! But if you're trying to keep your whole body warm solely by loading up on cozy hats, you're making a mistake.

According to the British Medical Journal, a person only looses 7 to 10 percent of their body heat through their heads. The entire myth likely stems from an old 1970s military study, which claimed as much as 45% of your body heat escapes from the top of your uncovered melon! Unfortunately, they weren’t practicing very good science back then, as the subjects they were testing were wearing full arctic suits and only had their heads exposed to the cold.

Since then, science has come to its senses and claimed that exposing any part of your body to the cold will reduce your core body temperature proportionally. So, you should focus on a full body warming solution, and not just use your head!

Pizza Table Hack

It’s been a pretty good day, so you’ve invited a few friends over and ordered a pizza. But when you open up that box of cheesy, doughy goodness, you find one of those strange little white plastic gizmos perched in the middle of your pie! It may look like a tiny table, but that gadget is called a pizza saver stops the top of the box from being squashed into the food.

It’s an ingenious invention, but because it’s not edible, a lot of people just toss it into the trash before pawing at the pizza. But you don’t want to do that, as it has another use that’ll stop your friends from putting their hands all over your slices!

Fortunately, by pressing the prongs of the pizza saver down into a single slice, it remains in place while the adjoining slices can be torn off, leaving them totally untainted! It’s the perfect pizza saving solution for everyone.

Unwieldy Wine Glasses

You’re feeling fancy, so it’s time to crack open a bottle of wine to serve with that greasy pizza. What a classic pairing! After you’ve poured it into your wine glasses, you might be tempted to hold that booze filled baby by the bulb.

As sophisticated as it feels, you actually shouldn’t hold it like that when you want to take a sip. Instead, your fingers should remain firmly on the stem! That is because around 80 to 90% of what we perceive as taste is actually our smell. Just think back to the last time you had a bad cold, or a blocked nose, and remember how dull and bland your food tasted!

So, to best experience the taste of fancy and expensive wines, glasses were developed with a long stem so that your hand remained far away from your nose. That prevents the smell of your fingers from interfering with the flavors of the wine!

Squatting Over The Toilet

Unfortunately, all that wine has made you desperate to visit the porcelain throne! Make no mistake, being able to stand up, unzip and quickly relieve yourself is just one of the many privileges of being a man. But it’s not always the best way to go about your business.

In fact, sitting down actually allows men to empty more of their bladder than if they were standing upright. That is because you’re able to use your abdominal muscles to really push every last drop out, resulting in fewer bathroom breaks! Not only that, but it’ll really help with the eternal problem of "The Male Aim".

Though you shouldn’t adjust your position just for number 1’s, but for number 2’s as well! Sitting up right on the john is a practice that’s been around since the time of ancient Egypt over 5000 years ago! But, and it’s a big butt, the problem with sitting like that is that it keeps a kink in your lower bowel, caused by the continence preserving muscle of the puborectalis.

That forces you to strain harder when pushing out poop from your colon, risking the development of painful conditions like hemorrhoids and colon disease. So, how exactly are you meant to relieve yourself without doing yourself a disservice? The answer can be found in a simple squat.

Raising your knees up to your chest roughly 35 degrees from your body relaxes that puborectalis muscle and straightens out your colon, giving you a straight route to poop! While that position makes things a lot easier on your rear, some people actually clamber up onto the toilet seat to take a real deep squat into the bowl!

Phone Charging Hack

While it’s well known that smartphone batteries don’t have the best charge life, it’s also partially our fault because of the way we charge them. According to the geniuses from the battery company Cadex, lithium-ion batteries like those in your phone are subject to stress. And just like a human extended stress can damage the battery’s lifespan. When your phone is closer to empty, it draws a constant current and operates at a lower voltage.

Lower voltages are really good for a battery’s life span, as they keep it in a state of low stress, which ultimately increases the number of times the battery can be charged. But leaving your phone on charge when it’s already got a full battery will do the opposite.

Once a battery hits 100%, it "trickle charges" to keep its power at 100% while it’s plugged in. That high voltage charge keeps the battery in a high stress state, which gradually wears down its chemistry and can lead to system-wide malfunctions and reboots. That means charging it overnight or leaving it to charge idly is a really bad idea!

So, how should you really charge? According to the experts, you should try to use short, irregular top ups when your battery is between 30% and 80%. While you can’t stop your battery from wearing out armed with what you know now you should be able to postpone its inevitable fate just a little bit longer!

Sleeping Position

While there’s no better feeling on earth than diving under a plush duvet, the position you sleep in might leave you feeling drained and pained. Comfortable as it may be, sleeping on your stomach is actually really bad for your back. Lying face down also puts a disproportionate amount of pressure on your spine!

And unless you’ve found a way to breathe through the pillow, turning your head twists your spine and head out of alignment which can be a pain in the neck literally. But if you really can’t help but sleep on your front, you should pop a pillow under your hips to restore the natural curve of your back and relieve all that pressure. Plus, it’s a great excuse to fill up your bed with more super-comfy pillows!

But it’s not just stomach sleepers that need to be wary but also side-on sleepers! You may not think it matters which side you sleep on, but your organs say otherwise. The thing is, your stomach’s natural position is on the left side of your body.

So, if you sleep on the right side, your dinner gets digested against gravity, hindering its breakdown, and even causing the old midnight heartburn! With that in mind, you should roll over and lie on your left side to get a more restful night’s sleep.

Ice Cream Hack

It may be late, but it’s never too late for a cheeky midnight snack. And you’ve just remembered you have a carton of ice cream sat in your freezer jackpot! When you got it from the store yesterday, it was soft and delicious. But now, less than 24 hours later, it’s come out of the freezer rock solid!

Unfortunately, that is because once the ice-cream’s air-tight seal is opened, water vapor in the surrounding air begins to freeze and form hard ice crystals in the mix. And the more air it’s exposed to in the freezer, the harder it is to scoop!

While that leaves most people trying to chisel chunks out of it like sugar obsessed cavemen, there’s actually a way to stop that from happening.

Simply flatten a layer of wax paper or plastic wrap against the ice cream’s surface before replacing the lid, or put the entire carton in an airtight plastic bag. That’ll help keep the air out, meaning your ice cream stays soft and ready to scoop whenever your sweet tooth strikes!

If you were amazed at these hacks, you might want to read about things you never realized you were doing wrong. Thanks for reading!