feature image via shutterstock
Lately I’ve been trying to wean myself off my habit of buying myself things when I’m down or to celebrate accomplishments — I’m generally pretty fiscally responsible, but I also have debt equal to the mortgage on a small fixer-upper in the Midwest, and those $6 lipsticks and $10 new notebooks add up. Here are some things I’ve been trying to give myself that feeling of getting something new, special and exciting without, you know, paying for something new and exciting.
+ Change your phone’s background or lock screen
+ Follow a new podcast/YouTuber/webseries/webcomic
+ Get a new book from the library
+ Rearrange a room or your desk
+ Change your comforter/bedsheets
+ Dig out a piece of clothing you like but haven’t worn in a while/have forgotten about
+ Change your desktop background or screensaver
+ Pick some flowers (if you live in an area with them) and put them in a vase in your apt
Some neat uses for those tiny silica packets you get with new pairs of shoes!
How often should you wash these 10 common household items? Find out!
This weekend I heard a secondhand tale of someone who has finally cracked the code re: how to watch Netflix while laying down: they took a box, cut a hole in it slightly smaller than their tablet/smartphone, and lay down on the bed with the box/tablet combo balanced over their face. Disconcerting to walk in on? Probably. The best way to keep your phone from falling and hitting you in the face? Possibly!
Lifehacker compares different ways to get leftover sticker gunk off after removing a label. They say that rubbing alcohol is the winner, which I had actually never heard before! I’m trying it as I type and have to say it works pretty well, although it does seem to work best if you soak the gunky thing in question for a bit, which can be tough/require a lot of rubbing alcohol if something is a weird shape.
Seems relevant to your interests: the best way to make a huge batch of tacos.
Allegedly “no-fail” herbs to grow indoors. If you, like me, have proven yourself especially gifted at failing even with no-fail plants, you might be helped by this comprehensive guide to grow lights.
If you have a toaster or toaster oven, they almost definitely have a small pull-out tray in the bottom of them that’s meant to catch crumbs and other debris from food you cook in them. If you’ve never opened that and cleaned it out, today is a great day to do that! If you’ve been smelling a gross burning scent every time you use the appliance, this might fix it. I’ve gone ahead and wrapped the bottom tray of my toaster oven with tin foil so that when pizza cheese or other gross stuff melts onto it during cooking, I can just take off the tin foil and replace it.
Is that tax preparation ad you’ve been seeing everywhere a weird scam? Here’s how to tell. (Y’all, you need to get moving on your taxes if you haven’t!)
Lifehacker says you’d be sleeping better if you were naked.
HEY this is a gentle PSA that if you’ve been waiting for the perfect time/situation/context for doing a thing, you don’t have to. I don’t even necessarily mean this in a sweeping Apply For Your Dream Job way — although I also do mean that, it’s always the right time to apply for your dream job and otherwise pursue your best life — I also mean that, for instance, I have two full boxes of old shoes I want to donate to goodwill, but they’ve been sitting in my bedroom for six weeks because I thought “I also want to go through my books for stuff to donate, so I’ll wait til I do that and take them all together.” Obvs that hasn’t happened yet, and so I’ve spent six weeks walking around boxes of shoes every day. Think of one thing in your life you’ve been putting off or putting on the back burner because not everything about it is perfectly ideal yet, and ask yourself whether your life would be better tomorrow if you just went ahead and did it today.
