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In the comments of the last edition of this column, a reader shared with us about the Productivity Owl, which discourages you from visiting websites/tabs that are a detriment to your productivity. Thanks, @Chandra!
If there’s something in your house that smells weird and isn’t easily washable (ex. my couch, which smells like my cats), try making DIY Febreze! It’s very easy because it’s literally just vodka in a spray bottle. Seriously. I cannot explain the science but if you spray vodka (even very cheap vodka!) on a smelly thing, especially fabric, it will initially smell like vodka — and then as the vodka dries, the vodka smell goes away and takes the original unpleasant smell with it. You can add some drops of essential oils or infuse the vodka with citrus peels if you’d like to try to get a more pleasant smell in the mix as well.
If you have identical chargers/electronics as those around you — perhaps because you and everyone you know have the same Apple products — try using washi tape or colored electrical tape to mark your chargers as uniquely yours. That way the next time you’re packing up from a vacation together or a group study session, you won’t have the chore of trying to remember whose is whose.
Finding a new doctor/dentist/other health professional and making sure your insurance covers them can be stressful. Thanks to the internet it is becoming easier by the day, though! If you know who your health insurance provider is (you likely have a card of some sort with their name on it), you can go to their website and they’ll likely have some sort of “find a doctor” tool where you can tell them what kind of doctor you need, and the search engine will spit out names of only doctors that the insurance covers. If you want to double check because you’re not sure about your specific plan coverage, you can make sure by calling the insurance company customer service line, explaining the doctor and the type of visit you need, and confirming that it will be covered.
Are you interested in the art of building a memory/mind palace, because of watching BBC’s Sherlock or just because they’re fucking cool? Great, here’s how to do it. (That article seems to be not totally finished, but the point gets across.)
Is your apartment, like mine, overrun by fruit flies in the summer? Here’s how to build a fruit fly trap that will take 60 seconds and uses things you almost definitely already have. I can confirm that it works fantastically.
Apartment Therapy has some storage ideas for renters who need places to put things but can’t permanently alter their residences.
Here is how Business Insider suggests you charge your iPhone as much as possible in a very short period of time.
It’s getting hot in herrrre! That’s why you should know what heat exhaustion and heat stroke are, plus how to treat them.
Drawing/sketching/illustrating is a fun and fulfilling activity that many of us feel like we missed our chance at if we didn’t learn and excel at art basics in, you know, elementary school. This is not the case! It can be great for your mind and heart to draw as a hobby, even if you never want to show what you draw to anyone else. Here are some exercises to try, and here are some thoughts on keeping a sketchbook.
So you’ve seen a plant in the wild and want to figure out if it will kill you if you eat it! What you need, my friend, is the universal edibility test.