Redditor secondhandsisters wanted to make a list of the things we may have or need that covers dual purposes.
"What are some lesser-known secondary uses for an everyday product?"
Vodka. Did you know it also disinfects?
God's gift.
Down the Drain....
cockroach GIFGiphy"Bleach to keep away cockroaches. I used to get big a** cockroaches in the summer that came up my drain. My exterminator told me to pour 1 cup of bleach down my drain each week. You have to pour it down the drain in the room you see them. I started 18 months ago and haven't seen a cockroach since."
moochello
Pour it In...
"Use salt as an abrasive and absorber when cleaning. I spray my stove top with a general household cleaner then sprinkle salt liberally over the top. It gets grease out easily."
"For liquid stains like wine, I pour salt over the stain to soak up excess liquid then come through with hydrogen peroxide. Finally I get absorbent towels and dab clean it."
fopeo
Down Below
"Scuba diver here. Instead of using those expensive defogger gels and sprays on your mask, smear a bunch of dish soap in it, rinse once or twice, and your mask will never fog during the dive."
"You can also use this method to keep your windshield from fogging. Smear a bunch of dish soap on a towel, then rub it all over the inside of your windshield. Take another damp towel and rub the soap off until your wind shield is clear. I did this 3 weeks ago and have not had to defog a single time since."
layerzeroissue
The Mist
"Shaving foam reduces\stops misting on bathroom mirrors and car windows."
wirral_guy
"You can also use it to write creepy text like 'I died here' or 'I'm watching you' on mirrors of other people's bathrooms. When done right it will be pretty much invisible normally but the text will show up when someone is taking a bath/shower and the mirror fogs up."
ben_g0
Blot
friends GIF by Stan.Giphy"Toilet seat covers are the same as blotting paper for oily skin."
wurstbrot_royal
Oil is really quite amazing. It covers a lot.
I hate Redisue
Whats Up Nod GIF by WWEGiphy"Any cooking oil is a great way to remove the residue from stickers. I don't know if this is recommended but if you get scratches on wood furniture I've always taken a matching washable marker, colored over the scratch, and then wiped it with a damp cloth (to effectively stain the wood back to match)."
Underratted
Nuts
"Rub a walnut nut on wood scratches."
"Also just go buy a small bottle of goo-gone. It is that oil, but smells great and does a better job than cooking oil. It's like a buck for a couple ounces, and that bottle has lasted me years."
"Edit: used 'Walnut nut' To differentiate it from using a whole walnut... So someone isn't rubbing a dry walnut shell on their wood. ;)"
Nords
"I have a set of 4 furniture wood pens. The trick to make it look natural is to wipe it after. I wondered for weeks why they weren’t doing the trick until someone told me that."
LilNightingale
Lessons
Vaseline Hml407 GIF by truTV’s Hack My LifeGiphy"Vagisil for chafing. It's antibacterial, lubricating, and an anesthetic. I learned that in the army."
Churonna
Stop the Bleed
"Corn starch is a good blood coagulant if you need to stop bleeding."
drdoom
"I saved my pet Tarantula with corn starch like this before. Her abdomen split after falling on tile, and the cornstarch stopped her from bleeding out. Several months later and she's doing great after that almost fatal fall."
WaCinTon
Grind and Press
"If you have a French press for coffee, you can also froth milk in it after. Pour in hot milk and raise and lower the plunger until the volume of the milk has about doubled."
"Not my channel, but plugging for James Hoffman. If you like coffee, and want to explore the utter depths of the world of coffee, coffee gear, coffee science in a super chill and informative way, check him out!"
ThatIndianBoi
Soothe
chihuahua petting GIF by YasislasGiphy"Clean mascara wands are used in animal shelters to soothe the animals by brushing, and to remove fly eggs and larva from fur."
Drink-my-koolaid
I have been under using everything I own. I swear.
I had to read the comment over about ten times and watch a YouTube a mopping tutorial, fam. I truly did.
And it's not like I had just never mopped, I have lived in a home with not an inch of carpet for like the last 20 years. I mop all the time. I was apparently just doing it wrong all the time.
You'll be pleased to know things are much improved and streak-free floors are now a part of my world, thanks to Reddit.
Thing is, I'm not the only one out here taking an average everyday thing and screwing it up wildly.
Redditors, what is the worst case of "I don't know how to operate this everyday object" you've seen?
And this thread, this thread right here, it SO proves it. Come, join me whilst I dance among my peoples.
But The E-mails
I worked deskside IT support at a Fortune 10 company. There was a Director of some super important division, I think it was involved with the launch of new products. Like all Directors there, he had an assistant. Unlike the rest of the directors' assistants, she had THE biggest printer we supported sitting right next to her, and connected directly to her PC. It wasn't even on the network, so no one could use it but her.
Turns out, it's because EVERY DAY, this woman comes in, prints EVERY email the Director got single-sided, and puts a huge pile on his desk when it's done. He then goes through every one (of course, immediately trashing 99% of them), and hand-writes replies on the back. She then stays late EVERY DAY to type them up and send them. All because this dude found Outlook too challenging.
- arcsine
Sweep
GiphyHad a kid at one of my jobs not know how to use a broom. He swept back and forth as a cartoon would.
Powerpoint
My wife is a middle school teacher, and her principal is technologically illiterate. He updates the same Powerpoint (not the same template, but the same literal Powerpoint file) for every single presentation he makes. It's now an illegible mix of fonts, font sizes and formats. His bullet lists switch between unordered and ordered, and different types of sub-bullets (so there would be three "bullet" points, followed by a "4" and an "e").
The worst, though, was when he was giving a presentation about the #MeToo movement, talking about how it might potentially impact their students and staff. Thing was, the guy has no idea what a hashtag is, or how to talk about them in a public setting. His entire presentation, he was talking about the "Pound Me Too Movement".
No actual message was communicated that day.
Turn The Page
I was checking into a hotel and asked if I could get access to the conference room to start setting up for the training I would be conducting all week.
The lady at the desk was adamant we hadn't booked their conference room for a full week. It had only been booked for today. We went back and forth for a little bit until she got out the schedule book to show me.
The schedule book was just a spiral bound book with calendar pages. She points at today the 31st and says "see there's nothing after this."
I screamed internally and just turned the page to show that reality didn't end at midnight and our company name was indeed written in every day that week. She didn't give me any trouble after that.
A Teachable Moment
One of my friends asked me if I would go to the gas station with her and fill up her tire with air because she didn't know how. I gave her the same answer I give most people when they ask me to do something simple that they will need to do again at some point.
"I'm happy to go with you. I won't do it for you BUT I will show you how to do it." She thanked me and said she asked me because she knew I wouldn't make fun of her and was worried people would think she was stupid because she didn't know how to do it.
She was always the first person to call herself stupid. In reality she was just sheltered and underexposed. Our overpopulated public school failed her and let her slip through the cracks (she barely graduated high school). She can be a little slow to grasp a new concept and most people wouldn't take the time to help her so she just figured "she was too stupid to figure anything out"
She really is smarter than she gives herself credit for (and smarter than most of her friends whether she believes it or not). She just lacks confidence in herself. Once something "Clicks" for her, she's got it and can easily build upon that knowledge.
The Basics
My mom and Gmail.
Quote: „No, I don't need a password to log in. Now get my emails back."
I get older generations are not as tech-savy, not having grown up with computers and internet, but come on, you've had that stupid computer for at least ten bloody years. You must have picked up on the basics by now.
Ladder
GiphyI once saw someone in my office start to climb up the wrong side of a common metal A-frame ladder before being stopped.
- TroperCase
Gassed Up
So I washed cars at a car dealership as a summer job in high school. Part of my job was to take cars to the gas station if they had less than a 1/4 tank of gas in them to make sure they had enough fuel in case a customer wanted to do a test drive.
One day I take new Chevy to the gas station. I think it was a Malibu. I park at the pump, go around to the gas cap, and see that you can't open it from the outside. "Oh, this must be one of those cars that has a release button on the inside", I think to myself. So I go back to the driver's seat and look around for a button/lever. But there's nothing there. I spend a few minutes looking around but I can't find anything.
So I give up and drive back to the dealership and ask my coworker how to get at the gas tank in these new cars. He walks over to the gas cap, pushes it in with one finger, and it springs open. facepalm.
- echo127
Rinse Cycle
Served in the army for a brief time with a girl who didn't know you had to rinse clothes after you soaped them while manually doing laundry. We had incidents where our laundry services would be woefully behind schedule, so occasionally, you had to do some sink laundry here and there. She would get hers wet, soap it up, and then just hang it and wonder why hers always came out worse than everyone else's.
A Smug Grin
A housemate of mine once put something in the microwave that was covered in tin-foil (Not a "foil" lid, something she had covered in actual foil to re-heat).
I saw it happen out of the corner of my eye and dived in to open the microwave before anything went wrong. She got very angry and said "what are you doing? I'm trying to cook my lunch, what's your problem?!".
I said something along the lines of "look mate, you can't put tinfoil in a microwave". She told me to f off and I sat down in the corner of the kitchen to eat my food while she tried to do it again. When the microwave sparked and made a fuss like it was going to catch fire, she started screaming and turned the microwave off at the wall, while I sat there with a smug grin on my face.
I wanted to say "see, told you so!" but I felt the smug grin was probably enough.
Mouse
I was showing a person where I worked once the difference between Office 2003 and 2007 when it first came out. I pointed to a spot on the screen and said "Put your mouse here".
They lifted up the mouse itself and put it on the screen. Maybe I should've been more specific and said mouse cursor but still.
On/Off
Came in to work one day and a couple of the office staff were huddled around a desk saying that they couldnt turn a computer on.
Now, computers can crash, but they usually turn on, unless they're not plugged in. I go over to where they are and they are trying to turn on a Dell computer by pressing the circular Dell emblem. I showed them the on/off button and explained what the 0 and 1 on the button meant, then started the computer right up.
But, I was curious. They'd worked here for several months (I was new) and i wondered how they turned on their computers in the past. It turns out that they never shut their computers off. I was amazed that people like this existed. I came from the tech world and you always shut off your computer at night due to memory leaks, or to prevent someone from screwing around with your computer.
These people weren't old. They were in their late twenties/early thirties.
- TVLL
Paperclip
There is this person that I work with didn't understand how to use paperclips... This is how she handed a stack of papers to my friend.
Towel Trouble
I had a girl at my old job ask me to show her how to wring out a towel, like she just didn't understand how to.
A PhD
My freshman year of college, a guy in the room next to mine blew up his microwave. The dude had wanted to make a pot of soup, and rather than walk 100 ft down the hall to the kitchen, he decided to put the metal pot in the microwave and cook it that way. The fact that this guy now has a PhD in electrical engineering will forever mystify.
- modoken1
Definitely Just
I can't use a lighter. I never learned, and I definitely just embarrassed myself at a party for not being able to do it.
As An Old Dude
As an old dude there are some 'simple' things that is surprises me that people don't know how to use and then it surprises me that it surprised me because the younger generation has just never needed to learn how to use it...
- Manual transmission vehicles
- Church keys (bottle and can openers)
- Cassette tapes (respooling them or freeing stuck reels)
Copy/Paste
It wasn't until... Two years ago that I learned how to copy and paste things into a document. I've been using computers since I was 6.
- Aux-Cord