DIY Life

COUGH, um, file this under seriously, what-were-you-thinking. Everyone say it with me, please, do not Duct Tape your baby to the wall, the fridge, the crib, or anything of the sort, it is not right. It is like automatically inviting DCFS to tea and brunch. Bad idea.

I know some of us DIY'ers can be not so bright at times *raises hand*, but this is why God gave us spouses and sisters, to slap us upside the head when we purposefully amplify the deficiencies in our gene pool.

Please, don't try to have a good laugh or chase that ever-elusive extra functionality in your DIY'ing by doing something stupid like this. I can't even begin to explain all the things wrong with this picture, but I'll leave it to you to draw your own conclusions.

Does anyone have any other great ideas that we should all NOT do with duct tape, or with DIY endeavours in general, if so, please share. Excuse me while I try to sleep while I shudder.

Summer is slowly drawing to an end here in the Northern hemisphere, which means this post is geared primarily to our hillbilly brethren South of the equator. However, it's never too early to get a jump on next Summer's oppressive heat, so I guess us Northenders can glean something from it as well.

Okay, here's the problem: it's hotter outside than two muskrats making love in a wool sock in the middle of the Sahara, and your pathetic ride doesn't have air conditioning. What's a sweat-hating hillbilly to do? You could always roll down the windows, allowing your sweaty pits to air out through your functional sleaveless flannel, but then you'll run the risk of making the back of your mullet all frizzy! Their must be some other way to stay cool!

Enter the ultra-portable hillbilly car/truck air conditioner!

Did you know that duct tape can remove warts? I'd heard that tip before, but always thought it was more myth than matter-of-fact. I figured that any improvement on a duct taped wart could be attributed to the placebo effect, but then I ran across this article stating the exact opposite.

According to the study, duct tape was more effective at removing warts that having multiple treatments of cryotherapy, which is the fancy way of saying, "having those suckers froze off." Having placed my faith in science and medicine from a very young age, it's hard for me to reconcile the fact that an expensive, and somewhat painful procedure can be outdone by a $4 roll of duct tape, but it's hard to argue against these facts:

"In patients treated with duct tape, 85 percent of the warts completely resolved, compared with 60 percent in the cryotherapy group. These results were statistically significant. Resolution of warts treated with duct tape usually occurred within the first 28 days of therapy."

Add this to the other 1,403,349 valuable uses for duct tape, and you can see why it's the DIY-er's multi-purpose tool of choice. Now, if only I could figure out a way to combine duct tape, vinegar, and WD-40 together... I could rule the DIY WORLD!!!

[via Neatorama]

I don't like folding my clean clothes, especially my shirts. To attest to this fact, I have a laundry basket sitting in the corner of my room that's literally overflowing with clean, but incredibly wrinkled t-shirts. Each morning, when I'm wasting time ironing that day's shirt, I think to myself, "if only I'd take the time to fold these darn shirts, I wouldn't have to waste my time ironing them every freaking morning. Why won't someone invent a shirt folding robot, and end my miserable plight?!" Unfortunately, the good people at Honda have yet to respond to my letters asking them to teach Asimo how to fold t-shirts, which means I'm stuck doing this tedious job manually for the rest of my life... or am I?

When I came across this video from Dan Pereda earlier today, demonstrating how to build and use your own t-shirt-folding machine, I nearly fell off my chair. It seems as though Dan has created a simple folding mechanism out of little more than foamcore and duct tape, and in so doing has solved one of the most pressing problems of all-time.



I can't wait to go buy some foamcore, and build one of these machines later tonight. I bet I can burn through my entire basket of t-shirts in less than an hour! Woo hoo! My life is finally complete! Thank you t-shirt-folding machine! THANK YOU!!!

Have you ever found yourself with so much money that you simply don't know what to do with it all? If you try to stuff all those $100 and $500 bills in your pockets, you'll eventually run out of space and have money flying all over the place! Of course, you could use some of that spare cash to buy a real wallet, but where's the fun in that? True DIYers know that half the fun of having money is building your own wallet to store it in ... am I right? Am I right?! Let's take a quick look at what options await the crafty, paper-money hoarder.

The Duct Tape Wallet - Simple, elegant, and sometimes sticky, the classic duct tape wallet was the catalyst that sparked the DIY wallet revolution.

The Plastic Bag Wallet - This type of wallet lends itself to all sorts of cool designs, but you have to learn the fine art of ironing plastic bags, which isn't easy.

The Playing Card Wallet - Impress friends at your next Texas Hold 'em tournament by pulling your money from this cool wallet made from playing cards, and then impress them again by losing all of your money two hours later on trip nines on the river. Curse you lady luck!!!

Household hacks are those creations and repairs which are accomplished without the use of instructions, diagrams, marked pieces and often without tools. Household hacks are the duct tape and hanger wire solutions which you've employed to solve a situation without making a trip to the hardware store. Most often, household hacks are not in any way meant to be a permanent repair but they are the kind of things which can satisfactorily carry you through to the next time you get to Home Depot. Household hacks can also be the sort of jimmy-rig repair which will get you home on time from a camping trip or will hold your lawnmower together long enough to finish the job.

Household hackers are the kind of individuals that discovered you can make a really cool looking flowerbed with a tipped over wheelbarrow and a pile of dirt. Household hackers are those ladies and gentlemen that have sixty three odd cookie tins and coffee cans full of cast-off parts on two dozen shelves in the back of the garage. Household hackers pay fewer car repair bills, make fewer trips to the hardware store and have generally more fulfilling lives because they are of the mindset, "there must be a way to do this". Household hackers are the kind of people who built America from the ground up.

Please feel free to join in and add your most ingenious household hack stories to the comments. We want to know about the ways you have found to keep the check out kid at True Value bored. We're not suggesting that anyone should try something dangerous like towing a dump truck with parachute cord, but if you found a safe way to accomplish a task or repair by using unexpected solutions you had on hand, we're just dying to hear about it!