At first, the term life hacks was used to describe things used only by IT professionals to make their work easier and much faster. Today, the definition has expanded to include magnificent tricks and methods that can increase productivity and efficiency in almost all walks of life. They’ve simply become clever tips, techniques, and shortcuts that make little everyday tasks much easier and allow us to improvise solutions to our most common problems with less effort.

We at Bright Side have found some of the tips that’ll satisfy any playful curiosity, accelerate workflows, and help us all through things with joy and style.

1. Tie a small piece of bright-colored fabric to your luggage

Sometimes we spend a lot of time looking for our luggage on that baggage carousel. Many bags look the same. Having a bright-colored fabric on one of them may save you a lot of time checking to see if it’s yours or not.

2. Cleaning the keyboard

Cleaning dust from your keyboard is really easy. You just need to simply ’sacrifice’ an old brush from your cosmetic bag for this purpose. Men can use a simple toothbrush. Just make sure it’s soft-bristled and don’t try to be too enthusiastic during the cleaning.

3. Removing unpleasant shoe odors

Just put some tea bags in your shoes and leave them overnight. This solution is much cheaper than all those fancy shoe deodorants. Besides, they tend to run out very quickly. The cheapest tea will work just as well, instead.

4. How to prevent water and food from splashing out

To prevent having a pot boil over when you’re cooking, just put a wooden spoon right on the top of the pot. To prevent food from splashing out from under the lid of a pan or a frying pan, use a wooden toothpick.

5. How to finally nail it

This dramatic activity is a real injury record holder. But alas, there’s always a solution. Try to hold a nail with a clothespin to make sure your fingers are far away from the “hitting point.” Teach your kids to do the same.

6. Eating popcorn to keep your calories low

Your first thought here may be, “Wait a minute. Junk food?” Yep! And it’s time to reconsider its place in a healthy and balanced diet. According to the USDA, one cup of plain, air-popped popcorn contains 32 calories. It’s a whole-grain food, that is low in fat and sugar (only 0.7 grams per cup), and it’s gluten-free.

We should only be concerned about eating the popcorn sold in movie theaters. They add too much butter and salt there, which significantly increases the number of calories. They also tend to use coconut, soybean, or canola oil to pop it. So instead make your own air-popped or microwave popcorn.

7. How to fix a broken swivel office chair

Often, those tiny wheels break up and there’s no shop that sells spare parts or any place to get it repaired. Instead of buying a new chair, take some duct tape and a bottle of water and wrap it up over the missing wheel. Just make sure you use an unopened bottle of carbonated water, so it will be solid and won’t crease under the weight.

8. How to keep your arm safe from hot oil

A mere kitchen mitt or glove may work in this case. But if you don’t have one or are somewhere camping, try to improvise with a plastic bottle that has the bottom cut off.

9. How to pull hot bread out of a toaster

Just use 2 popsicle sticks to do it. Put them together with a rubber band. Wash it and keep it somewhere to use to pick up or pull out any other hot food as well.

10. How to prevent the hanger from sliding off the edge of the rack

A carabiner is an easy way to solve this problem, but not many of us have one. So try to use duct tape or a binder clip instead.

11. One more way to eat your chips

It is always great to have a pair of chopsticks around. You can finally nail eating your chips with style, for instance. Besides, if you do it in the office, it will keep your hands clean and prevent you from overeating your snacks.

12. Getting small objects out of hard-to-reach places

Sometimes some pieces of jewelry or other valuable, but still tiny, objects can fall somewhere behind a chair or a table. In this case, just put a sock on your vacuum cleaner and get the object with complete peace of mind.

What other useful tips have you developed throughout your life and experience? Please share with us all in the comments below. And maybe one day it will become a part of our new collection of amazing life hacks.