I just realized I've been doing something the hard way for years and I feel so silly

I’ve been using a spoon to put the filling in when I make stuffed shells for my whole life. Two days ago my wife wanted to make them with me, which is great! Extra help! But as soon as I asked her to get a spoon for the stuffing she looked at me like I was nuts, got out a big ziploc bag, and cut off the corner so we could pipe the filling in. ……….I have been living in ignorance for SO LONG.

I've told this story a few times but it was a genuinely humbling moment for me and made me start wanting to be more mechanical in thought. I worked at a factory with a machine that tapes up boxes. One day, the machine needed more tape. So I opened it up and had a look at the completely puzzling back and forth the tape needed fed into. As I was poring over this machine, memorising the path the tape was taking...an old no-nonsense woman comes up behind me, slaps the new tape on the end of the old tape, and feeds it through the machine. ....I learned so much from that woman that day. So much.

Excel shortcut: CTRL A then Alt + H + O + A If you open a sheet and the columns are squished together so it won't show what's typed in some of them, this resizes everything perfectly to fit the text. My team had to sit through so many meetings watching my boss slowly adjust them manually. I've saved lives.

those white deodorant stains that get on your shirt when you put it on they were so annoying to get off, and I always had to change my shirt because of them, the stains were stubborn af then I saw a comment on listnook saying to just use a different section of the same shirt to rub it off, stain disappeared like magic 🤯 also, highlighting permanent marker with a regular marker to easily wipe off the permanent marker. And W-40 to easily wipe off stubborn sticker residue

Learn the keyboard shortcuts for EVERYTHING. It makes life so much faster. Watching my business partner click around everywhere is painful lol. New tab? Ctrl+T. Copy file? Alt+Drag. Move program to other window? Shift+Win+Arrow. Once you master shortcuts, your efficiency and speed goes through the roof. And then operating in any other way is infuriatingly slow.

Me when I found the 'skip to next comment' button on listnook after 3 years

I was staying over at a friend’s place (known her for over a decade) and saw her cut dental floss with a pair of scissors. Asked her why she was doing that and she said how else are you supposed to cut it? I was dying from laughter while I demonstrated cutting a piece with the metal tab. Apparently her whole family thought it was just to keep it in place so everyone’s been using scissors their whole life 😭😂

Very niche but I’m an audio engineer and it took me a couple years to realize you can just select all the transients and quantize audio that way. Meaning instead of cutting up a drum recording for example and individually moving the cuts to sound more on time, you can basically Select All & put them on the beat (quantize)

I put my husband’s yeti mugs through the dishwasher and I put the seals and magnets in the silverware rack. But it’s always a pain to get the magnets back out since the opening is so small. My husband was unloading the dishwasher one day and I saw him take one of the newly cleaned forks and stick the handle in the compartment with the magnet. The magnet stuck to it, and he pulled it out.

I just learned you can send SCHEDULED text messages! Where have I been??

swiping right on a song adds it to queue on spotify 😬 i used to search the song, press the three dots on the right and then clicked add to queue 😭

I learned this as a kid, probably when I was 12 back in the 80’s. So not new to me but maybe others can learn. Instead of jamming your pillow into a pillowcase and fumbling around with it and forcing it to fit, turn the pillowcase inside out, put both hands inside it, grab the pillowcase corners then grab onto the corners of your pillow and easily slide the pillowcase over your pillow.

i was cutting bell peppers by slicing around the outside for 15 years. you can just push the stem in and the core pops out clean.

I learned that on some mobile keyboards, swiping across the spacebar moves the typing cursor. I also taught my parents that tapping and holding the top row of letters gives them special characters and numbers. Some people also don't know that if you highlight text and click the uppercase button, they'll make the first letter a Capital. If you double click the uppercase button to enter caps lock, you can make the whole word CAPITAL letters.

i was mass deleting emails one by one for like 2 years before someone showed me you can select all. two years. i dont wanna talk about it

For YEARS I thought usernames were case sensitive, like passwords.

As a lawyer, I was opening a new word doc every time I needed to make notes of a phone call. About ten years in, my boss tells me that he uses the same word doc but just adds to it each time………….

Herbs and spices are in alphabetical order on the shelves in super markets. Was in my 30s when i realised i don't have to search randomly every time. Edit: spelling

Cooking corn in the microwave. Don't pull off leaves and silk. Instead, place whole cob in mw on high for 3 mins. Take out and cut through close to non-silk (bottom) edge. Pull leaves and silk off in one easy go. Simple.

The first time someone showed me an excel pivot table

Some guy, a few years ago, figured out that you don't have to thread your belt buckle through your belt loops in his 20s. That it was a lot easier if you threaded the tongue through first. And, IIRC, he ran out and announced to his roommates/ friends that he'd discovered a better way to thread your belt, to their great amusement.

Banana-peanut butter sandwich. I'd always slice the banana into little rounds and place them on my sandwich. They would always be uneven. One day, I saw my sister make hers by slicing her banana horizontally. It blew my mind and changed my life. I now eat banana-peanut butter sandwiches that don't fall apart and aren't way higher on one side than the other. It's glorious.

I grew up in an old farmhouse with a bathtub, no shower. I always wanted to shower because it looked like so much fun in soap and shampoo commercials: men and women smiling as they faced the shower head from about a foot away. I had to wash my hair in the sink and I couldn't wait to do it like I saw on TV. Well, the first time I stayed at a motel, when I was 10, the room had a shower and I couldn't wait to try it! Unfortunately, I got water up my nose and shampoo in my eyes, and spent 15 minutes coughing and hacking. I tried several more times over the years with the same results, so I gave up. When I was a junior in college, I moved into an apartment with my best friend. One day she asked me why I didn't wash my hair in the shower like everyone else. I explained I didn't like getting water up my nose from facing the shower spray. She looked at me like I was an idiot and told me to...turn around. I tried turning my back to the water and it worked! I couldn't believe it. Anyway, don't believe commercials...they lie.

The caps for those metal tubes for medicinal creams, glues, or tomato paste have pointy thing with which you can open the tube.

When you open a new deodorant and it has the little plastic cover, I could never easily pluck it out, I was using my teeth to get it. Now I just twist the deodorant a few times and it pops right off.

Swiping left on the current route in Google maps will show you the next step/turn in your directions. I used to swipe on the map itself and zoom out to see where the next turn was and then had to click Re-center. My 4 year old nephew is tech-obsessed and showed me that. It's been a total gamechanger.

Cook bacon then cook the eggs in the grease.

Hot water gets the sticker glue off jars. I used to scrub with the steel wool 🙄🤦‍♀️

I had no idea that aluminum foil and plastic wrap have little tabs on each end that you press in to keep the roll in place.

I’m 52. These are two things I’ve learned since turning 50, both aluminum foil related. The matte side, not the shiny side, has the nonstick coating. And if your aluminum foil is perfectly flat there is more surface area to stick to your fish (or whatever you’re baking). So crumple up your aluminum foil then smooth it flat on your baking tray, shiny side down. The little ridges from crumpling it will hold your food up ever so slightly and make it so much easier to lift off!

I just recently realized that I can freeze leftovers in single portion sized containers. I used to just freeze entire batches of leftovers in one big container. Then I would have to heat up the entire amount of leftovers, eat just a single portion and then refreeze what's leftover again.

Window cleaning spray takes the price tag sticker and glue off books! Works for jars too, although it takes longer.

Years ago I tried to wrap my hair up in a towel by starting at one end and wrapping and wrapping. To my horror my girlfriends laughed at me and showed me the right way (putting your head in the middle and twisting the two halves together). Somewhat embarrassing but we died laughing about it

There's a path to feed the thread through on my sewing machine when you're filling a bobbin. It's very clearly marked on the machine, but I had been threading it *just* wrong enough that I had to hold the thread the whole time I was filling the bobbin. A couple weeks ago, I did it correctly and it WORKS SO MUCH BETTER. Felt pretty dumb.

You know when you get a Charlie horse in your foot… and to get rid of it you can just flex your foot… I didn’t know that until I was like 17. I used to just try to be still as possible which resulted in it cramping a few more times until it would eventually stop. So much unnecessary pain lol

Sitting at the table to chop ingredients instead of standing

Ok so I have questions about the use of the word vagabond here? Haha

I have a bagless vaccum. For the first 10 or so years I owned it, I was only aware of the top opening. It was always so annoying emptying it because there were parts in the way that made you have to shake it upside down and often pull strands of hair to get it completely empty. Then one day I realized that it has a bottom opening too. Just press the button and everything falls out the bottom.

Turning the shower on without getting in

I worked at a bank as a teller back in the day. We had to thread the “machine” not sure what it was called with a white roll of paper to print out customers receipts on. Getting the paper threaded through the machine was quite the task. Once I was through training & out in the bank I saw another teller tape the new paper to the old paper in the machine & just feed it through until the new paper appeared on the other side. Genius.

i feel that, it’s wild how long we can go doing things the hard way. for me, realizing i could use keyboard shortcuts in google docs was a game changer.

Garlic cloves 15 seconds in the microwave. Skin comes straight off.

Not really a hack but what I like to call my lightning strike of genius. One of the bars on our clothes horse snapped off completely and couldn't be slotted back in. Partner came home with a new one only to find I had replaced the snapped bar with some wired twine, just wrapped it around the thicker bar and stretched it across. He stood there just staring and said that I was a genius. I am not, obviously, just spotted a quick fix. The new clothes horse stayed in the wrapper for another three months as the fix held! Also- store duvet sets, sheet, etc in one pillow case for each set, makes it easier instead of dicking around looking for the sheet that matches that set.

Pythagorean theorem for utility poles. Instead of square roots, it’s the 3,4,5 formula. We use it to figure out how much guy wire we need. Height of the pole (30ft) distance from the pole (40ft) means we need 50ft of wire. Works for most estimates. Doesn’t have to be exact decimals because we pull extra anyways. (Guy wires are the ones that are anchored into the ground to help fight tension from overhead lines)

Dude, I did the exact same thing for like three years before my friend showed me. The worst part is I'd see people doing it and just thought they were being weird, never actually investigated it myself. What other basic features are we all just casually missing without realizing it?

Trying to pry the plastic cover piece off a new stick of deodorant with my fingernails rather than twisting it up until you can just easily remove it.

For two years I loaded the groceries and laundry into my trunk through the backseat only to discover my fob has a trunk key in it.....

After years of spending extra time, energy, money, and anxiety to keep up with life, I realized at age 35 I have ADHD. Turns out, I've been paying life on hard mode the whole time. Now I'm playing life on moderate-hard mode with the help of medication and therapy.

My mom would always try to teach me to peel potatoes the hard way with a knife, and make fun of me if I felt scared or messed up. Then when I met my husband he said I can use a peeler for anything I want and I don't have to use a knife. Potatoes, Carrots, Apples... It's a silly thing to be afraid of but I feel so much faster and confident when I make food now ♥️

A plunger for a clogged toilet is far more effective if you tip it to the side and let the bell fill with water before you start plunging. Water is very difficult to compress as compared to the air that was in the bell. This means allowing water into the bell creates far more force on the clog when you plunge.

Hold down on the "space bar" to do an exact cursor placement. Hold down on a letter to bring up alternatives (for example, hold down on the "o" to see all possible umlaut, diacritics, etc.)

lol i had that moment with alarms on my phone, i used to set like 5 separate ones instead of just editing one. felt so dumb when i realized but also kinda funny how long i just accepted doing it the harder way.. lowkey makes u wonder what else ur overcomplicating without noticing.

I try to apply that to life in general. As an adult I realized that I have options and I don't always have to do things the hard way. There's no need to overcomplicate things. Dont worry Be happy.

Jello! I boil the water on the stove and boil the mix for 3 minutes. Just realized this week that I can mix the boiling water with the mix off the stove for the 3 minutes.

I was 46 when I learned to tie my shoes. Double knotted them my whole life to keep them from coming untied constantly. Hated fighting to untie them sometimes so ruined a lot of shoes making them slip ons. Friend at the gym saw me and showed me how to make bunny ears and tie them. No more double knots and my shoes never come untied. So yes, I was 46 when I learned to tie my shoes.

By pressing “alt” in word, it opens up the shortcuts menu. You can then follow the path to figure out shortcuts to your commonly used tools. Example I use “alt+jp+ag+g” to group pictures without clicking through 4 menus. I also use “alt+h+v+t” to copy and paste the text only, without formatting. Lots of tips like this

Japanese pumpkins. I was struggling to prepare them for years. Hard to scrape off the peel and cut through the middle. You have to put them in the oven for about 10-15 minutes on low. Then take it out and the peel is super easy to scrape off. It's super easy to cut and dig out the seeds. Takes about 2-3 minutes to prepare it after the oven.