Rubber Gloves Instead of Lint Rollers?

Today life hack was the most annoying and difficult life hack I’ve ever tested out. It was so monotonous that I almost gave up. But I stuck it out and finished it because that’s how dedicated I am to this blog. Read on to find out why this life hack was a nightmare.

This life hack says you can use rubber gloves like a lint roller to remove pet hair from clothing. There’s no real trick to this one. You don’t have to cover the rubber gloves in glue first or spread any liquid to get the fur to stick to the gloves. The hack says you just rub the rubber gloves all over the clothing to get the fur off.

My younger brother was gracious enough to let me try this on his winter jacket. It already tends to get dog fur stuck to it so I thought it would work well for this hack. I figured I would let my dog sit and play on it for a few minutes to really get it covered with fur. I regret everything.

After about five minutes of letting my dog role around on my brother’s coat I was satisfied with the layer of dog fur covering it. I donned my trusty rubber glove and went at it. At first things looked good. The glove was getting some of the fur off. This life hack was working.

 

I decided to keep at it for another few minutes. But as the minutes turned into hours, the hours into days and the days into years (Okay so maybe it just felt like years) I began to realize some of the fur would just never come off. The right side of the coat in the image below shows the outcome of using the rubber glove to get fur off the jacket.

I then grabbed a lint roller and went to the other side of the jacket to see if it worked better than the rubber glove. It did.

 

The left side of the image below is the result of using the lint roller on the coat. It worked better than the rubber glove that I used on the right side.  

 

The lint roller was easier to use and worked better than the rubber glove. To be fair the rubber glove did work but I would never use it in place of lint roller. The only way I would recommend use this hack is if you don't have a lint roller and it's an emergency.

This life hack gets a slight pass from me.

Then came the part that really annoyed me. After I decided the lint roller worked better than the rubber glove at getting fur off the coat there was still hair on the coat. I continued to lint role my brother’s jacket for another thirty minutes after I was actually finished with the hack. At one point, I got so desperate to get the hair off I actually took a vacuum cleaner hose and tried to suck the fur off the jacket. It didn’t work any better than the lint roller.

In the end, the only real lesson I learned from this hack is to not let your dog play on top of your clothes.

If you have any fur removal hacks that work for you I’d love to hear about them below in the comments. As always, if you are interested in reading about any other life hacks I’ve tested out you can find all of them in the blog archive to the right. Stay tuned for more life hacks every week.

Batteries and Soda Lids

I found two life hacks this week that really excited me. The first hack involves an interesting way to use fast-food soda cup lids while the second involves using incompatible batteries to power household objects. They are both neat tricks. But did they actually work when I tested them out? Read on to find out.

Soda Cup Lid as Coaster:

This life hack blew my mind when I first found out about it. Picture a soda cup lid that you would get from a fast-food restaurant. Okay, enough of that. Now look at the picture of a soda cup lid below.  

Have you ever wondered about the odd shape of the fountain drink cup lid? Notice the millimeter-deep indentation circling around the inside of the lid. Have you ever wondered why that is there? I myself had never really given it a second thought.

This life hack says that if you flip the lid over you can place the cup into the indentation and use it as a cup holder. So, I tried it out on a Wendy’s cup. It worked!

 

 

The cup fit right into the lid and made for a lovely cup holder. The lid remained on the bottom of the cup even as I held it up into the air. I don’t know how commonly known this is but I certainly never knew about it.

 

Using AAA Batteries in the place of AA Batteries:

I initially thought this next hack would be really cool to test out. Too often I find myself in dire need of AA batteries only to check my hallway closet and find nothing but AAA batteries. But what if I could use those AAA batteries on a remote controller that only takes AA’s?

This life hack would certainly be worth trying out.

The hack says that you can use AAA batteries in the place of AA batteries by placing tin foil on the negative end of the AAA battery. First I tried it on my TV remote. No luck. I thought maybe I hadn’t added enough tin foil.

 

So, I added a bit more foil and guess what? A light on the remote flashed for half a second when I tried to change the channel. After that? Nothing.

Then I tried the same thing with my Xbox 360 controller. I put AAA batteries where the AA’s would go and added tin foil to the negative ends. I locked the batteries in place and pushed the power button. Still nothing.

 

I was really determined to get this one to work. I tried more and less amounts of foil and even attempted this hack with two different flashlights. Unfortunately, all my efforts came back as failures. I’m sad to say that this life hack was a fail.

 

What did you think of this weeks tested life hacks? Do you want to try out the lid hack next time you go to McDonalds? Leave a comment and let me know.

Check out some of the other life hacks I've tested in the blog archive on the side and stay tuned for even more hacks right here on Life Hack Lab.

Dustpan Life Hack:

Raise your hand if this happens to you. You’ve got company coming over in just a few minutes and you’ve got to do a quick clean-up of the house.  You take out the trash, wash the dishes and dust the furniture.

There’s only one chore left to do. Sweep the floor. You grab a broom and practically break your back sweeping up every last bit of dirt from the floor. You look up at the clock. There’s still three minutes before your guests arrive. “I’ve got this,” you think aloud. All you have to do is get the rest of that grime into the dustpan and you’re home free.

You sweep the bulk of the dirt into the pan. There’s still some left on the floor. You sweep again. Not much better. You sweep two, three, four more times. There’s still a line of dirt on the floor in front of the dustpan you just can’t pick up. You hurtle your broom at the wall! You fall to your knees and shout, “Why God? Why have you chosen me for such a forsaken task?”

Okay, maybe not. But those lines of dirt you can’t quite sweep into the dustpan are really annoying.

I’ve found a life hack that claims to help with this little problem. Simply take a piece of tape or two and place it at the edge of the dustpan. This should decrease the space between the floor and the pan and make sweeping soot into the pan much easier.

So, I tried it. At this time, I would like to put up a disclaimer. The white powdery substance that you can see being swept into the dustpan in the photos is in fact flour. Nothing more. I simply needed something I could sweep into the dustpan that would be easily visible on a wooden surface.

I tried it first without tape. The line of flour I expected was left over after my best attempts to sweep it away.

Next, I tried it with the tape.

This did seem to work better than no tape. Unfortunately, there was still a thin line of flour left over. Even with the tape, the floor wasn’t completely clean.

 

This life hack is a fail. I guess I’ll just have to stick with a mop to finish off that last little bit of dirt left over from sweeping.

Got any good floor cleaning tips? Leave a comment below and let me know.

Be sure to check out other posts to the side and stay tuned for more life hacks every week right here on Life Hack Lab.