Life needs hacks. With modern technology boosting our ability to get more done, how do we continue to live at warp speed and not get tangled in all the cords, or spend a small fortune to get everything done? We have the answer: DIY life hacks, of course.

We have compiled an exciting list of the best 26 DIY life hacks that you’l actually want to use. Most importantly, they all use things you either already have or regularly buy, to help you make more time and have more fun. After reading, you’ll be able to declutter your desk, and save money. You will also learn how to more efficiently clean your kids’ rooms, organize your bathroom, and sort out your kitchen in a jiffy! Read on to discover our top 26 DIY life hacks you’ll wonder how you lived without!

DIY Life Hacks For In & Around the Home

1. Hide that fender bender

Fender benders happen. And there are very few life hacks that are as useful as this one to remove paint scrapes from your car. Try this DIY life hack to make your car look new again!

What you’ll need

• 100% acetone nail polish remover
• Cotton pads

Instructions

1. Take a cotton pad and put the nail polish remover on it.
2. Swipe the cotton pad over the paint scrape on your car to remove the paint.

Fun Fact: 100% acetone is also good to remove scuffs from patent leather and sneakers, and to remove tough stains from floors without damaging the materials.

2. Waterproof your shoes

Who doesn’t hate walking in wet shoes? Whether it’s stepping in a puddle in your favorite sneakers or in slush in the dead of winter, wet shoes are an uncomfortable part of life. And, they can stain your kicks, making them look more worn than they really are. Our fix? A smart fix to waterproof your shoes!

What you’ll need

• Beeswax
• Hairdryer

Instructions

1. Rub the beeswax on your shoes so that the wax looks chalky.
2. Use the hair dryer to heat the beeswax until it seeps into the fabric and appears wet
3. Allow the beeswax to dry.

3. Find a hole in a tire

Bike riding is a way of life these days. More of us are riding than ever before. But unfortunately, flat tires are inevitable. The good news is that we have just the hack to help you fix your flat tires in no time! Keep calm and ride on!

What you’ll need

• 1 cup of water
• 10 drops of dish soap
• A bowl
• A sponge

Instructions

1. Mix the water with the dish soap in the bowl.
2. Rub the mixture onto the tire with the sponge as if you were washing the tire.
3. A bubble of dish soap will appear wherever there are holes, making it easier to patch it.

Pro Tip: You can use this DIY life hack to find and fix a hole in your car tire, motor cycle tire, motor bike tire, or even your scooter tire!

4. The best DIY life hack for using up leftover flat soda

Here’s a game changer for using up leftover or flat soda in the refrigerator to keep your new fresh glass of soda cool and full of flavor.

What you’ll need

• Flat soda
• An ice tray
• Freezer

Instructions

1. Pour flat soda into an ice cube tray. Freeze.
2. Use the soda ice cubes for your newly opened sodas or even to put flavored cubes in other drinks. You can also fill the entire ice tray with bubbly soda so that your soda won’t go flat, too!

5. Wash your baseball caps more effectively

Some of us (or the people we love) wear baseball caps 24/7. As you may have noticed, they can get grimy! But there is a solution, without investing in anything special (and which only allows you to wash one cap at a time).

What you’ll need

• Dishwasher
• Non-sudsing treatment
• Clothespins

Instructions

1. Empty the dishwasher of dishes and utensils.
2. Pretreat the areas of the baseball cap that need it with a non-sudsing treatment of your choice.
3. Put your baseball caps on the top rack of your dishwasher, forming the bill of the cap on the pegs of the dishwasher (the rest of the cap doesn’t need much space).
4. Using the clothespins, pin the cap to the dishwasher on its back tab and its sides.
5. Run the dishwasher through one full cycle.
6. Let your baseball caps air dry.

6. Take the pain out of washing your children’s toys

We aren’t done with the dishwasher yet! Some parents may already know this DIY life hack, but if not, here it is to remind you how totally useful it is to get your kid’s toys cleaned and disinfected by just running them through the dishwasher.

What you’ll need

• Dishwasher
• Dishwasher liquid
• Toys you’d like to give a good clean

Instructions

1. Empty the dishwasher of dishes and utensils.
2. Put the toys on the top rack of your dishwasher.
3. Run the dishwasher through one full cycle.

7. Patch up your walls and leather sneakers

We all have our favorite toothpaste for making our smiles bright and clean. But, believe it or not, we should also keep an extra tube on hand for home repairs and clothing fixes! Did you know that toothpaste (and that means the white paste, no gel) can be used to plug holes in walls, to help get rid of pimples, and to clean sneakers? Here are just some of its uses.

• Plug holes in walls. Use sandpaper to sand over the hole to make it smooth and put a dab of toothpaste into the hole. Keep adding dabs of toothpaste until the hole is filled and flush with the wall. The toothpaste will harden and makes a permanent spackle.
• Clean leather sneakers. Use toothpaste and an old toothbrush to get your white leather sneakers white again. You can also use this hack on just the rubber parts of all of your sneakers to get them bright and white again!
• Get rid of pimples. To get rid of a pimple overnight, just press a dab of tooth paste onto the pimple and let it dry. Wash it off in the morning, and the pimple will be gone (or at least greatly diminished).

Bonus Tip: When hanging photos on a wall, dab toothpaste on the back of the frame where the nail (or other hanging hardware) should be placed. Now place the frame on the wall exactly where you want it. Take the frame down, and you’ll see a little toothpaste mark showing you exactly where to put your nail.

8. Clean your car and cobwebs

Leaf blowers are helpful for getting all the leaves off your lawn in the fall, but they can also be useful for making your everyday chores less boring, and help you get them done quicker!

• Clean your car. To remove dirt, debris, and whatnot from car interior, just open all the car doors and use your leaf blower to get under the seats and remove all those old french fries and chips that have been there since time immemorial.
• Remove cobwebs. To remove cobwebs in the basement or attic corners, use your leaf blower to blast them away in literal seconds.
• Clean gutters. To clean gutters without a ladder, attach a long PVC pipe with a bent attachment at the end and blow the leaves and debris out of the gutter in no time!

Creative Life Hacks to Turn Junk Into Treasure

9. Make your own unique wine rack

Wine is one of the best parts of life. It’s even better if you can buy it at a discount and then store it until you want or need it, especially if your wine rack is a DIY life hack that you made from PVC pipes!

These make a great gift for the wine lover in your life, too!

What you’ll need

• PVC glue
• PVC Pipe
• Sandpaper
• 6 pieces of PVC pipe: 4-1/4” dia. X 10” long
• 7 binder clips
• Spray paint in the color(s) of your choice

Instructions

These instructions are for two rows of three tubes stacked on top of each other.

1. Use the sandpaper to sand all the tubes, both inside and out.
2. Put the tubes together with binder clips in a configuration that you like.
3. Unclip one pair at a time, and apply the PVC glue to the length of one tube where the two tubes meet.
4. Re-clip the tubes together until the glue is dry (about 2-5 minutes).
5. Do the same thing for each row until you have two sets of 3 pipes.
6. Glue the two rows together and allow the glue to set for a few hours.
7. Remove the binder clips.
8. Spray paint the wine rack completely, inside and out, in the colors of your choice.

10. Build wall shelves from scratch

Who couldn’t use more storage? Making it beautiful and personal, as well as interesting, is always ideal. Using the drawers from an old dresser, nightstand, phone stand, or other antique furniture, you can DIY your own shelves! You can use these shelves for books, pictures, lamps, or you can add hooks for keys or coats.

What you’ll need

• Old drawers from a nightstand or dresser
• Latex paint or wood stain
• Paint brushes
• Hammer
• Nails

Instructions

1. Paint the inside and the outside of the drawers in any color scheme that you like. Let it dry.
2. Stagger the drawers on the wall and nail each corner to the wall to make sure they are mounted sturdily.
3. Put books, picture frames, vases, or other knick-knacks inside the drawers or on top of them.

11. Insulate your windows

When winter draws closer, we all prepare plans to stay toasty and warm inside our favorite places at home. But if you have a draft near any windows, that image is easily ruined! Our fix? Bubble wrap!

What you’ll need

• Bubble wrap (big bubbles)
• Tape measure
• Scissors
• Spray bottle of water
• Optional: double-sided tape

Instructions

1. Measure your windows, from pane to pane.
2. Cut bubble wrap to measure.
3. Spray the glass of the window.
4. Place the bubble wrap with the bubbles on the windows.
5. For really stubborn windows, use double-sided tape to keep the bubble wrap in place.

Easy & Eco-Friendly Life Hacks

While most DIY life hacks use old items in new ways, we have found several that can actually replace harmful chemicals that we normally use in our everyday lives. Everything from bug spray to hair gel can be loaded with harmful chemicals or agents, so we have found the best DIY life hacks that are easy, promote good health for ourselves and the environment, and still get the job done.

12. Make an eco-friendly pencil case

Upcycling is one of the best ways to get creative and help out the environment. The following is a nifty DIY life hack that will allow you to transform ordinary plastic bottles into a pencil case! It makes for a great pencil case for your kids to take to school, or even to donate to a local community center.

What you’ll need

• Two plastic bottles of the same size (water bottles will work fine)
• Scissors
• Hot glue gun
• A zipper

Instructions

1. Take the first bottle and cut off the top (the part with the bottlecap) so that it ends up around 8” tall.
2. Take the second bottle and cut off the top so that it ends up around 3” tall (you’ll be left with pretty much just the bottom of the bottle).
3. Unzip the zipper.
4. Take the first bottle and squeeze hot glue along the edge of the open top. Glue one side of the zipper around this edge.
5. Take the second bottle and hot glue along the edge of the open top. Glue the other side of the zipper around the open edge.
6. Allow the glue to dry (15-20 minutes).
7. Put your pencils into the longer bottle and zip the case closed.

13. Get rid of fruit flies and gnats

Fruit flies can appear all year round. Here’s how to get rid of them without using nasty chemicals!

What you’ll need

• A mason jar
• Apple cider vinegar
• Dish soap

Instructions

1. Fill the mason jar with apple cider vinegar. The sweet odor of ACV will attract the flies.
2. Add a few drops of dish soap. This decreases the surface tension so that flies will sink upon touching the liquid’s surface.
3. Leave the jar open on the counter, and watch and wait for the critters to come!

14. Keep out spiders and other bugs

Keep creepy crawlies away with this DIY natural insect repellant (especially spiders!). Spray it around doors and window openings, or even on your skin, clothes, and hair to keep bugs away from you.

What you’ll need

• A spray bottle
• Peppermint essential oil

Instructions

1. Fill the spray bottle with warm water.
2. Add 20-30 drops of peppermint essential oil.
3. Shake well.
4. Spray around door and window openings, or wherever bugs enter.

Beauty Hacks

15. Say goodbye to zits

Everyone gets them, and everyone wants to get rid of them. Luckily, apple cider vinegar works wonders on zits!

What you’ll need

• 1 cup of water
• 1/3 cup of apple cider vinegar
• A small spray bottle
• Cotton pad

Instructions

1. Fill a spray bottle with apple cider vinegar.
2. Shake well.
3. Apply it to a cotton pad and press it directly on your pimple.
4. Wait for 15 minutes.
5. Rinse off the apple cider vinegar.

16. Use your soap slivers until the end

Soap slivers are fairly easy to keep using if you put them on a new bar of soap. But what if there’s a solution that works better, is easier to use, and is more fun?

What you’ll need

• Mesh bath pouf
• Scissors
• All your slivers of soap

Instructions

1. Use the scissors to cut a very small slit into one fold of your mesh bath pouf, near the center.
2. Insert a sliver of soap into the slit.
3. Continue to insert the slivers into each folds so that there is one sliver of soap in each section of the sponge.
4. Use your self-lathering loofah until the soap is gone!

17. Boost hair health

We all want soft, touchable yet manageable hair, right? This DIY beauty hack is shockingly easy, fast and affordable, and it works!

What you’ll need

• ¼ cup of flaxseeds
• 2 cups of boiling water
• Fragrance or essential oil
• A small pot
• A medium-sized bowl
• A knee-high stocking
• An applicator bottle

Instructions

1. Put the flaxseeds and the water into a pot and boil for 10 minutes.
2. Add the fragrance oil to the mixture and stir.
3. Allow the mixture to cool for 30-40 minutes (do not wait longer, as the gel will set and be difficult to transfer).
4. Put the knee-high stocking over the opening of a medium sized bowl.
5. Pour the cooled flax seed mixture into the knee-high over the bowl, and squeeze out all the gel (really give it a good squeeze!).
6. Transfer the gel into the applicator bottle. Using the applicator bottle will help apply the gel directly to your hair, as it tends to coagulate into one large glob.
7. Store in the refrigerator.

Food Hacks

18. Keep your lunch fresh for longer

Taking lunch to work or school is so much healthier, and it helps save money, to boot. And the best thing about this hack is that you can prepare everything the night before and just put the juice box and/or yogurt tube on top of everything to keep it fresh and cool till lunch time!

What you’ll need

• Freezer
• Juice boxes and/or yogurt tubes

Instructions

1. Put juice boxes in the freezer overnight.
2. Use one juice box and/or one yogurt tube per day in your lunch box to keep your lunch cool and safe from bacteria.
3. The juice and/or yogurt tube will be thawed by the time you eat your lunch.

19. Make a simple bento box lunch container

Bento boxes! We love them! You can make a bento box out of any container that you have at home, and create delicious, elegant lunches for yourself or your family just by following the steps below!

What you’ll need

• Silicone cupcake cups
• Food container or lunch box

Instructions

1. Arrange several silicone cupcake cups inside any food container or lunch box.
2. Add cubes of fruit, chicken salad, crackers, cheese, carrot sticks, cucumber slices or cookies to each silicone cup to keep wet and dry foods separate.

20. Cook easy DIY office lunches

Lunch from home rules. And it is easy to be the envy of your office when you bring something unique and interesting that is also made fresh every day. Consider the following DIY food hack for cooking your food in a thermos during the morning, and enjoying a hot fresh meal when lunchtime rolls around!

What you’ll need

• Thermos container
• Quinoa, bean threads or cellophane noodles

Instructions

1. Put dry noodles or quinoa in your thermos.
2. Add sufficient boiling water to cover the noodles or quinoa and allow it to expand while cooking.
3. Seal your thermos.
4. By the time you eat your lunch, your thermos will have cooked your noodles or quinoa.
5. Add any other toppings or sauces to your noodles or quinoa.

Pro Tip: Add a little soy sauce, garlic, and toasted sesame oil to the bottom of the thermos before you add the noodles so they will already be flavored when you enjoy them for lunch.

Time, Organization, and Work Life Hacks

Since we haven’t figured out how to find another hour in the day, we did the next best thing. We found new ways to strategize time to help you get more things done without any extra effort. Here are our favorite DIY life hacks to get more done and stay organized whether at home, or in the office.

21. Get more done

While we all have major projects that take days, weeks, or months to complete, we also have a dozen 3-5 minutes tasks that can take hours to complete every day. These are the return phone calls, the emails, and the quick look at Facebook. Or, the document signing, the assigning of tasks, or the list-writing to get other things done.

To get more done in the same amount of time, it helps if we can knock out a few (or many) things on the to-do list all at once, without interrupting our focus on larger tasks. You can reserve this for the morning, for after lunch, or for breaks during the larger tasks. But whatever way you plan them, do them together to get them all done at once.

22. Learn to prioritize

Learn your limits and stick to them. Don’t be afraid to tell someone that something is impossible for you to commit to. This may also mean ignoring that text, phone call, or email until you have something definite to say.

The important thing here is to truly understand which tasks are important for your growth as a person, in your career, and for your future, and make those the priority. Allowing something that is less important to fall by the wayside, even if it’s just temporarily, will help you manage your time so that you have more of it to devote to the things that matter.

23. Order your groceries online

Many nationwide grocery chains offer this free service, where you can complete all your grocery shopping online, pay for it with your card, and schedule a time when you will pick it up. All for free. If your grocery store also has a rewards program, that is even better, as it allows you to both save at checkout and apply your rewards towards your choice of savings.

24. Keep better track of everything

When writing instructions for your kids or just a list of things to do, the best DIY life hack we found was to use a mirror as a whiteboard! You can also use any large picture frame or pane of glass as a dry erase board too. Just remember to use dry erase markers instead of permanent ones.

25. Smartly store paper clips

Storing paper clips is fairly easy, if you don’t mind a huge mess whenever they spill, or having to untangle them every time you want to use just one. That’s why we love this DIY life hack so much. It keeps a large stash of paper clips nice and neat, out of sight, yet easily accessible whenever you need one.

What you’ll need

• Magnetic tape strip
• Paper clips

Instructions

1. Remove the adhesive strip on the back of the magnet tape
2. Stick the magnet to the inside of your desk drawer
3. Add paper clips

Pro Tip: You can also try this in the bathroom drawer for bobby pins and safety pins!

26. Research like a pro

Whether for work or courses, we’ve found the three most useful sites or search tools we could find to help you with your research. Enjoy!

What you’ll need

• Computer with internet connection

Instructions

1. For research projects, use Google Scholar to find educational articles and scientific research to help support your research papers
2. Use Google Books to look up any quote, and it will give you the full citation and page number where the quote appears in any book
3. For mathematical calculations, use Wolfram Alpha for help with learning and understanding your algorithm, geometry, or physics in a step-by-step tutoring format that also gives the correct answer.

Conclusion

All in all, the best DIY life hacks can help you live a better life. We hope that this list has done exactly that and that you can incorporate as many or as few as you wish into your life. Get hacking!