MacGyverisms Features
How To: 10 Life Hacks You Need to Know for a Better Summer
Are you a messy burger eater? Ants and fruit flies invading your home? Hate drinking warm drinks? Find out the quick and easy DIY solutions to these problems with these 10 amazing tips and tricks for the summer.
How To: 10 Ultra-Practical Uses for Your Hair Dryer (Besides the Obvious)
Hair dyers are pretty straightforward tools, but they can actually do way more than just dry your wet hair or defog your bathroom mirror. From the kitchen to the backyard, a blowdryer can help you solve common problems around the house and beyond, and here are our 10 favorite uses.
How To: Dry Your Soaking Wet "Hand Wash Only" Clothes Faster
Let’s be honest: you’ve thrown a few delicate, "hand wash only" clothes into the wash with your jeans. Maybe you’ve even ruined a sweater or two. There are so many things to look out for when doing laundry, and they’re easily ignored or forgotten, especially when it comes to drying.
DIY Survival: How to Filter Dirty Water with a Stick
There's no shortage of ways to filter water, but it doesn't get much simpler than this. Researchers at MIT have found that you can turn dirty water into drinking water with nothing more than a stick.
How To: Repurpose Your Old LEGO Bricks into a Functional Hanging Key Holder
LEGO may no longer be in its heyday, but those colored building blocks of joy can still make some really cool and creative things. I mean, take a look at these pieces from LEGO artist Nathan Sawaya. While making something like that is undoubtedly impressive, it could be just a little too difficult for the common LEGO enthusiast—and expensive (LEGOs aren't cheap these days). So, for the regular LEGO-builders, usefulness is more important that extravagance.
How To: Create a Grease Splatter Screen Out of Pantyhose and a Wire Coat Hanger
We've all been there. You wake up early, hungry for breakfast, but not just any breakfast will do. You want bacon and eggs. So, you blindly stumble into your kitchen, underwear-clad, and begin fumbling about with pots and pans. After a few minutes, you fill your pan with delicious and smokey rashers and turn the heat on. Everything seems okay... until the bacon actually starts to cook. With a splat, burning hot grease flies out of the pan and bombards your skin, causing intense pain and great...
How To: Turn a Cardboard Box into a Cheap DIY Smartphone Projector
Smartphones and tablets are great for watching movies and videos while you're out, but at home, the screen is just too tiny. There are quite a few projectors on the market that work with mobile devices, but they can get pricey.
How To: Make Long-Lasting, Wax-Free Candles for Your Home
Scented candles tend to magically turn a house into a home. The light flicker of the flame gives a relaxed or romantic tone to the atmosphere, and keeps the space smelling fragrant for hours. The only problem? Wax melts, and the candle becomes worthless after the wax is all gone. So how do you keep the flame going for more than a few hours? Simple, just remove the problematic ingredient—don't use wax!
How To: Make a Smartphone Projector for Less Than $5
There's nothing better than gathering up all the cushions, pillows, and blankets in your home and having a good ol' fashion movie night. But if you're still rocking the old 19-inch TV your parents gave you in college, you may want to upgrade to something bigger.
How To: Use a Drop of Water to Take Extreme Closeups with Your iPhone (Or Make a DIY Macro Lens!)
It can be incredibly frustrating to take closeup shots with an iPhone camera—or any smartphone camera for that matter. Even if your phone's camera is top of the line, you'll still get a fuzzy picture if you get to close to your subject.
How To: 10 Clothes Iron Hacks Everyone Should Know (Flatirons Aren't Just for Clothes!)
Ironing is a serious chore: hot, unpleasant, and frustrating all in one, but necessary if you don't want to look like you crawled out of bed just before work. While you might only turn to your flatiron when faced with wrinkled clothing, this little appliance packs the power to tackle even greater challenges—and here are our 10 favorites.
How To: Make a MacGyver-Style, Emergency Butter Candle That Burns for Hours
Most people wouldn't think of butter as a flammable substance, but in this project—it definitely is! We're making emergency candles that burn for hours using just some toilet paper and a bit of butter!
News: How to Build a DIY Iron Man Repulsor Beam
Check out this awesome tutorial that shows you how to make a light up Iron Man repulsor beam in the comfort of your home! Iron Man Inspired Repulsor Beam Blaster V1.0.
The Mega Solar Scorcher: Harness the Power of the Sun with Your Old TV
In this video, I show you a technique for hacking a four foot mega magnifying lens out of your old projection TV. Not only are these TVs everywhere, they can be found easily—for FREE!
How To: Turn an Old Fan Grille into a Decorative Plant Hanger
Everybody should have plants in their home. Not only do they give off oxygen, but they add a whole new level of decor and awesomeness to an otherwise drab room. So naturally, if you want to improve a room, just display a few plants.
Summer Cooling Tip: How to Upgrade a Handheld Fan into a Mister
If you're anything like me, the heat of the summer can often be unbearable. Where I live, it often gets as high as 108 degrees Fahrenheit, so anything that cools off is a welcome and amazing thing. Mister fans are especially amazing for cooling off, but they are usually very big and attached to buildings (which currently is way out of the picture for me.)
How To: Recycle Red Plastic Cups into a Sweet Set of Stringed Party Lights
Plastic red cups are synonymous with college parties, beer pong, and generally a good time. The reason these cups are so rampant in the party scene is because they're cheap, easily disposable, and, well... who wants to drink out of a blue cup?!? Oh, to be young and in debt.
How To: Make a Lego Key Holder and Note Clip
How to make a Lego key holder with note board. Tired of loosing your keys? Well keep them safe and in one place with this fun Lego key holder.
How To: Add a Drill to Your Pepper Mill for Super Fast Grinding
Fresh peppercorns add a delicious and noteworthy touch to many dishes. Some of my favorite dishes that include peppercorns are pepper-crusted steak and peppered spread for crostini.
How To: DIY Impossible Light Bulb, Plus 6 More Ways to Repurpose Burned Out Bulbs
The next time a light bulb burns out in your house, don't throw it out. Believe it or not, burned out light bulbs aren't entirely useless. Besides creating an extra task on your to-do list, they can be hollowed out and used for a variety of different things from home decorations to miniature indoor gardens.
How To: 10 Life Hacks That'll Make Your Life Easier & Stress-Free
Life hacks are tips and tricks to help make life easier. Shortcuts and clever workarounds for life's daily problems. Sometimes common sense isn't so obvious until you've actually seen it. In this video, I'll be sharing with you 10 life-changing hacks you can use right now, from finding your lost smartphone to sleeping better at night.
How To: Fix Your Cell Phone's Broken or Missing Volume Buttons Using Sugru
Smartphones are almost completely controlled through touchscreens now, but most of them still rely on physical buttons to turn it on or adjust volume. When those buttons stop working, you've got trouble (especially if it's your Home button).
How To: Amp Up Your Cell Phone's Sound System with a Plastic Cup
Everyone loves using their cell phones for everything except actually making phone calls. Whether it's watching streaming video, listening to music or playing video games, it would seem that calling people is almost an afterthought to cell manufacturers in this day and age.
How To: Slow Wi-Fi Got You Down? Speed Up Your Home Wireless Network with These Quick Tips
Wish your home wireless network was faster? You can always buy a signal booster, but if you'd rather not spend the money, here are a few tips and tricks to speed up your wireless connection, including how to make a homemade signal booster with things you probably already have lying around.
How To: DIY iPad Stand and Stylus, Plus 8 More Ways to Recycle Old Chopsticks
Chopsticks are very easily reusable, yet they always get thrown away. You use them when you get Chinese takeout, then toss them out without even a backwards glance.
How To: Turn Your Empty Plastic Bottles into Solar-Powered Lanterns for Just $2
Do you have two dollars and a water bottle? Then you can put together this simple but awesome solar-powered lantern that will provide more than enough light to read by at night.
How To: Make a Super Simple Toothbrush Holder and Declutter Your Bathroom Sink
If you don't have a lot of counter space in your bathroom, even something as small as a toothbrush can seem like it takes up a lot of room. Hanging a toothbrush holder on the wall helps to declutter your counter, or you can hang it inside the cabinet to hide them from sight. Photographer and Instructables user Andrea Biffi used one mini-pack of Sugru to make a really simple wall-mounted toothbrush holder. All you have to do is roll the Sugru into a cylinder, then press the toothbrushes into i...
How To: This Simple DIY Rain Cover Will Keep Your Camera Dry During Stormy Shoots
Rain can make for an amazing photograph, but it can do disastrous things to your equipment. This super simple DIY cover from Purple Summit Photography will keep out the rain so you can capture beautiful shots no matter the weather, and it's made using things you probably have lying around. Photo by Jon Shave
How To: Use Ice Cubes to Get Furniture Indents Out of Carpets & Rugs
Once your furniture is finally moved in, settled upon a spot, and used for comfort or leisure, chances are it won't move very often. We tend to leave—and use—our furniture in the same spot for years, which can leave signs of great wear beneath, deeply indenting our carpeted floors and fancy rugs.
How To: 5 Cheap Life Hacks for Organizing Your Bathroom
There comes a time in relationships when two people decide to move in together, and when this happens, you learn two things:
How To: Use Those 'Useless' Leftover Toilet Paper Tubes to Clean in Tight Spots
How many times have you thrown out the remaining cardboard tube from an empty roll of toilet paper? Most of the time, they don't even make it to the recycling bin, and with the average American using over 20 rolls each per year, that's over 6.4 trillion tubes being wasted each year. Yet these small tubes are particularly valuable helpers around the home, especially when it comes to cleaning, so why toss them out?
How To: Steam Tons of Food at Once with a DIY Multilayer Steamer Basket
Steaming food has a lot of advantages over other cooking methods. The gentle heat of steam allows for meats, such as chicken wings, to become more moist after cooking.
How To: Trade in Your Bulky Set of Keys for This Simple DIY Swiss Army-Style Keychain
Keys always seem to multiply. You start out with your house keys and car keys, and the next thing you know, your keychain is full and you have no idea what half of them even unlock.
How To: 5 Winter Life Hacks to Keep You Warm, Dry, & Moving
Winter is already here, and when Jack Frost is nipping at your nose, he tends to nip on your wallet, too.
How To: Build Your Own Projector Screen at Home for Less Than Fifty Bucks
A few weeks ago, we saw a simple 128 inch DIY Projector Screen that looked like a pro built it—and it only cost $200. But this one is even cheaper, and looks just as good. It's also simpler because it's painted right onto the wall. In the video below, How To Lou shows us how to make it with just some white or silverscreen paint, a few pieces of casement molding, and some black velvet for the trim.
How To: Bottles + Zippers = Cute DIY Pac-Man Monster Containers
Small containers are useful for many things. They're good for storing snacks if you have children, as well as holding coins or odds and ends. But those regular store-bought containers are lame—who wants to keep their stuff in a Tupperware dish or old butter container?
How To: Make a Mini Grill Out of a Wire Hanger & Foil Pans
It is a beautiful, yet scorching day here in Los Angeles, and the only reason I would ever step outside from my air-conditioned castle would be to grill out by the pool. There's just one problem: backyards are few and far between here in The City of Angels.
How To: DIY Pedal-Powered Phone Charger for Your Bike
Being healthy and active will help you live longer, but finding the strength to work out? That's hard. What does it do for me right now? I mean, here I sit, writing this article, thinking about going for a run, and I feel good just for thinking about running. But will I do it? Nah, I'm too lazy.
How To: Make Grilled Cheese in the Toaster!
Today we show you how to make a grilled cheese in the toaster! Making a grilled cheese in the toaster is So Easy a Guy Could Do It!
How To: Save Over $30 on Kleenex with a Personalized Tissue Dispenser
So, this idea was born from a necessity to save. My household uses tissues a lot. I have two small kids, so they are extremely useful. The problem with tissues is that they seem to disappear in no time. So, whenever we ran out in-between shopping visits, my family would just use toilet paper.