MacGyverisms Features — Page 4 of 6 « MacGyverisms

How To: Make a Phone or Tablet Stand

How to make a simple yet effective stand for your phone or tablet / iPad. Great for watching films or reading recipes whilst you cook.

How To: Silence Obnoxiously Noisy Laptops & Smartphones with a Simple Device-Muting Key Fob

Electronic devices seem to have an uncanny ability to make noise at the worst possible times. It's always during an important meeting, a quiet study session at the library, or a biology final that your laptop or smartphone decides to play some obnoxious or embarrassing sound.

How To: No Smartphone Stand? Just Use Your Wallet

My wallet is useful for pretty much two things. The first, holding my credit cards, lottery tickets, and money (or lack thereof). Second, making my ass number whenever I'm driving.

How To: Make Your Own Makeup Remover Wipes Using Oil, Water, & Paper Towels

For me, the worst thing about makeup has always been taking it off. It's always that one last thing you have to do before you go to bed, and if you don't, you instantly regret it when you wake up. When you're tired, makeup removing wipes are a godsend because they're so quick.

How To: 10 Creative and Unique DIY Planters to Inspire Your Home Garden

Summer is in full swing! Everywhere you look, plants are in full bloom and green is a way of life. Gardeners are clearly living up to their full potential. I cannot think of anything else that personifies summer better than gardening.

How To: Make Your New Apple EarPods Fit Better in Your Ear with Sugru

Along with the release of the new iPhone 5, Apple has introduced EarPods, which now replace the soon-to-be-defunct EarBuds. For three years, Apple has been testing the EarPods with users to try and find the most secure fitting, best sounding headphones for that price range. Loose Fit?

How To: Turn Dried Out Markers into DIY Alcohol Ink That Works on Glass, Metal, and Plastic

Dried out markers are the worst. They take up space, and for some reason, even though they're totally useless, most of us have at least a few lying around just for the sake of not throwing them out. Luckily, Julie Finn over at Crafting a Green World has come up with a way to repurpose them into alcohol ink, a versatile type of ink that can be used on non-porous materials like plastic, glass, and metal. This is truly a tutorial for the pack rat in all of us. First, a little primer on what you ...

How To: 10 Beautiful DIY Ways to Declutter Your Closet

Your closet is an area that holds important things such as keys, glasses, clothes and shoes. However, for some reason, it's always messy. Why is this? I know my closet is messy because I don’t have a lot of time to sit down and organize every little thing in there. I have never really even given much thought into organizing it.

How To: Make a Homemade Lightsaber from Junk!

This may not be something MacGyver would make, but it would be if he was dropped into the Death Star with a horde of Imperial stormtroopers hot on his trail. Especially if he found himself temporarily trapped in the trash compactor with some friendly Jedis, because this DIY lightsaber is made of pretty much all junk. Surely, he'd be able to find all of the parts, which include a broken camera lens, old hard drives, chrome pipe, film canister, busted microphone, and rubber mat. Some of the par...

How To: Make a Personalized Home Bulletin Board for Cheap

One thing that's always important to have in your home office is a bulletin board, because they let you quickly display papers that you need to see every day, such as schedules, notes and memos.

How To: Turn Leftover Cardboard Boxes into Sturdy Chairs and Stylish Nightstands

Contrary to popular belief, IKEA can get pretty expensive. You find something that comes pretty cheap, but then, you decide that your GORF will look good with the BLERGH, and you really need the SPLOOF to tie it all together. Pretty soon, your living room looks like an IKEA magazine ad, and your bank account has seen better days. Instead of spending so much money at IKEA, why not build your own pieces of furniture?

How To: Beat the Heat with an $8 Homemade Air Conditioner

If you're breaking a sweat in the summer heat, but not trying to break the bank, this dead simple trick will show you how to make your own air conditioner for under ten bucks.

How To: DIY Stormtrooper Helmet, Plus 10 More Ways to Reuse Old Milk Jugs

When it comes to milk, my family consumes anywhere between two and four gallons every two weeks. That's about four to eight gallons every month. That's a lot of milk—and a lot of empty milk jugs! Instead of simply tossing them in the recycling bin, why not get creative and make something useful out of them yourself?

How To: 10 Creative Ways to Upcycle Your Junk into Usable DIY Chairs

With the upcycling revolution, folks are turning their otherwise useless junk into something functional for the home. Practically anything that you would normally toss or recycle can be reused for a bigger and better purpose. Your milk jugs, chopsticks, toilet paper cardboard, glass jars, and even your old junk computer keyboards can be upcycled into something totally useful around (or away from) the home.

How To: Make an Elegant No-Gas, No-Electricity Heater for the Winter

The weather outside might be frightful, but heating bills are downright scary this time of year. Heat is absolutely essential during the winter season, but it's also really expensive. If you aren't blessed with a fireplace or unlimited disposable income, fear not, because you can still heat your home on the cheap using flower pots and tea lights—even if the power goes out.

How To: Start Fires in Style with a Glass Matchjar, Plus 9 More Clever Uses for Mason Jars

Mason jars are a DIYer's best friend, nearly on par with duct tape and paper clips. Why? Because you can use mason jars for so many things besides just canning and drinking, and I'm not talking about other obvious uses like basic storage containers or miniature terrariums. I'm talking about MacGyver-style ingenuity. With a little creativity, the uses for those jars are practically endless.

How To: Save Money Barbecuing This Summer with One of These Inventive DIY Grills

Sometimes you just want to grill. It doesn't matter where you are, what you have, or whom you're with—you just want a delicious burger and you don't care what it takes.

How To: A/C Broke? Keep Your Car Cool with This DIY Solar-Powered Air Conditioner

If a solar-powered air conditioner that requires no electricity or moving parts sounds to good to be true, well, then you're not as ambitious as this clever high school student. Instructables user Fozzy13 put together an awesome DIY tutorial on how he built his own air conditioning unit in his car that works using the principles of evaporation, convection, and capillary action. This air conditioner works by using sunlight to heat air at the bottom of the unit. The hot air rises, allowing the ...

How To: Double the Size of Your Closet Using Soda Tab Hangers

While walk-in closets are nice, not many of us actually have one. Instead, we're stuck with tiny wall closets or those oddly-shaped spears. Add a roommate or girlfriend and you have yourself a classic dilemma—"Where in the French toast do I put all my damn clothes?"

How To: Keep Cool Outside with This Overhead DIY Water Misting Rack

Summer is here, and with the season comes more freedom and searing heat. It's the ultimate between-a-rock-and-a-hard-place situation. You want to be outside and enjoy the sun, but you don't want to be over-powered by it. Thankfully, you can create makeshift misters on the cheap to enjoy the summer heat right on your deck.

How To: Kill or Keep Away Flies & Other Small Pests with Homemade Sticky Flypaper

Despite being disgusting, houseflies are actually beneficial to humans in a few ways. As scavengers, they help the environment by eating rotting organic matter, and make great food for pet tarantulas. Regardless of the advantages to their existence, having them in your home can be infuriating. There are countless sprays, traps and devices made to kill or deter the little pests, one of the most common being flypaper that hangs from the ceiling. These sticky strips are incredibly easy to make a...

How To: Make a Foldable, Wallet-Sized Paper Amplifier for Your Smartphone

Are your smartphone's built-in speakers not loud enough? Don't want to fork out the cash for some additional speakers? Instructables user urant's got you covered. He created the Whirlwind—a portable paper stand and speaker that folds up to fit in your pocket or wallet so you can take it with you on the go. The best part about this amplifier is that it's free to make. You can use regular old printer paper, but urant suggests using something a little sturdier for the stand.

How To: 50+ Creative, Useful, and Unnecessarily Dangerous Ways to Open a Beer Bottle

There's nothing worse than holding an ice cold brewski on a hot summer day and having no way to open it. If you're a Bud fan, you'll have no problem opening the bottle because most mass-market beers have twist-off caps. But if you have a taste for finer, more expensive brews, you'll more than likely run into the pry-off caps. Pry-offs are used mainly because companies believe it provides a better seal against one of beer's greatest enemies—oxygen. Plus it's a cheaper alternative for craft bre...

News: How to Make a Basket Out of Newspaper

Sometimes you need a basket for carrying things. I get it. It's important. What if you don't have a basket and you're in a bind?! The solution is simple! Make one out of paper of course. Check out this tutorial that shows you how to make one out of newspaper. Easy-Weave Newsprint Basket.

How To: Turn Boxed Wine into a Mega Ice Pack That's Perfect for Big Coolers

Next time you finish a box of Franzia, don't throw out the bag. Instead, wash it out, fill it with water, and lay it flat in the freezer. As America's Test Kitchen points out, your newly created flat ice pack is perfect for lining the bottom of a cooler for a barbeque, camping trip, or hot summer day on the beach.

How To: Turn Your Old NES Controller into a Wireless Light Switch Remote

The original NES controller has become one of the most recognizable symbols of the Nintendo gaming culture, thanks to its perfectly rectangular shape and simple button design. But despite its popular appeal, people just don't game with them anymore. So, what do they do with them? They savor the memories and turn it into something more useful, like a light switch.

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: Recycle an Empty Wipes Canister into a Neat & Tidy Plastic Bag Dispenser

Plastic bags may be banned from retail stores in some cities, like Santa Monica, Seattle, and San Fransisco, and will be banned in Los Angeles shortly, but we still use billions of them every year. What else are we going to use for throwing away cat litter or picking up dog poop?

How To: Strut Your Stuff—Build This Super Cheap Multi-Monitor Rig for Three-Screen Gaming

Want to take your gaming to the next level? If you're going to do it, why not go big—by building a multi-monitor setup with not two, but three screens like Redditor optec did. Most multi-monitor setups are pretty pricey, but he built this using simple parts that ended up costing him about 30 bucks. The frame is made of four pieces of Unistrut, bent to 45-degree angles. He used a couple of brackets to attach them and made the mounts out of medium-density fibreboard. Finally, he added some more...

How To: Keep Your Earphones Tangle-Free & Smelling Good with This Minty Fresh DIY Cord Container

The cord on your headphones is usually more enemy than friend. While they obviously need it to function, a tangled or unnecessarily long cord can wreak havoc on your sanity. Personally, I've broken at least two pairs of headphones by tripping over the cord and yanking the jack right off of the wiring. There is a fix for that, but you can prevent the problem altogether by organizing your cords. There are plenty of ways to wrap a cord so it won't get tangled, but you still have to unwrap it if ...

How To: Make the Bitty-Q (A Mini Outdoor BBQ from Drink Cans)

In this project, I'll show you how to make an itty-bitty outdoor BBQ from leftover beer or soda cans. It's the perfect summertime hack if you don't have a grill and are cooking for a small group of people—one bratwurst at a time. You can grab the wire grill template here.