Cleaning the dishes after making a large meal is never fun. Either you get to them right after you’ve eaten, when you really don’t feel like doing anything, or you leave them for a while, only to find pans that are nearly impossible to clean. Soaking them in soap and water goes a long way toward helping, but a trick you might not know is to use aluminum foil. This trick is best used on glassware and things like oven…

Are you looking to add a little extra lighting to one of your rooms? You could go out to the hardware store and peruse the expensive ceiling lamps that they have. Or you could just build one yourself. The interested lamp you see in the picture above might look like a stylish art piece, but it’s really just a bunch of plastic cups. Following this quick guide, you can make a similar ball-shaped lamp out of around 250 large plastic…

Have you ever been out swimming in a pool or lake, and wished that you had some good tunes to complement your great day? If there is a flat, steady surface nearby, then you won’t have too much trouble finding the means to get music to your ears. However, if all you have is water around you, there’s going to be a bit more work involved. Thankfully, it’s not a ton of work, as you can create your own floating…

Are you the type of person that likes to take really good care of your belongings? How about your vast collection of CDs, DVDs and vinyl records? Well, no matter how careful you are, such things get dirty over time, especially if you’re a collector making purchases from various pre-owned stores and such. So how exactly does one go about cleaning the grime off of your old 45’s? If you ask the preservationists at the Library of Congress, there is…

Time-lapse photography is a great way to track the movement or growth of an object with pictures, rather than video. The general idea is to take a number of pictures, each spaced at exact intervals. In order to be precise, you can’t really do it by hand. Thus, you’ll need the help of a special piece of hardware called an intervalometer. This talks to your camera and tells it exactly when to snap each picture. If you seek out one…

How many times have you lost an important document to a power outage, computer crash, or any other instance where you’d forgotten to save? As a rule of thumb, I try not to go more than 15 minutes without saving a document that I’m working on. However, if the worst does happen, and you’re using Microsoft Word 2010, you might not be out of luck. This great guide over on MakeUseOf walks you through the steps of recovering unsaved documents….

Have you ever picked up your favorite set of headphones, only to find that the dog has chewed through the cord? You get that sinking feeling, knowing that this expensive piece of hardware has been rendered useless because a couple pieces of copper aren’t touching anymore. Thankfully, such things aren’t terribly difficult to remedy. When you get down to it, there are only three things you need to do to repair a simple audio cable. Strip it back, join the…