If you want to improve your life, there are a lot of clever little tricks you can use called “life hacks” to fix problems. Some are great! Some are very, very bad. These are the worst hacks that either don’t work, waste your time, or cause more problems than they solve.


Welcome to Senior Week at Gawker Media! Here’s the lowdown: We’re not going anywhere, and neither is Lifehacker, but ahead of the acquisition of our parent company, this week we’re sprinkling a little spice in your regular serving of tips, tricks, and downloads for getting things done. We’ll post a few takes, some unusual hacks you may want to try, and some other goodies we wouldn’t normally. Enjoy!


10. Organize Your Plastic Bags In a Tissue Box to Make Your Next Sneeze Really Gross

There’s nothing particularly organized or streamlined about having a plastic bag full of other plastic bags in the cabinet beneath your sink. It is, however, much simpler than this method of tying one bag to another and carefully shoving them into an empty tissue box. I mean, at least use a wet wipes container. Or don’t. Maybe the best plastic bag life hack is to not waste time organizing your plastic bags. If you do decide to try this out, at least make sure that the next time you have to blow your nose, you grab from the correct box.

9. Shove a Banana Through a Wire Tray to Kind of Slice It, I Guess


If you find yourself in a situation where you have a metal rack like this, but not a knife and you just have to slice a banana, it’s possible you might actually have a priority problem. Then again, you’re the one wasting all the delicious banana goop that’s left on that tray you have to clean. If you’re fine with that sacrifice, so am I.

8. Make Your Grilled Cheese Sandwiches Really Pop


For all of the folks who have ever said that Lifehacker “really went downhill” in recent years, this post is proof that we haven’t. The occasional crappy hacks have been around for years. It’s a time-honored tradition laid down at the dawn of the Lifehacker team.

7. Plastic Bags Are Kind of Like Cell Phone Stands, Right?


There are a lot of down and dirty ways to make a cell phone stand on the cheap if you need to prop your phone up on a plane. You can make a dock out of binder clips, LEGO bricks, one of those $1 plate stands, or even the box it came in. However, when you’re on a vehicle traveling at 500+mph that’s so prone to turbulence that it’s the reason you know the word, maybe don’t dangle your expensive, critical device above the floor in a plastic baggie loosely held in place by a cheap hook.

6. Wrap Your Dishes In Plastic Wrap


You know what? Why stop here? Wrap your table in plastic wrap. And your chairs too. Line your floor and walls and cabinets with plastic wrap. Skip the shower by lining your body in plastic wrap. Is a corrupt businessman trying to pay for your silence? Line that dirty money with plastic wrap and you’ll never have to feel guilty again. This is a great hack.



5. These Hot Dogs Are In a Coffee Pot


To be fair to this hack, our own Andy Orin put this one through the Tip Tester and it does work. Kind of. Eventually. However, it is not a very good way to make friends in the office. If your manager Steve comes into the break room to get his afternoon coffee and winds up with a bunch of wieners in his cup, you’re not going to have a good day.

4. Anything You’ve Ever Seen Written On a Colored Rectangle


I’m not saying that you can never find good advice on one of those colored rectangle image macros you find in the bowels of sites like Pinterest or Tumblr. I’m just saying I’ve never seen the Sherlock Holmes adaptation where Watson reads a hot tip from a colored rectangle and suddenly the whole mystery suddenly makes sense.



3. Fitted Bed Sheets Are No Match For Sand


Look, I don’t want to harp on Lifehacker Editor-in-Chief Alan Henry too much for this post. I’m sure it’s meant well. It’s just naively hopeless. Sand is an impossible enemy. It’s coarse and rough and irritating, and it gets everywhere. It’s enough to single-grainedly turn a nice young boy into a dark lord of the Sith. If you honestly think a fitted bed sheet can stop sand from getting in your stuff, you don’t know the power of sand.

2. Diet Coke Brownies

Not an accurate representation of Diet Coke brownies. You’re welcome.


What the hell is wrong with you people? There are some lines man was not meant to cross.

1. Milk Is Hard


We’ve tried several times to hire this man, but he’s too good. We can’t afford him.



Photo by Katy .

Lifehacker’s Weekend Roundup (usually) gathers our best guides, explainers, and other posts on a certain subject so you can tackle big projects with ease. For more, check out our Weekend Roundup and Top 10 tags.