One issue I have run into is that when I park my car in the garage at night, I have to fumble around in the dark to find the door to the house and end up tripping on various obstacles.

I had to think of a way to have a light turn on when I pull into the garage (other than the garage door light which doesn’t stay on long enough and is not very bright).

The solution I came up with was to install a motion sensor light in my garage. The one I used was the Mr Beams light, which is battery operated, and therefore has the advantage of not needing a power supply line.  In my experience the batteries last 6 months or more before they need to be replaced.

Here is a pic of what it looks like. This brand is Mr. Beams and it can be found on Amazon through the following link: Mr. Beams MB380, 400 Lumen Version, Weatherproof Wireless Battery Powered Led Ultra Bright Spotlight with Motion Sensor, 1-Pack, White

One downside with this light is that it is a little too heavy to stand on its own, so it needs to be secured to something to prevent it from falling over.  This was pretty easy to solve, I just screwed it into a piece of a 2 by 4 for stability, see picture below.  Now I can move it anywhere I want with ease.

The light can be used anywhere obviously, not just the garage. You could use it in your backyard or elsewhere, and it does have a mounting bracket to mount to walls if needed. There are more details in the following video.

This is an easy life hack but it is super useful. I used to have a standard trash can in my car, but it had the issue of falling over and the trash spreading out on the car floor when I made sharp turns. However, the solution to this issue is very simple. Instead of using a typical trash can, you can use a cereal container with a lid. This way the trash will be contained and won’t spill anywhere as the lid will keep everything contained. Also to make clean up easier line the cereal container / trash can with a small garbage bag. Below are some trash cans ideas:

Here is a video describing the ideal car trash can in more detail.

Simple idea but this is probably the most useful life hack I know of.

This life hack can result in you getting up to $500 for free. Capital One currently has a promotion where they will give you a $100 cash bonus for every $10,000 you deposit in a new 360 Performance Savings account, with the maximum bonus being $500. Details on how this work are in the chart below.

The promotional code to get the bonus is SCORE500.

A few other things to note:

-The deal expires on May 31, 2020

-You must maintain your balance for 90 days to get the bonus. For example, to get the $100 bonus your balance must be $10,000+ the whole 90 days.

-If you had a bank account with Capital One on or after January 1, 2016 you are ineligible for the cash bonus.

The deal is really simple and it is easy to meet the criteria if you have extra money in the bank. Also, I called Capital One and confirmed the deal is still in place. So go put your money to work and look into this deal!

This is a pretty simple life hack but one I thought was worth pointing out. Whenever I am about to throw away any furniture, electronics or other things which might have bolts, screws or other potentially useful hardware I unscrew, unbolt or otherwise take off this hardware and store them. They come in handy for projects down the line and they are free. I especially look for hardware which is hard to find in the store, such as oddly shaped screws or bolts (ones which are especially fat or long).

I provide a more details in the following video:

This is a simple life hack but a useful one. One of the most annoying things with dealing with tape (duct tape, electrical tape, etc.) is locating the end of the roll. Often it can be tightly bound into the tape making it hard to find and when you do find it often the tape tears trying to wrestle the tape end off of the roll. To make it easy to find simply add a paper clip to the end of the roll.

Once the paper clip is added it is very easy to find the end of the roll of tape. Note that the roll may dry out / lose its stickiness where the roll contacts the paper clip, but this is a small price to pay for being able to easily find the end of the roll.

The video below describes this in a little more detail:

Apologies for not thinking of a better title, but this life hack revolves around the many uses for velcro in your house. Specifically, I am referring to velcro discs like the ones shown below. These discs have an adhesive on one side and velcro on the other. You can get a 75 pack of these velcro discs for $6 on Amazon here: VELCRO Brand – Thin Clear Fasteners | Perfect for Home or Office | 5/8in Coins | Pack of 75

The life hack part of the velcro circles is using these to hang up things which are lightweight in your house. For example, I have a whiteboard in my house and I hang up a pen and eraser for the whiteboard using velcro discs. Below is how this looks.

Basically any light weight thing in your house can be hung up with velcro. There are a lot of possibilities, such as keys, flashlights, utensils, toys, etc. Also, you can use velcro to secure various things in your house, such as cabinet door, etcs. In the video below I describe how you can use velcro in your house in more detail.

A few years ago I noticed that my dryer vent on the outside of my house did not have a cover/ screen to prevent insects, birds, etc. from entering the dryer vent. At times I would see birds near the dryer vent, perhaps attracted to the warmth.

This led me to want to install a cover over the dryer vent to prevent anything from going in there. However, the options I found on Amazon required drilling holes in the wall and were not very cheap. Here is an example:

I came up with my own dryer vent cover using screen door netting and binder clips. This is how the cover looks, it completely covers the vent so nothing can get in.

In the following video I show how to make the dryer vent cover, it only takes a few minutes to make.

An issue that many of us run into is figuring out how to park in our garages properly, making sure we don’t pull in too far and hit something or make it hard to move around the garage, while also making sure we don’t pull in so little that the garage door hits your car when it closes.

One of the best ways to gauge distance in your garage and park the proper distance is to use a tennis ball of a string.  The way it works is that you tie a tennis ball to a string with the string being the proper distance to go from the ceiling to the car windshield.  Then you attach the string to the ceiling in the position where you would want your car windshield to be when properly parked.  Afterwards whenever you park in the garage you stop and park the car at the point the car windshield hits the tennis ball.

This might be easier to understand if you look at the following picture.

Note that on Amazon you can buy pre-made balls on string. Here is an example: Genie Yellow Perfect Stop Parking Aid – Retractable Ball Compatible with All Garage Door Openers-GPS-R, one Size

However, making your own tennis ball on a string is pretty simple, you just cut open the tennis ball, tie the string around a washer and then put the washer in the tennis ball. You could also just directly tie the tennis ball to the string but it might come undone over time.

In my house I initially used the tennis ball on a string to properly gauge distances in my garage when parking.  However, my kids kept playing with the tennis balls and pulling them out of the ceiling.  Therefore I had to come up with a new system.  The system I came up with was to place a stop sign on the side of the garage which would align with my head when the car is properly parked.  In other words, when parking I stop when my head is perpendicular to this stop sign.  This system has worked well and is pretty easy to implement.  The following video explains this in a little more detail.