Lifehacker

Since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic triggered what's been called a global garden boom," there has been a renewed interest in various methods and strategies for improving growing conditions for houseplants and outdoor gardens alike.Read more...

In school, most people learned that gardening involved planting a seed in soil, making sure it had the right amount of water and sunlight, and watching it grow. Of course, there's a lot more to it than that, not to mention many other gardening methods.Read more...

For the first time in several years, housing prices nationwide are actually dropping. For the most part, these decreases in cost aren't dramatic, but the best deals can be found in some of the housing markets that saw explosive growth at the beginning of the pandemic-especially in the southern and western parts of the...Read more...

Even if you prefer washing your hands and body with soap in gel or liquid form, there are still plenty of reasons to have a few bars of soap on hand at home.Read more...

Sleeping in the summer heat can be pretty miserable. Of course, having air conditioning helps tremendously, but if you're feeling hot when you go to bed, falling and staying asleep can be hard-especially if you're a hot sleeper.Read more...

Owning-or at least having access to-a car or another type of vehicle is a necessity in most parts of the United States, but this wasn't always the case.Read more...

Whether your driveway was paved using cement, asphalt, paving stones, bricks, or another material, you may have noticed that it has started to sink and crack in certain areas.Read more...

Hurricanes, tornadoes, and other extreme weather can take down even massive trees, but sometimes, the damage isn't as severe. Instead of toppling over completely, trees can be left leaning to one side, while its roots remain in the ground. Leaning can also be the result of planting a tree in soil that's unstable or...Read more...

A few weeks ago, one of Lifehacker’s regular freelancer contributors pitched us an idea for a parenting story: Streaming shows to watch when you’re sick of the kids watching Bluey over and over. Reader, I rejected this pitch, because Bluey is possibly the best show for kids and parents to watch together, like, ever,…Read more...

One of the challenges of starting a new job is learning all the lingo, acronyms, and terminology specific to the workplace, and the industry as a whole.Read more...

Until this week, my only knowledge of the association between vibration and fitness came from old cartoons. Watch them long enough, and soon you’ll see somebody jiggling their butt or belly with a vibrating machine attached to a cloth belt on it. (You know the ones.) They were supposed to somehow vibrate your fat…Read more...

Has any television show produced as many series finales as Futurama? Matt Groening’s sci-fi followup to The Simpsons aired on Fox for four seasons from 1999-2003 before it was canceled for the first time (series finale #1). A few years later, it was revived as four feature-length movies that aired on Adult Swim from…Read more...

I have a bad habit of taking carrots for granted. They’re everywhere—in lunch boxes with hummus, alongside potatoes and pearl onions under pot roast, chopped or shredded in garden side salads at mid-range chain restaurants. Their ubiquity is a slight disadvantage: The carrot is often included, but rarely considered or…Read more...

Your blood pressure is a measurement of the pressure your circulating blood is putting on the walls of your arteries, and is expressed as two numbers: Your systolic pressure (the top number, so the “120" in 120/70) is the force exerted on your arteries when your heart beats, and the diastolic pressure (the bottom…Read more...

When you pull up a resume template, it’s pretty straightforward: Your past jobs are listed in reverse chronological order near the top, dating back about 10 years or so. But you may need a “functional” resume sometimes, even if templates for it are a little harder to find.

ChatGPT’s impact on our daily lives has likely been overhyped, but itdoes have some great uses. Students can use it to study for tests, for example. And if you’re interviewing for jobs, ChatGPT can help you prepare.

You may want to cut a pill in half—maybe because you need a smaller dose, are trying to save on prescription costs, or have trouble swallowing larger pills. Cutting pills can be safe and effective, but there are a number of guidelines to make sure that you’re getting an effective dosage with each split pill. As…Read more...

One of the most common career scenarios is feeling like you’re performing well and not being paid enough for it. Maybe you put in extra hours, volunteered for committees, or helped train others. Perhaps you shared new ideas that were implemented, making your company more efficient. It’s natural to think “I deserve a…Read more...

Rosetta Stone offers beginner to advanced-level instruction for 25 different languages. And with a lifetime subscription (and, obviously, enough motivation), you can learn a new language at your own pace. Until June 20, you can get a lifetime subscription to Rosetta Stone for $159.97 with coupon code VACATION15.Read more...

When you’re unhappy in your relationship, it’s easy to point the finger at your partner and accuse them of being toxic. But what if you’re the one who’s toxic?Read more...

Going back to an old video game can be a great way to relax and recapture the feelings you had when you first played it. However, games take more effort to revisit than movies or books, and, sometimes, they don’t hold up to modern standards.Read more...

If you’re dropping checks in the mail to your landlord or utility provider, it’s time to look for a different way to pay your bills. Check fraud and mail theft nearly doubled between 2021 and 2022, affecting hundreds of thousands of Americans, according to reports from both the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network and…Read more...

The Wetie PM2.5 Air Purifier has a three-in-one H13 HEPA filter and can clean a large space with 360-degree air intake. If you’re concerned about pollen, smoke, or your general indoor air quality, you can get a Wetie Air Purifier while they’re on sale for $129.99 (reg. $299) until June 18.

Sex can be awkward even when you’ve got everything going for you, but throw in a significant height difference between you and your partner and you might be facing some whole different level of misalignment.Read more...

This week, kids are eating rat snacks, staying off Reddit, considering their “canon events,” and finally asking important question about Grimace, McDonald’s inexplicable abomination of a mascot.

Yuzu koshō is like sunlight on your tongue. A fermented paste of yuzu, chilies and salt, it brings the umami, but with a brightness you only get from fresh citrus. Some foodie friends and I noticed it in a soy dipping sauce at dinner in New York. It was a completely new and unique taste none of us had experienced…Read more...

We don’t celebrate orzo enough, but its adorable, small size and shape makes it hardly feel like pasta. It can trick you into believing it’s a grain, or chewy kind of rice, which is fairly benign as far as treachery goes. Don’t think about it too much and just enjoy it.

If physical distance and/or a pesky custody arrangement find you separated from your dad (or your kid) this Father’s Day, maybe a virtual holiday could fill in the gap. In the future that many envision, we’ll all be hanging out, working, and socializing in virtual spaces all the time, just like in 1996’s The Lawnmower…Read more...

I write a lot about different methods to remove odors from of a bunch of different things, from smoky smells in the house to stinky ones in diaper pails. While different tactics work for different stench causers, one underlying truth remains the same: You have to eliminate whatever is causing the smell instead of just…Read more...

I hate picking strawberries. I love the berries themselves, and I romanticize picking them every year until I’m there, crouched on the ground, reminded of my age and proclivity for back pain as I aggressively flip over leaves looking for ripe berries. I used to get angry at the green, unripe berries—at their…Read more...

I love an heirloom tomato; Black Krim and Aunt Ruby’s are some of my favorites to grow in the garden. I’m a huge apple nerd as well, and I love antique varieties like Roxbury Russet and the Zabergau Reinette. I’ll admit I’ve never tried heritage breeds of chicken (although I roasted an actual wild turkey once), so…Read more...

Microfiber cloths—soft, absorbent, economical—are often a preferable alternative to using and throwing away a heap of paper towels. But not every time. Here’s how should you decide which to reach for when you have a mess to clean up.

If you ever fantasized about leaving your job right on your 67th birthday and living a life of relaxation in retirement, well, the pandemic likely shattered that vision. These days, the combination of our country’s high inflation and an individual’s low savings mean many have lost confidence in their ability to retire.

I am bad at letting things marinate: ideas, problems, meat. The issue is I don’t know what I want to eat until an hour after I’m hungry, which is not the time to start a cooking pre-process. I want to get to the post-process: eating. Nothing will illicit a “Pass” faster from me than reading a recipe and realizing I…Read more...

Rents keep going up and houses are expensive (and so-called “starter homes” are no longer being built), leaving many people feeling a little desperate. One of the strangest aspects of the current housing crisis is the fact that there are about 16 million vacant homes across the country—houses and apartments with no…Read more...

It’s not your imagination: Buying food has gotten expensive. Even as we collectively recover from the trauma of the Great Egg Price Shock of 2023, overall grocery prices continue to rise—nearly 6% over the last year. And while everything is more expensive than it used to be, one common ingredient that is poised to get …Read more...

Race weekend approaches...and when you’re talking Formula 1, a global motorsport league, races take place almost half of the weekends in a year. A traveling band of drivers, engineers, mechanics, and other team members come together to pit some of the coolest and fastest race cars against one another, all around the…Read more...

Most of our devices these days have touchscreens. They allow us to mix the best of both worlds: Type when it makes sense to type, and write when it makes sense to write. Microsoft is finally adapting that philosophy to Windows, offering touchscreen PC users the option to write in any text field through Windows Ink.Read more...

You may have the skills to edit a sunny sky into a cloudy landscape, but the time it takes may better be spent on other tasks that you can’t outsource to AI. Whether you’re a professional photographer or a hobbyist, Luminar Neo can help simply your photo editing. The app uses AI to make quick changes to photos, and…Read more...

Electric vehicles are often touted as a way to reduce emissions and save money on gas. As they become more common, people are installing charging stations at home for convenience. But there are also lots of charging stations going in at workplaces, transit hubs, and other accessible locations—and there are surprising…Read more...

This week, a lot of people are wrong about aliens and UFOs.

An unblemished concrete patio, driveway, or walkway can feel like a magnet for leaking vehicles and spilled oil, which will penetrate the porous surface of a concrete and leave a lasting stain. That is, if you let it. There are a few ways to tackle oil stains on concrete to restore them to like-new condition.

A teen’s transition through adolescence to college and career are filled with pressure to achieve and a lot of uncertainty. That’s why academic advisor and career development expert Ana Homayoun says structure and connection are the most important things parents can give teens struggling with uncertainty.Read more...

Sometimes I wonder if TikTok is just a collection of food “hacks” that aren’t hacking anything, or if it’s some great conspiracy to get me to do silly things, like drink lots of balsamic vinegar. It’s probably both. I decided to get fooled again and try out the upside-down puff pastry hack. I can’t say it’s solving…Read more...

Maple syrup is so good, it’s hard to believe it comes out of a tree. Or maybe it’s easy to believe. Trees also give us peaches, olives, and lemons, three things that markedly improve mundane life with their mere existence. I feel like maple syrup knows how good it is, at least based on its price tag; and it’s the…Read more...

Remember using dialup in the 1990s? Back when the technology was new, the online world wasn’t overrun with corporations, and everyone was basically trying to figure out what the internet even was? If you miss those days and you want to revisit an information superhighway where regular people created quirky online…Read more...

I have no qualms about mixing mayonnaise with an item and declaring it “salad.” Indeed, I love a good bacon pickle salad any day. However, for the past year or so, I’ve been making tuna sans mayo. Not for any aversion to the creamy emulsion, but because I made a good niçoise once with a dijon vinaigrette and stuck to…Read more...

Bad password habits are hard to break. In the olden days of the internet, many of us got used to repeating the same, easy-to-remember password on every site, so we’d never have to worry about getting locked out. And recent data suggests plenty of people have yet to learn better, even if the era of mass data leaks…Read more...

Technology often makes it easy to signal when you don’t want to be bothered. You can toggle on “do not disturb” features if you use an iPhone and anyone who tries to text you will be notified, for instance, that you’re not going to see their message right away. You can wear headphones and people get the idea that…Read more...

To keep our money safe, most of us have, at minimum, a checking and a savings account. But many Americans have no sort of bank account at all. Outside of struggling with fees or lack of credit history, reasons for being “unbanked” often involve privacy concerns, or a general lack of trust in banking institutions.Read more...