10-Minute Life Fixes
Need extra cash? Want to get in shape? Looking to cook or clean better—or feel happier? These 37 tweaks take just a few seconds or minutes and can lead to big changes.
Need some extra cash? Want to get in shape? Looking to cook or clean better—or even feel happier? These 37 small tweaks can lead to big changes.
1. Defrost Frozen Meat
Research published by the USDA indicates that your frozen strip steak might benefit from a nice hot bath. The study found that one-inch cuts of meat can be thawed in ten minutes without reducing quality. The trick: Use 102-degree water, seal the meat in plastic, and submerge it in a large pot, stirring occasionally to prevent a cold zone from developing and insulating the meat from the warm water. Researchers also found that waterthawing may lead to better-tasting steaks, as they leaked less juice than air-thawed ones.
2. Speed-listen to a Podcast
So many podcasts, so little time. Fortunately, most podcast apps have options to speed up the audio without distorting the pitch or quality beyond recognition. The 1.8x speed is a good place to start—it would allow you to get through a 30-minute podcast in less than 17 minutes. You can also use the app Overcast, which has a Smart Speed setting that automatically compresses podcasts by cutting out pauses and silences. This approach is better for purely informational podcasts than for those with Seinfeld-like, pause-heavy humor.
3. Get an Instant Favor
When you ask someone a small favor, they’re far more likely to do it if you add the word because. Psychologist Ellen Langer conducted a study that found that people were 34 percentage points more likely to heed simple requests when they contained that magic word. So if you say, “Excuse me, may I jump ahead in line? My parking meter runs out in two minutes,” there’s a 60 percent chance the favor will be granted. But if you say you need to skip the line because your meter is running out, the likelihood leaps to 94 percent. Langer also found that saying “because” even with a flimsy excuse raises your odds of success.
4. Ease an Aching Back
You may think you’re giving your back the night off by sleeping on your stomach, but that can actually exacerbate back pain, the Mayo Clinic found. If that’s your natural position and you can’t break the habit, tape an uncooked pea to your stomach before you crawl into bed, says chiropractor Cynthia Vaughn. You’ll forget it’s there while dozing on your back, but when you flip over, it’ll wake you up right away, allowing you to correct your position.
5. Nap like a Soldier
Uncle Sam wants you—to take a nap! The U.S. Army recently rolled out new guidelines that encourage soldiers to take “short, infrequent naps to restore wakefulness and promote performance.” The freshly updated Field Manual FM 7-22: Holistic Health and Fitness also recommends sticking closely to a consistent sleep schedule. However, if soldiers (or civilians) can’t get their typical number of winks on workdays, they should try sleeping in and napping to pay down “sleep debt” rather than sticking to their usual sleep-wake schedules on off days. Beetle Bailey would be thrilled.
6. Start a Fire in a Twigless Place
Any good scout knows that all it takes to build a fire is tinder or kindling (easy-to-light material, usually in the form of small sticks or crumpled paper) and fuel (logs)—and that without the tinder you won’t get anywhere. If there isn’t much around in terms of dead leaves or dry twigs and you can’t spare the day’s newspaper, Family Handyman says there’s another source hidden in the basement: the lint from your dryer. Stuff it into empty toilet paper tubes (which even look like logs) and put them under your grate. These lint logs light quickly and burn long enough to ignite any wood.
7. Chill a Bottle of Wine
The dinner is ready, the lights are low, the perfect evening is about to begin—but you forgot to put the wine in the fridge. No worries, say the editors of Taste of Home. Submerge the bottle in liberally salted ice water and turn it periodically. The salt will cause the water’s temperature to drop more
quickly, enough for a bottle of red wine to take only about three to five minutes to reach a temperature of 50 to 60 degrees. Whites will take about eight to ten minutes, and sparkling wines will take ten to twenty minutes.
8. Maintain Strong Hips
Keeping both feet planted on the ground seems like a good way to avoid shattering a hip. However, a study from Brigham Young University found that women ages 25 to 50 who jumped in place ten times in a row twice a day upped their hip bone density in just 16 weeks. Find a spacious, flat spot, and rest 30 seconds between hops.
9. Rescue a Lost Drawstring
Nothing is worse than fiddling with the drawstring of your favorite hoodie or sweatpants and realizing too late that one end has disappeared. To fix it, start by pulling the whole drawstring out. Thread one end through a straw and tie a knot on the end. Then push the straw (knotted end first) into one of the openings in the material and work it all the way around to the other opening.
10. Boil Veggies in Less Time
Instead of filling a pot with water and waiting for it to boil on the stove, jump-start the whole process with your electric teakettle. Pour the boiling water into a preheated pot, and you’ll be cooking with (or without) gas fast. Chopped or baby potatoes can be done in as little as five minutes.
11 Boost Shortterm Memory
A 2018 study from University of California, Irvine, found that students who pedaled a stationary bike at a speed that raises heart rate only 30 percent for just ten minutes (a brisk walk is 50 percent) demonstrated significantly better short-term memory on a test asking them to remember images they’d seen only briefly.
12. Get Past the Pain
A university research team in Germany exposed 20 people to a painful cold stimulus and told them to use one of three methods to mitigate pain: counting backward from 1,000 by sevens, thinking of something pleasant, or telling themselves the pain isn’t that bad. Researchers found that counting backward works best because it requires enough concentration to distract from the pain, even reducing pain intensity by 50 percent
NEXT TIME YOU BANG YOUR FUNNY BONE, SKIP THE CUSSING AND START COUNTING.
in some people. So the next time you bang your funny bone, skip the cussing and start counting.
13. Revive a Charred Pot
After years and years of use, your favorite pot is approaching a burned, residue-filled end. Don’t say goodbye just yet. Instead, fill the pot about halfway with water, drop in a dishwasher tablet, and bring it to a boil. This soap soup concentrates the tablet’s full power and should revive even the most far-gone pot in just ten minutes.
14. Lower Risks from Diabetes
Science has long suggested that saunas and hot tubs help improve blood sugar and body fat percentage, but unless you’ve got an in-home spa, those things can be hard to come by on a regular basis. A study presented at the 2020 annual meeting of the European Association for the Study of Diabetes found that subjects with type 2 diabetes who spent anywhere from 2 to 30 minutes in the bath four times per week showed decreased body weight, body mass index (BMI), waist circumference, diastolic blood
pressure, and glycated hemoglobin. All that from a good old-fashioned soak in a warm tub!
15. Opine for Pocket Change
It pays to be opinionated: Google’s Opinion Rewards app will pay you anywhere from ten cents to $1 per market research survey completed. Download the app, and Google will notify you when there’s an available survey. You’ll have 24 hours to complete it, but most surveys take less than 20 seconds.
16. Preclean Your Green Thumbs
Gardening gloves are a good idea—if you remember where you put them. Another solution: Run your fingernails across a bar of soap before you dig into the dirt. The soap will keep out the dirt and help you scrub up later.
17. Quell That Shopping Impulse
A survey from slickdeals.net found that impulse shopping has increased by 18 percent since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. If your credit card information is saved to your browser or if your Amazon one-click purchase is enabled, it’s easy to find yourself making too many gratuitous purchases. Disabling these features and forcing yourself to get up and dig out your credit card, enter your payment information manually, and go through the standard checkout process will decrease the likelihood that you’ll complete the purchase by 30 percent.
18. Feel More Optimistic
Shawn Achor, CEO of Goodthink, Inc., performed a study with Harvard University that found that subjects who took two minutes each day to write a positive message to somebody who supports and is close to them score significantly higher in optimism and life satisfaction after just 21 days. “People who do this not only get great e-mails and texts back; they’re also perceived as positive leaders,” says Achor.
19. Undo Stuck-at-desk Syndrome
Research from the University of Missouri found that just six hours of prolonged sitting reduces blood flow to the legs, preventing healthy dilation of significant arteries in your calves and harming vascular health.
However, the study also found that it takes only ten minutes of walking after an extended sedentary period to work those arteries to dilation and quickly restore blood flow to healthy levels.
20. Unclog a Drain
Even if you share a bathroom with Rapunzel, hair clogs can be easier to remove than you think. The editors at Family Handyman say to start with a wire coat hanger and untwist to free the hook, leaving the nonhook end of the wire in its twist. Now that it’s shaped like a tiny auger, push the nonhook, auger end down the drain to the clog. Bend the hook end to form a handle, and crank it so the auger bores into the clog. Pull, and voilà!
21. Convert Celsius to Fahrenheit
There’s not a huge difference between the Fahrenheit and Celsius scales, except that 70 degrees on one means it’s a nice day and on the other means you are dead. To avoid future moments of panic, there’s a simple formula for converting C to F: Multiply by two and add 30. To go from Fahrenheit to Celsius, do the reverse: First subtract 30, then divide by two.
22. Boost Your Self-esteem
A little extra serotonin is just a fiveminute good deed away, according to research published in Psychological Bulletin. The study found that behavior based on cooperation, compassion, trust, and altruism can increase individual health and psychological function. “Helping an elderly neighbor carry groceries, for example, offers a prosocial boost for both sides,” says Bryant Hui, PHD, a researcher on the study. Researchers from the University of Pennsylvania, Yale University, and Harvard also found that volunteers’ sense of “time affluence” (the feeling of having plenty of time for leisure and meaningful activities) rose when doing small selfless acts for others, compared with those who got to spend time on themselves or simply wasted time.
23. Keep Your Fly Closed
Realize a little too late that the zipper on your favorite jeans has gone faulty and won’t stay up? Slip a key ring off your key chain and scurry away to the bathroom. Attach the pull to the ring as you would a key, close the zipper, and then hang the key ring over your pants button. The zipper will stay up on the teeth and under the radar until you can get the pants to a tailor.
24. Safeguard Against Garbage Juice
There’s perhaps nothing more disgusting than lifting a full plastic bag
A TEN-MINUTE WALK RESTORES VASCULAR HEALTH DEPLETED BY A DAY OF SITTING.
out of the trash can only to find that it has sprung a leak. Protect the can from future gunk eruptions by placing neatly folded newspaper at the bottom. It will soak up any foul-smelling liquids that escape from the bag.
25. Prep the Pets for Alone Time
If we have to derive one good thing from the pandemic (which we don’t), it’s the extended quality time we’ve had with our pets. However, lockdown will end at some point, and you don’t want to leave man’s best friend heartbroken once man (and woman) has to reenter the world. Arizona State University’s Canine Science Collaboratory director Clive Wynne, PHD, suggests starting to leave the house for ten minutes each day and slowly building the time increment so your pet can gradually adjust to your eventual extended absence. (BTW, experts have debunked the myth that too much cooing over your pet upon your return home exacerbates separation anxiety. In fact, make as much of a fuss as you want!)
26. Save Money on Amazon
Not sure whether amazon.com is giving you its best offer right now? Scroll down the product page until you find your item’s ten-character Amazon Standard Identification Number (ASIN), or hit command+f (control+f for PC users) and type “ASIN” into the find bar that appears. Then head over to keepa.com, an Amazon price tracking site. Enter the ASIN number in the search bar to access the item’s price history; if there has been a lower price in the past, it’ll probably drop again.
27. Don’t Cry over Spilled Eggs
Is there any mess like egg mess? Not quite solid, not quite liquid, but a vexing hybrid that’s hard to wipe or scoop up. If an egg hits the linoleum instead of the pan, give it a good salting (be mindful not to grind it into the floor). Wait ten minutes, and that raw egg will turn nearly solid for a much easier pickup that won’t leave your broom gooey or your dishrag trashworthy.
28. Ease the Body, Ease the Mind
Researchers from the University of Konstanz in Germany have found that just a ten-minute massage is enough to put you at ease, both physically and psychologically. It’s the first research to confirm the relationship between brief massages (or even just a gentle stroke of the shoulders) and the parasympathetic nervous system, which is responsible for initiating a sense of calm and restoring balance to the body after a stressful episode. No spa day is necessary to rev your body’s physiological relaxation response.
POST-PANDEMIC, FIDO WILL NEED TO RELEARN HOW TO BE HOME WITHOUT YOU.
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