Ordinary People Who Found Clever Solutions to Tricky Problems

If you’re living life anything like the rest of us, you’re likely to run into annoying problems in your everyday life. Unlike math problems though, these don’t have a straightforward solution, leaving you scratching your head and trying to figure out how to solve them. A lot of the time, the ‘proper’ fix will take a lot of time or money, and sometimes it seems like it isn’t even worth the effort. Not for these people, though! For some, all it takes is a bit of clever thinking and a little bit of time to solve any problem life throws their way. So, let’s take a dive into these brilliant solutions that fix regular problems. You might pick up a trick or two from this!

As Secure as Any Lock

A storage shed is a familiar sight and many times they contain dangerous tools and chemicals, so it is best to keep them locked at all times. One thing that you may not appreciate is that locks need two close loops to even be fitted together. In this case, the loops are miles apart!

That didn’t stop this person, though. By grabbing a wrench and drilling a hole into the slimmer end of it, this amateur engineer was able to slip it through the loops of the shed door. One end is too big to fit through and the other gets sealed with a lock! If that’s not brilliant, what is?

It’s pretty awesome how far technology has gone in the pursuit of relatively trivial things. For instance, think of how video gaming systems have managed to turn relatively advanced concepts like virtual reality, 3D, and controller-less play (through devices like the Kinect) into commonplace things.

So, you shouldn’t be too surprised that the Nintendo Wii had the Wii Fit Balance Board, which was used for its exercise games but was actually a scale. A really smart pair of parents figured this out and decided to use it to figure out how much gas was left in their canister. No need to buy a scale!

If you’re not vigilant, your animals will find out how to pull off the greatest jailbreak, provided there’s a tiny vulnerability in the cage or space that you keep them in. For some, it’s leaping over fences or digging beneath them. For others, it’s using their teeth to open latches. Some can simply just walk between the bars.

That was the case for this slim dog and its owners must have been insanely frustrated with it breaking free and wandering around the neighborhood. That’s something that can give any dog owner a scare. Sure, they could have gotten a new fence, but it’s a lot cheaper to tie a spoon to the dog’s collar. There’s no way he’s slipping between the bars now!

The number one reason to keep all your ceiling tiles intact is simply that a complete set makes things look presentable. Apart from that though, missing tiles can be a fire hazard as they can promote flames climbing to the rafters and internals of the structure. That’s problematic.

So, when the fire inspector came around and told this person to fill up the missing ceiling tiles, instead of paying to have extras installed and delivered, they chose to think outside the box. By photocopying onto a UPS envelope, it’s really hard to tell the difference. We can’t hate on the intelligence at play here.

Keeping rooms properly illuminated is something that is very commonly overlooked. It’s only when you have to deal with a space where the lights don’t work that you’re able to fully appreciate things. This family had no light fixture in their ceiling and thought better of paying an electrician.

Instead, they decided to make use of a hanger to hold up the light. This is a temporary fix that we likely would have never come up with, but these people did and it has been going strong for four years! The best part is that they even managed to get it to hold two lights rather than just one.

There are many things that gamers see as the worst thing that can happen to their hobby. Some hate microtransactions, others are major enemies of lag, and to some, nothing is worse than the notorious gamepad disease known as joystick drift. If you’re not familiar with the world of gaming, this is where your joysticks move the character even when still.

This is a lot more effort than we think we’d have gone to in order to fix a controller, but this guy did and we assume he got it to work perfectly. The rubber bands are able to keep the sticks centered so that they don’t cause any drift. It must work if he is so proudly displaying it on the social media sphere.

8 PM is coming up and your favorite game show is about to start. You search all around for the remote control but you can’t find it! It’s only 10 minutes later that you finally find it sunken deep between the couch cushions. It’s too late for you to watch your favorite part of the show. Sadness commences. we’ve all been there, haven’t we?

Well, one creative person came up with a solution. Why spend money on an AirTag or a Tile when you can simply strap the remote to a block of wood that is five times longer than it? This doesn’t seem like the most elegant solution to this problem, but there is no way that you can deny its effectiveness.

We all have daily commitments like work and school and errands, and as such, we can’t just choose to wake up whenever we like. Some folks are blessed with natural internal clocks that wake them up at the right time, but for the rest of us, alarm clocks are the way to go. The problem is, sometimes, if we’re deep sleepers, they just fail to wake us up.

Well, if you’re one of us that can sleep through an alarm blaring for hours, then you’ll need another kind of stimulus. What is better than electricity? This guy rigged together an alarm clock that effectively shocks him every morning when it’s meant to go off. We’d have gone for a louder alarm, but this works too.

There are some really innovative solutions that you’re bound to come across when people are fixing inconveniences they face in daily life, such as struggling to climb into the flatbed of their truck. In this case, instead of investing in expensive add-ons, this person wielded a pipe wrench to the tow ball to function as a step.

The major downside of this makeshift step is that most people will have no idea what you’ve done, and you’ll be hearing a lot of unwanted comments. You’ll probably have to deal with people flagging you down and telling you that you forgot a tool on the back of your car. At least you’ll have a cool story to tell them and see their reaction each time.

When your showerhead is dirty or broken, the obvious option to us regular people is to take it off and get a new one. Of course, it’ll take you a bit of time to find a replacement as well as some money. One clever individual realized there’s a really easy homemade hack for this that will do the trick.

Grab yourself a big bottle of water or soda and poke a bunch of holes in the bottom of it. You can use a knife or scissors. Strap it up to the shower piping, and boom! You’ve got a shower head that is entirely recycled. You can choose to use this permanently or as a temporary solution, but either way, it’s a brilliant option.

We love our technology over here, and one aspect of television or computer setups that enthusiasts hold in high esteem is cable management. Regular people might not care as much, but you see those hardcore individuals? They care about the little things. It is important to keep the multiple winding cables organized and untangled, not only for aesthetic reasons.

This is a solution that we’d never have come up with. Instead of buying expensive cable ties and cable management kits, you can just use a plastic spoon. You should have a bunch of these lying about the house, and they are certainly cheaper. You get clean cables and you save money – a win-win situation.

Moving buildings in one piece is something that has happened more times than you’d think in the past. Yes, people actually moved entire houses. However, on all those occasions, it involved the use of heavy-duty equipment. Why waste resources on getting such expensive machines when all you need is a whole bunch of people?

Seeing this picture shocked us because we didn’t really think that this was the kind of thing that could even be done. Sure, a barn definitely isn’t as heavy as a full-blown house, but come on, we’re sure that you didn’t know that this was even something that could be done in the first place.

Back when a lot of us were young, touch interfaces were not commonplace. Things had to be done via buttons and other kinds of physical controls. It’s easy to take your phone’s screen for granted until it falls and stops working. Then how are you meant to interact with it?

Your device manufacturer probably wants you to spend a bunch of money to come and repair it with them, but why not just think outside the box and not even repair it at all? By using a USB OTG dongle and a Bluetooth mouse, this person got their broken phone usable without having to bother about repairs.

Pools are fun places to spend your time, but it always helps for the water to be just the right temperature to make people want to get in in the first place. On a hot day, you’re looking for a refreshing swim, and on a cold day, you’d prefer hot water. Water heaters and pool heaters can be a tad costly, so this man went for a cheaper alternative.

Note that we definitely don’t recommend passing your water through a radiator and heating that over an open flame as a suitable alternative to a pool heater. But come on, there’s no denying the kind of unorthodox thinking that is required to birth such a wacky solution to this problem.

We didn’t think that we’d be seeing two DIY pool heaters following each other, but here’s one that is just as genius – but definitely twice as dangerous. Whoever was behind this put a wheelbarrow inside the pool and set a fire inside it. The metal of the barrow will conduct the heat of the fire and heat the pool.

Our major concern with this solution is that it limits the space in the pool because no one wants to get too close to a giant hot metal object in the water. Plus, that’s an inflatable pool and all it takes is that hot wheelbarrow touching the sides of the pool for the whole thing to collapse! But hey, it works, we guess.

Even if you’re a relatively young person, it’s easy to see how complicated technology can be most of the time. For older people, it’s even worse because they can’t keep up with all the rapid developments. With TV services like Apple TV or other streaming services, you end up having multiple sets of remotes in one house. That can be confusing!

With that background out of the way, you can now understand why this remote was mummified, leaving only two buttons exposed. One turns on the TV and the other is to switch between cable and Apple TV, each of which have their own remotes. So basically, all the other buttons are redundant! That’s a brilliant fix!

People who work in hands-on industries have to rely heavily on the tools of their trade. Forgetting even some of the simplest things can mean a trip back home or to the workshop, and that can be frustrating to go through. If you’re really hands-on, you’d just make your very own tools right on the spot.

With a block of wood and a flat piece of metal, this person was able to conjure up a flat-head screwdriver on the spot. Obviously, it won’t be as good as a regular one (especially because the handle has sharp corners) but it will certainly get the job done without having to go get another