Secret Set Of Useful Items For Adult Life That Are Good To Have:

Secret set of useful items for adult life that are good to have:

1) A hammer, not too big, maybe an 8oz one. Because you will need to hit something with a hammer at some point - maybe a nail’s coming out of the wall, maybe that bag of frozen fruit you got melted a bit on the way home and refroze into a solid lump in the freezer. At some point, you will need a hammer. I got mine at the Great Canadian Dollar Store for $1 Canadian. Good hammer, serves its purpose.

2) A pair of regular-sized screwdrivers, one phillips (has the + shaped tip) and one flathead (has the - shaped tip). As with the hammer, you will need to screw or unscrew something at some point, and these two types of screwdriver will cover most of the stuff you’ll encounter on a normal day. I got these at the dollar store, too, reliable allies.

3) A mini-screwdriver kit, a small one with maybe six screwdrivers in it. These will have your back with all the fiddly little screws you don’t normally think about - glasses, calculator battery cases, small bits on sewing machines. One of those items you generally think of as useless, right up until you need it, at which point it becomes the most valuable thing in your house. You can get a good set for about $8 usd.

4) This one will sound like a joke, but a model tool kit for plastic models, a simple one with nine to eleven pieces. They are full of strange, esoteric tools that can just… come in handy at weird times - a metal file to smooth a rough edge on something plastic or resin, a nice exact-o knife with some spare blades, a polish cloth, tweezers, good stuff. And you can get a good one for $10-$15 usd easy, which is way cheaper than going and buying all this stuff separately.

5) A box of q-tips. They’re just weirdly useful for stuff, but, again, one of those things you don’t often think of until you need one.

6) A cleaning toothbrush. This can be an old toothbrush that is a little too worn to get its job done anymore or a cheap new one. The important thing is, the cleaning toothbrush does not go in the mouth. It is used with a bit of soap or detergent to gently clean spots on clothes, dirt from the fiddly areas of jewelry, watches, cool figures/statuettes, small spaces the scrub-cloth doesn’t reach, and that sort of thing. It is a powerful secret weapon, cherish it throughout its life, then pay respects when it is finally replaced.

8) A pair of utility scissors, possibly with orange handles. The big kind your parents didn’t let you get as a kid, but not so big as to be unwieldy. Grown-up scissors. Used for everything from cutting cardboard to removing a small chunk of uneven hair to cutting plants outside. Costs about $11 usd to get a good pair, very worth it.

9) An appropriately-sized bag or box to keep all this stuff in. It won’t have to be very big, a shoe box will hold all this with loads of space left over, but you wanna keep it consolidated, you know? The scissors especially, they will try to strike out on their own for regions unknown if left to their own devices.

All together, this kit will probably end up costing from $40-50 usd, if you go for the cheapest version of everything I’ve suggested and hit up the local dollar store (like I did). That may still sound like a lot. However, with the exception of the q-tips and the toothbrush, all this is stuff you will never have to buy again. The newest, non-toothbrush-or-q-tip item I have on my list is the tool kit for plastic models, and it’s about four years old - the rest is more in the range of fifteen years old and have never needed replacing.

None of this is likely stuff you’ll need on a daily basis, but it’s all stuff that you will need eventually and which is really useful to just have on-hand when you do. One day you’ll need a screwdriver to pry a stuck lid off something, another you randomly require a pair of tweezers or nippers from your plastic model tool kit, and what could have required an hour-long work-around or a trip to the store is over in a couple minutes and you can get on with your day.

Do you want a guide to writing a research paper but you don't want to scroll a mile on your dash? This post is for you, buddy.

This book (book????) or tidily-laid-out-shitpost or whatever you want to call it is a handy-dandy guide to college-level humanities research methods and paper-writing.

This is a step-by-step follow along of my process as I, a person with a BA in English Lit, navigate writing a paper on George Orwell for my English 101 class.

This is NOT carefully crafted, it is literally a post that I made.

That said, it is a post that I made that is twelve thousand words on how to write a paper and now comes with a table of contents and headers and fancy alt-text and image descriptions and is forty fucking pages.

This document includes:

How to read an academic paper

How to skim a book for a college class

How to prioritize what sources to use

How to write an organized, cohesive research paper with an introduction, support paragraphs, and conclusion

(i managed to only say "fuck" six times in forty pages so I'm not taking them out.)

ANYWAY for a PDF click here.

If you want it in .docx click here.

Free to use for any reason, free to reproduce, give them to whoever, just don't sell them. (if you want to credit me if you do share them, ms-demeanor.tumblr.com is perfectly fine)

Happy finals season, babes. Good luck with those papers.

what addons do you use for firefox? i've just downloaded it to switch from chrome (derogatory)

firefox (affectionate)

UBlock Origin obviously. out-the-box works just fine but has a bunch of extra privacy/tracking/spam filters you can enable

Decentraleyes protects you against tracking through "free" curated content delivery and works alongside UBlock (or any of the other common adblocking addons)

I Don't Care About Cookies good for EU users where GDPR made it so every site ever in the universe asks you to accept cookies and privacy terms seventeen times a day. will just auto-accept for you. never see an annoying popup again! but only use in conjunction with...

Cookie Auto Delete does what it says on the tin. will automatically flush cookies, cache, and data when you close a tab. those cookies you just auto accepted? they're gone now. whitelist any sites you wanna stay logged in on and let the rest fucking perish

Don't Track Me Google removes that annoying link conversion when you copy google results. you know when it changes from "site.com" to "encrypted.google.com/randomnonsensefor200charactersblahblahblah"? yeah. this stops that happening. fuck off, google.

Don't Accept image/webp blocks sites from using the most useless file extension known to mankind so you can save as .jpg or .gif as god intended. fuck webp. seriously. what even is that.

Bypass Paywalls Clean exactly what you think it is

HTTPS Everywhere automatically adds ecrypted security to any site that supports https (you can do this manually by adding the s yourself to any url but... who can be fuckin bothere amirite? this does it for you)

New XKit ...duh

Google Search Filter allows you to remove domains from your searches forever. pinterest? gone. weheartit? nuked. also works on duckduckgo. never type "-pinterest" into a search again.

Simple Tab Groups allows you to group tabs together and shove them out of sight, which is nice if you're researching something and don't want 50 bajillion jstor tabs clogging up your normal browsing session

What to do if you suddenly find yourself homeless

FOOD

Find your nearest food bank or mission, for food

grocery stores with free samples, bakeries + stores with day-old bread

different fast food outlets have cheaper food and will generally let you hang out for a while.

some dollar stores carry food like cans of beans or fruit

SHELTER

Sleeping at beaches during the day is a good way to avoid suspicion and harassment

sleep with your bag strapped to you, so someone can’t steal it

Some churches offer short term residence

Find your nearest homeless shelter

Look for places that are open to the public

A large dumpster near a wall can often be moved so that flipping up the lids creates an angled shelter to stay dry

HYGIENE

A membership to the YMCA is usually only 10$, which has a shower, and sometimes laundry machines and lockers.

Public libraries have bathrooms you can use

Dollar stores carry low-end soaps and deodorant etc.

Wet wipes are all purpose and a life saver

Local beaches, go for a quick swim

Some truck stops have showers you can pay for

Staying clean is the best way to prevent disease, and potentially get a job to get back on your feet

Pack 7 pairs of socks/undies, 2 outfits, and one hooded rain jacket

OTHER

first aid kit

 sunscreen

 a travel alarm clock or watch

 mylar emergency blanket

 a backpack is a must

 downgrade your cellphone to a pay as you go with top-up cards

 sleeping bag

 travel kit of toothbrush, hair brush/comb, mirror

 swiss army knife

 can opener

Gather ‘round kids: I had a coworker mention to me this morning that it’s impossible to get grease stains out of fabric. As a former chemistry minor who worked two years under the table doing housekeeping and who generally tends to be a fucking disaster, I am here to tell everyone that it absolutely is not impossible, in case this is a widespread belief. Here are a few of my favorite cleaning stain removers that I always have at home.

Here are some options:

A Tide™ pen.

I’m a generic kinda lady. I hate promoting brands 99% of the time. BUT if you catch absolutely any kind of stain before it gets ground in, you can get most of it out with one of these babies. I’ve tested it on blood, chocolate, coffee, guacamole, pizza sauce, red wine on, on that one time i accidentally slopped some oil I was supposed to be using on antiques onto a fancy rug (also an antique but not the one I was gunning for). If you’re washing something delicate, pump it onto your finger a couple of times and gently rub it in. I’m not sure what they put in these things but I’m pretty sure it’s an arcane secret.

Dish soap

Granted, this is a little trickier for upholstery/carpet, but it can still be done using a rag, some water, and some patience. But for clothing, just pour some soap on the stain and rub it in under cold running water.

Absolutely any clear alcohol is your new best friend

You know the old “white wine to clean red” trick? Well, this is its updated sister I like to call “you, too, can use coconut rum to get red jello shot out of your nice white dress”. It’s a nice party trick. Straight vodka works even better. For every day situations involving any kind of alcohol-related spills (including markers)–and especially work situations–rubbing alcohol is ideal. To quote another adage, this one from every chemistry teacher you will ever meet, “like dissolves like.”

Hydrogen Peroxide

It can get blood out of absolutely anything, including your mattress. It reacts with the iron in hemoglobin, which breaks down the molecule, causing it to lose its red color. So make sure you’re not using a cast iron skillet to wash your period underwear in.

Vinegar

This will dissolve lime buildup overnight. Fill a bag, tie it around your showerhead, and presto. You can also use it to scrub the area around your sink and to break up any buildup in pipes. (Limeaway™ is for rich people.) 

Baking soda

This is great if you have a pet or child who peed on the carpet. Just cover the area, wait until it dries, and vacuum it up. The longer you leave it, the better it will do at removing the smell. It’s also good removing mild odors from a small space, like a fridge or a laundry hamper. 

Charcoal

This is your heavy duty odor killer. A little goes a long way. In chemistry, activated charcoal is used as a purifier in reactions, and in medicine, it can be used to treat mild poisoning/overdoses. In your car that smells like someone died because you forgot you had potatoes in the trunk for six months? All you need are regular old charcoal briquettes. Stick a couple handfuls in a flat box and the smell will be gone overnight. Guaranteed. For larger areas, just use more charcoal.