8 Clever “Cheat Codes” That Will Make Your Real Life Less Difficult

You know those little tips and tricks that help make your day-to-day life a little easier? Many people call them “life hacks,” but I don’t think that term is the best fit. While I don’t know any hackers personally, I have a feeling that computer hacking isn’t nearly as easy as they make it look in the movies.

That’s why I always felt that those little tips and tricks were closer to “cheat codes” than hacks. Back when my kids were little, they spent hours and hours playing games on the original Playstation, and many of those games had cheat codes you could unlock that would make make the game easier or give you some type of advantage. (Do games still have cheat codes? I’ll have to ask my kids.)

In today’s blog post, I’ll be sharing a few of my favorite “cheat codes” for real life. Just like the video game cheat codes my kids used to use, knowing these tips is an advantage that can make your day-to-day life easier. (And if you have a favorite tip or trick similar to these you’d like to share, swap your cheat codes in the comments at the bottom of this post.)

8 Hacks That Feel Like Cheat Codes for Real Life

1. Sunday Sandwich Prep

Save yourself time and stress throughout your work week by making all your lunch sandwiches on Sunday night! The key is to leave the bread out of the equation to prevent it from getting soggy. Instead, just assemble the insides of your sandwiches.

Grab a couple of slices of cheese, some deli meat, plus your condiments like mayo and mustard. Layer your meat and condiments between the two slices of cheese, then pop it all into a sandwich bag and put it in your freezer. Repeat for all the sandwiches you’ll eat that week.

Then when you’re leaving for work in the morning, just grab a bag of prepped sandwich fillings out of the freezer. Grab a couple of pieces of bread, put it all in your lunchbox, and you’re ready to go.

2. Skip the Previews

Some DVDs and Blu-Rays will play previews or ads before they start your movie. But you can skip them by pushing a few buttons on your remote! Just hit Stop, Stop again, then Play to skip the ads and get straight to the movie. (And if hitting the Stop button twice doesn’t work, try hitting it three times. That usually does the trick.)

3. Keep Your Night Vision

It takes time for your eyes to adjust to both the light and the dark, depending on the environment. This can be a problem at night when you need to turn on a light for just a moment to find something! But you can keep your “night vision” by keeping one eye closed when you turn on the light. Once you turn it off, your eyes will have a much easier time adjusting back to the darkness.

4. Execute Perfect High Fives

Have you ever gone in for a high five and missed completely? How embarrassing! But there’s an easy way to nail those high fives every time—just keep your eyes on the other person’s elbow. I don’t understand exactly how this works, but it totally does. No more humiliating high five do-overs!

5. Warm Up Your Butter Knife

The next time you’re making yourself some toast, place your butter knife on your toasted bread right after it comes out of the toaster. The heat from the toast will warm up your butter knife and help it slice through the butter like… well, butter! It will makes the butter easier to spread too.

6. Prevent Lid Leakage

Every disposable coffee cup has a seam where the paper overlaps, and if that happens to line up just right (well, more like just wrong) with the lid, it will leak as you drink it. Instead, position the lid so that the hole you drink from is on the opposite side of the cup as the seam. It’s a one-second fix that will help you enjoy your coffee free of leaks and dribbles.

7. Avoid a Dry-Erase Disaster

Where there’s a white board, there’s someone who will accidentally write on that white board with permanent marker. But instead of messing around with ineffective cleaners, there’s a much simpler way to remove permanent marker from a dry-erase board.

Just write over the top of the permanent marker with a dry-erase marker. Afterward, you can use a standard dry-erase eraser to wipe off both the dry-erase marker and the permanent marker at once.

Related: 19 Simple Ways to Remove Permanent Marker from Anything

8. Cure Your Hiccups

Nobody knows exactly why hiccups occur, but everyone knows that they’re really annoying. To get rid of them, exhale all the air from your lungs, then inhale as slowly as possible until your lungs are full.

Hold your breath for as long as you can, then exhale all that air back out as slowly as possible. This is usually all it takes to get rid of a run-of-the-mill case of hiccups!

What’s your favorite cheat code for real life?

NEW! Can you guess the 5-letter word related to today’s post?