45 People Are Sharing Things They Did Wrong All Along, & We Wish We Knew Sooner

There are a lot of products out there that have subtle uses that very few people are actually aware of. For instance, styrofoam cup lids, with those little tabs that always seem kind of irritating since they get in the way of your drinking.

Turns out, you can actually snap them back so they fix to the lid itself, at which point they don’t obstruct you at all. Man, why don’t they have instructions on how to use these things?

If you don’t have a rice cooker, it can be a lot easier to mess up making rice than you may think. That said, the main issue is people not knowing how much water to add to it: they either add too much or too little.

The finger trick is simple: add however much rice you want to the pot, put your index finger on top of it, and just add water until it touches your first knuckle. It almost always comes out perfect.

Okay, so maybe you haven’t been using your dishwasher incorrectly, so to speak. But there are probably many nifty things in this particular comment that you didn’t know about. Or rather, you probably didn’t know these things were a good idea.

Admittedly, we’re the type of people to pre-rinse our dishes in the sink, but when you think about that whole process, it does kind of make sense that it would be a waste of water to wash the dishes twice.

Considering that Pop-Tarts recommend you toast them literally on the boxes they come in, you may find it hard to believe that some people didn’t know you could do that. But lo and behold, there are some people like that out there.

That said, is it wrong to eat a Pop-Tart plain? Not at all. The box even mentions plenty of other ways you can enjoy this breakfast treat, and toasting them is just one option.

Have you been throwing away celery whenever it becomes limp and unappealing? Well, you shouldn’t be doing that! Turns out, you can still save them if you just let them soak in water overnight. Which, you know, kind of makes sense.

They’re plants, after all, so it makes sense that they can absorb lots of water and get rejuvenated. At the very least, this is worth trying next time your celery looks a little limp.

While we don’t want to be rude or cruel, there’s no denying that some people just aren’t that smart. Take this guy, for instance: evidently, he had no idea you didn’t have to step into the shower as soon as you turned it on. He just felt like freezing, apparently.

You would think that nobody could possibly take a shower wrong, but then again, it probably shouldn’t be a big surprise. There are people of all sorts of different intellects out there.

For those of you who use soap bars, you may know how difficult it is to use them up entirely, especially once they get to the tiny slivers. But if you use soap bars in the first place, why not just add the sliver to the new bar?

After all, soap tends to stick together pretty easily, and with this, you’ll be able to use it all up and let nothing go to waste. So, have you been using soap bars wrong your entire life?

So, maybe you haven’t been wrong with how you’ve been signing up for free trials, but there’s possibly a better way to do it. Instead of using one of your own cards, why not use a gift card to sign up for those free trials?

That way, if you happen to forget and you get automatically charged for a subscription renewal, you can avoid having your actual accounts charged. It’s not world-changing, but it’s definitely a good idea in the long run.

Opening cans of tomato paste can be a real pain, especially if you have trouble getting that paste out as well. However, apparently, there’s a better way to do it. It sounds weird, but just open the can at both ends.

Then you can push the contents out via some sort of utensil. We have to admit — this is a super useful kitchen tip to have in mind. From now on, any other way of dealing with such a can will definitely be considered wrong!

Is there a wrong way to get dressed? Well, in some cases, there very well may be. Not all of us wear corsets, but for those that do, there’s definitely an order to how you should get dressed. Wearing a corset makes it quite difficult to bend vertically.

That means you should put on everything for your legs first, whether that’s pants, boots, socks, or something else. Needless to say, the whole process will be a lot easier if you do it in that order instead.

Phones are capable of all sorts of things, which means that, invariably, there will be many tricks users don’t even know they can do. One of them includes the spacebar on the digital keyboard. If you press and slide your finger around, it moves the cursor as well!

Well, that would certainly have made our lives a lot easier if we had known this beforehand. You’d think the phone companies would have included this info somewhere, instead of leaving us all to figure it out ourselves.

Depending on your nail situation, it can be tough to pop the tab on a soda can. But what if you’ve just been using the tab wrong this whole time? Lo and behold, can designers actually did give you a way to get that darn thing open.

You’re supposed to press down on the front of the tab so the back of it raises enough for your finger to get under it. Yeah, in hindsight, that makes a lot of sense. Why haven’t more people realized this over the years?

A lot of us know that there is a right way to lift stuff. But admittedly, there are many people who don’t even know how that there’s a wrong way to lift things. Naturally, you’re supposed to use your legs, not your back.

It may not seem like a big deal, but if you lift heavy things the wrong way throughout your life, you could find yourself facing some serious back pain in you future, and no one wants that. So, be sure to lift with your legs!

If you have frizzy hair, you may have convinced yourself that it’s natural for you and there’s nothing you can do about it. But as it turns out, washing your hair with hot water may be what leads to frizzy hair in the first place.

So, maybe you’ve been washing your hair the wrong way this whole time. That said, washing your hair with cold water may be undesirable for some. Ultimately, everyone is going to have their own preference on this one.

For this one, we’re honestly somewhat torn. Is there really a “right” way to hold anything? As long as you can still use the tool properly, is it wrong to hold a pencil or chopsticks the wrong way? We don’t really think so.

Sure, maybe one’s penmanship may not be as good in such scenarios, but these days it almost doesn’t even matter anyway. Most everyone writes through typing anyway, so it’s really not that big of a deal, regardless.

Many of us end up wrapping a towel around ourselves after a shower or a bath. However, what if you found out that you’ve been wrapping that towel incorrectly this whole time? Wait, you can wrap a towel wrong?

Well, apparently, you can. Supposedly, the way described right here is the actual way you are supposed to wrap a towel around yourself, and it’s supposed to be a lot more effective. We’ve yet to try it, but maybe it does work?

Have you ever had trouble fitting your washcloths in your drawer properly? Maybe it’s because you are folding them when it would actually be better to not do that. Think about it: don’t clothes take up way less space overall when they aren’t folded?

You would definitely be able to fit a lot more clothes in a drawer if they weren’t folded. This just goes to show that sometimes, children have some really great ideas compared to the rest of us adults.

If you have a picture frame that needs to be hung with a wire, it can be kind of difficult to get it to catch properly when you need it to. Frankly, we won’t say this tip below is the “right” way to do this, but it does sound helpful.

Forks have many uses, and there’s no reason one of them couldn’t be to help you hang up a picture frame quickly and easily. Then again, you could also just avoid using wire frames in the first place. But hey, it’s still nifty.

Come on, who hasn’t struggled with trying to get a pillow cover onto an actual pillow? It’s super hard to get it done without a lot of time and effort. But maybe you’ve just been doing it wrong all along? Admittedly, this tactic of turning the pillowcase inside out makes a lot of sense.

Certainly, it will make things a lot easier the next time you need to put on a new pillowcase. We can’t wait to give this trick a try, as it’ll be cathartic after all those years of struggling we put up with!

Have you ever had trouble getting those little plastic caps off of deodorant sticks? Is that because you’ve been trying to pry them off with your hands alone? Well, that’s the wrong way to do it.

Just twist the cap and push up the deodorant stick, which will give you enough space to actually remove that plastic piece without any difficulty. Really, we feel like this one’s pretty obvious, and most people should’ve figured it out already.

Not many of us even handle vinyl records on the regular, but for those of us who do, you may be handling them wrong. Apparently, the way that’s described below is the right way to grab a vinyl record so you don’t damage it at all.

It would be nice if things such as this were included on the back of a record label or something. You would think that companies would know people have no idea that they should be doing these things.

For some people, brushing your hair the right way is just common sense. But a lot of people don’t know the right way because no one ever bothered to teach them. How many of you brush your hair from top to bottom instead of from bottom to top?

Apparently, this is the wrong way to do it, and results in you losing a lot of hair. So, next time you try to detangle your hair, you should probably start at the tips. Then you won’t lose as much hair, and that’s a boon for everyone.

If you’ve ever had Muller Corner yogurt, you may know how easy it is to make a mess while eating it. But maybe the whole issue is that you’re eating it wrong in the first place, and there’s a better way.

Allegedly, the way described above is the correct way to go about it. Admittedly, we haven’t been able to give this a try ourselves yet, but it does sound like a much more efficient way of eating Muller Corner yogurt.

Have you ever wanted or needed to type a letter with an accent mark on your phone but had no idea how to do it? Well, turns out there’s a way to do this embedded into your phone! The secret lies below.

That said, we’re not sure if this still holds true for every keyboard around the world, but at least for the phones we have, this little secret is true. Now you can finally spell those relevant words correctly!

Who doesn’t love some seasoned, roasted corn on the cob? Every sane person loves it. That makes it all the more heartbreaking to acknowledge that some people, well and truly, have never had it because they thought boiling was the only way to cook corn on the cob.

We suppose it makes some sort of sense though: unless you investigate alternatives, most people are going to stick with what they learned in childhood. So, blame the parents for this one!

We’re not sure specifically how the person who made this comment was holding their knife, but believe it or not, a lot of people do indeed hold, or rather, wield, their knives improperly. It leads to a lot of accidents in the kitchen!

At the very least, when you’re chopping something, be sure to ball the hand holding the food in place into a fist. That way, you won’t be likely to chop off a fingertip or anything like that.

Leave it to someone in the medical field to inform you that you’ve been walking wrong. Or at least that there’s a better way for someone to walk, in the case of stairs specifically. It makes sense that how you walk affects your leg strength.

From now on, we suppose everyone should consider walking upstairs in the manner described here. Do that, and you may be able to strengthen your legs for the future.

Taking care of one’s hair is actually a lot more difficult than many people realize. Different hair types and products make it a pretty confusing mess for most. So it’s no wonder that many people actually wash their hair the wrong way.

If you pick up on it early enough, you won’t have to shave your head like this poor soul did. So, be sure to do a little research so you can see what works for your hair before it gets to that point!

Cooking includes lots of neat little tips and tricks, but unfortunately, many people just flat out don’t know about them. For instance, you should add things to the pan after it heats up, not before. That’s a much better course of action.

Makes sense, though. It’s a lot like that guy who didn’t know he could wait for a shower to get warm before getting in it. Technically, it’s not any faster to wait for something to be ready before using it.

We pretty much all know that cutting onions is an endeavor that involves a lot of tears. But it doesn’t have to be, because you’ve been cutting onions wrong all this time. As it turns out, you should refrigerate them before doing the cutting.

We don’t know enough about food science to know why this works, but we do believe it. Food often behaves differently when it’s heated or frozen, so this definitely sounds like a legitimate strategy to us.

Look, we aren’t trying to be rude, but how can some people not realize they’re sitting in a way that causes them discomfort? That just doesn’t make any sense to us. Surely you would pick up on why you’re having physical discomfort and pain?

But, well, evidently, that’s not always the case. Some people just don’t know what’s causing their problems. If you have a lot of back pain, consider that you may be sitting incorrectly, like this person was.

Apparently, this person didn’t know they were doing a lot of things wrong. We already mentioned the one about slouching and how that causes problems for people. But apparently, you may have also been using your bed wrong, according to this.

As for the sushi one, while you’re supposed to eat it with your hands, it’s probably not that bad of an idea to eat it with chopsticks or something. Honestly, you can probably enjoy your roll however you want.

Bell peppers have a lot of seeds in them, and if you cut them the wrong way, those seeds go all over the place. Well, naturally, there’s a right way to cut them as well. It’s explained in detail down below.

Of course, you could also go look up some videos of your own, and that would probably help quite a bit. There’s nothing quite like visual aid when you need to learn how to do something new! Still, prepare to make much less of a mess.

Peeling the membrane off of baby-back ribs can be a whole lot of effort if you don’t know a good way to go about it. Well, apparently, paper towels were the answer the whole time. They give you a much better grip, and when things aren’t so slippery, that really helps.

Of course, we suppose there’re other things you could use besides a paper towel alone, but the point still stands: just get something that will allow you to have a better grip on what you’re doing, and you’re set.

Many of us know about the little plastic cup that comes with laundry detergent. Many of us have felt that it shouldn’t go into the washing machine because surely, the heat will melt it, right? Well, no, you can actually just throw the cup in there too.

Which seems pretty natural, doesn’t it? After all, it would only make sense for someone to be able to do that with the cup you use to measure the detergent. That’s definitely something that a company would intentionally put into the design.

Basically, every smartphone is capable of functioning as a calculator as well. However, some people didn’t realize they weren’t using this function to its full capability. The functionality of the calculator is expanded when you turn it sideways.

That’s because the screen gets bigger, and you can see more buttons, which gives you access to more capabilities. It may sound like common knowledge, but a bunch of people really didn’t know about this.

Almost everyone has had at least one experience with a jar where they were unable to get the lid off. You could just try even harder, but that usually just ends up hurting your hands. So, what can you do instead?

Well, apparently, running some hot water over the lid for a minute or two will make it much easier to get the lid off. Heating up the lid probably causes it to expand a little, which gives you some more leeway to get it off.

If you’ve ever tried to cut a tomato, you may have had some trouble with it. They always seem to squish when you try to cut them with a knife. But that might just be because you’re doing it wrong. Have you ever tried using a serrated knife?

It makes sense that a serrated knife would cut through a tomato without squishing it as much. After all, that’s kind of what serrated knives were made for. Be sure to give it a try next time!

Apparently, a lot of people didn’t know they were washing their hair the wrong way. But it’s something that doesn’t really come up that much. Do you wash shampoo out of your hair almost immediately after you put it in?

When you think about it, how can shampoo actually do its job if you wash it out right away? You need to leave it in for a bit so it has time to work. If you do that, your hair will probably end up being a lot cleaner from now on.

If you have or want to shave your legs, there’re a few ways to go about it, but a lot of people do it with their knees bent. However, it’s actually a lot easier to accidentally hurt yourself when you do it this way.

But if you keep your leg straight, you’ll be much less likely to do that. So if you’ve been hurting yourself when shaving your legs, consider doing this instead, and maybe it won’t be such a painful experience anymore.

We’re not sure how anyone could possibly read wrong, but if this person is being serious, then it’s apparently somehow possible. We suppose that some people were taught to read a certain way, but how could nobody know that?

Or at least, wouldn’t you figure it out at some point? Surely you would figure out how to read in your head once you’ve grown up? Well, we can’t speak for everyone. Some people may very well not be able to do that.

When it comes to cooking eggs, there are many ways you can do it, but salting them first is probably one of the best things you can do. It will make them a whole lot fluffier, not to mention tastier.

Of course, we’re not sure exactly how much salt needs to be used, but supposedly, that would come down to what kind of eggs you’re making and how much of it you are cooking. Either way, it’s pretty much always a good idea to salt food.

Peeling a banana is something that many people have experience with, and it may seem pretty straightforward: after all, there are only two possible ways to peel it, right? Well, one may be worse than the other.

Apparently, it would be better for us to imitate monkeys and other primates that like bananas. In some ways, nature is more efficient at things than humans tend to be. So, it might not be a bad idea to pick up on this banana peeling practice.

When you do the dishes, have you ever taken special notice of the little basket that you’re supposed to put the silverware in? When emptying the dishwasher, it can be pretty annoying to have to walk back and forth between that basket and the drawers to put away the silverware.

Except, of course, you could just take the whole basket out. For a lot of us, that may seem like common sense, but you may be surprised to learn that a lot of people had no idea you could do this.

We’re not actually sure how true this one is. Did a dentist somewhere actually say this? Either way, we can say that we aren’t terribly torn up about doing this wrong all of our lives. Leaving toothpaste residue in your mouth for thirty minutes? No washing?

No, thank you. What about toothpaste that gets really foamy? Surely the right answer isn’t just spitting it all out? How would you even manage that? This all sounds very unpleasant.