16 Holiday Life Hacks - mental_floss List Show (Ep. 233)

Hi, I'm John Green. Welcome to my salon. Did you know that there's a quick trick for when you're out of wrapping paper

Just clean out the inside of a bag of potato chips and invert it to make a stylish, silvery, last-minute package

Tie a little ribbon around it and then boom! Happy Holidays! That's a pass and just one of the holiday life hacks from the internet that I'm going to test for you today in this video, brought to you by Intel

Now if you do have some wrapping paper, I just have to stop briefly

Meredith, are you sure that this is a holiday hat? Because I feel like it's just a funny hat

Meredith says that it's definitely a holiday hat, so I'm gonna keep wearing it. So if you do have wrapping paper, you can keep it from unraveling by cutting a toilet

paper roll in half, which Meredith has already done. So then you wrap it in tin foil and you clamp it around here

And wrapping paper clasp. Pass. is reasonably effective, a rubber band. Okay, the internet also tells me that to keep Christmas lights from tangling

you can wrap them around a coffee can. Okay, let's give this a try here

This is starting out poorly. There is no one on earth who is going to spend the time necessary

to wrap their Christmas lights around a coffee can. When you finally take down the Christmas lights

you're just so full of joy that the last thing that you want to do is spend another 20 minutes with them

wrapping it around a coffee can. It's already twisted. My friends, let me ask you

in what world is this a good solution to the holiday light tangling drop and fail

That apparently if you cut these ping pong balls with X's, they look cool when put over the lights Now we already learned that it almost impossible to cut the X into ping pong balls but let see if it looks cool

That's so bad. Of all the life hacks I have ever life hacked

this is the worst. By the way, we got these little red cups

so I just noticed we could play tiny beer pong. Nope. Nope

It's nothing to do with the third one now. All right, so here's another holiday life hack. Apparently, if you break your holiday lights

not with a hammer, hopefully, but however you break them, you can pick them up with a piece of bread

That saves you the trouble, I guess, of getting out a mop or a broom or whatever

Let's try it out. Oh, God! It's picking up some glass, but it's also leaving some bread

and leaving lots of glass. Double fail. So let's say you want to class up your holiday party

and you've got wine glasses and candles, but no candle holders. Wait, maybe you do have candle holders

Candle, candle, candle. It's not amazing, but I think it's better than no candle holder, pass

Now if you want fancier seasonal decorations, Pinterest tells me that all you need is a mason jar

salt, and a candle. I'm gonna fill the jar up with salt and then add the candle

and it should look like snow. Well, first off, we didn't pick the best bowl for this

Oh. Oh yeah. Pinterest is a weird place. Pats? Now I know what you're wondering

How are you gonna light the candle that deep in the mason jar with uncooked spaghetti

Haven't you watched all of our Life Hacks videos? Now, for a more kid-friendly version of fake snow

Meredith and Mark have combined glue water glitter and borax to make the snow slime Let see if it as fun as it looks like it going to be Oh

Mmm. Slimy. Oh boy. In no way resembles snow, but it's very entertaining to play with

It's like flubber. I'm going to say a strong pass and insist that we put the recipe for this in the video info below

Now we all know that soap does nothing to eliminate the tree sap that collects on your hands after lugging a Christmas tree home

but using a little toothpaste will apparently break down those chemicals and eliminate the stickiness

Now we don't have any tree sap because, you know, it's outside and we live inside and outside is cold and miserable

so we're going to use maple syrup. Oh, there we go. Okay, just rub, rub

That's disgusting. On the long list of things that I thought I would never do, let us please include rub maple syrup carefully into my hands

Is that enough toothpaste, Meredith? I mean, not at all. It's not

No, no, fail. I hear it's possible to string popcorn or cranberries more easily using waxed dental floss instead of thread

That is pretty easy. I mean, we're just able to, we can put the cranberries right on the needle and then onto the dental floss and down it goes

That's a good, that's a solid, yeah, pass. To make post-holiday cleanup easier

you can supposedly use egg cartons for smaller ornaments, which totally works, I mean

as long as they're round or egg shaped. Okay, so Mark has wrapped up this old tinfoil box

with some pretty paper, which apparently is a nice way to store holiday cookies

That's quite nice, actually. I don understand why we have to limit this life hack to the holidays I like to store cookies all year round

Yes. But what if you want to decorate your holiday cookies? Well, an easy way to do that is by using frosting in a condiment bottle, or at least so says the internet

This is possible, but it really requires quite a bit of squeeze strength

Those are for you, Mark and Meredith. Speaking of decorating, who doesn't love making paper snowflakes

But what if it's 2014 and you no longer have any paper because email

Well, you can use a coffee filter. Maybe turn this one over here

See how that looks. Oh, too much. Not my best work. Let's see how it came out

That's actually quite beautiful. Doesn't look like a snowflake, but it's lovely

Pass. And if you're wrapping presents with a big roll of tape, use a bread tab to save your

place. That's a total pass. And finally, I returned to my salon wearing a blindfold to play pin the nose on the reindeer

This was all created with just a bulletin board, some pushpins, and construction paper

I have no idea where it is. Yeah. Nailed it. How did I do

Where did I put it? Oh! Not good