Rubber bands are great,
and life hacks are great,
and rubber band life hacks are especially great.
And today, we're gonna try out 10 of them to see which one's work,
and which ones don't.
[Captions by Judy V. at Y Translator] [Music]
[Music]
Here's the basic idea.
We've got 10 rubber band based life hacks that have appeared
in several different viral videos.
We're gonna put them to the test,
and see which one's hold up and which ones fall flat.
Can you use a rubber band as a pencil eraser?
I've written the same thing twice.
And for the first one,
I'll use the eraser that comes with this pencil,
and for the second one,
I'll use a couple of different rubber bands,
and see how well they'll erase it.
[Music]
I gotta tell you.
I was a little surprised at how well this one worked.
We had slightly different results
with our two different types of rubber bands.
So your mileage may vary.
But overall, I think the rubber bands did almost as good of a job
as the eraser that came on the pencil.
I would say that rubber bands as a pencil eraser works pretty well.
If you have a stripped screw in a piece of wood,
can you use a rubber band to increase the grip between the screwdriver and the screw?
The idea is we can fit the rubber band over the head of the screw
and the rubber will help give extra grip between the screwdriver and the screw.
This screw is pretty thoroughly stripped,
and I can't really back this screw out.
So let's see if we can get any added grip with the rubber.
[Music]
Well I wasn't able to back the screw out,
and it felt like in about one second,
I had stabbed and cut my way right through the rubber band.
Can sort of see there's a cross-shaped hole in this rubber band now.
Let's try it again with both sides of the rubber band for extra grippiness.
Oh, I think I cut through both of them already.
Yep already cut through both sides of the rubber band at once.
In my experience, if a screw gets completely stripped,
a rubber band is not going to solve your problem.
You're going to need to use specialized tools designed for removing screws that
have been stripped away.
Using a rubber band as a bookmark.
In every video, I've seen that shows this life hack,
the rubber band is stretched all the way around the open book
to keep your place where you're reading.
I'm going to try this with both a paperback and hardcover book.
[Music]
This hack is that you can easily open your book back to where you were,
and just continue reading.
[Music]
This does technically work.
A rubber band, it does keep your place in the book.
You can open it back up,
but it only a couple minutes of having the rubber band on there,
it started to leave a dent mark in the pages where it's compressing them.
It's also very easy for the rubber band
to catch the edge of the paper and fold it over.
On some books like this one,
the pages have sort of this decorative silver edge,
and I don't know what it would do to that over time,
but I can't imagine it would be all the great.
You know what else works really well as a bookmark?
Literally any scrap of paper.
[Music]
Book marked.
Can you use rubber bands to secure a pot lid onto the pot
while it's full of something?
We're gonna test this out with some delicious water stew.
Pot mostly full of water.
Lid that stays on,
but may not be super resistant to sloshing.
[Music]
Let's give it a good slosh.
[Music]
Popped right off.
Tons of water everywhere.
Let's test if that's something we can stop using rubber bands.
In the videos where I've seen this life hack,
the lid is secured by using two rubber bands.
Each one goes around one of the handles of the pot,
and the handle of the lid.
That seems like it could work.
Often the pot lids have more of a button style handle,
which would make the rubber bands grip onto it even better than they are here.
However, this already seems like it's doing a decent job.
Let's go give it our slosh test.
[Music]
Little bit still escape out the side,
so it's not holding it on pressed down super hard.
Let's give it the big slosh.
[Music]
Well, water still managed to escape,
but the lid is still on.
If tipped for just a second,
not much water comes out.
So let's say you're carrying it and oops...
Well, you lost a little bit,
but let's try that same test with no rubber bands.
All right you're carrying it, and drop it for just a second.
That's a lot worse without rubber bands.
A rubber band stretched around a roll of toilet paper,
in theory, you can pull out the tube in the middle,
and then have a handy little dispenser
that works a lot like a tissue box.
Well, on this role and pretty much every roll of toilet paper I've ever used,
the toilet paper is actually glued onto the roll itself.
It means that so far, this is a little difficult.
[Music]
Yes, progress.
Sort of.
[Music]
All right, finally got that roll out.
Now, we should be able to just pull the inside.
We have a sort of tissue dispenser,
break off what you need,
blow your nose,
break off more,
blow your nose.
This works okay here at the beginning of the roll.
Let's see what happens when we get near the end,
and it still has a rubber band wrapped around it.
[Music]
This is really good use of toilet paper.
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Our rubber band is now collapsing our container.
Still dispensing.
Well, not anymore.
[Music]
Rubber band has now collapsed our container
to the point where it doesn't dispense.
[Music]
Now it's not even attached.
With the rubber band around the roll of toilet paper,
you can pull the toilet paper out of the middle,
but unlike a tissue box, it's not a one-handed operation.
You need to use one hand to pull,
and then another hand to break off how much you want.
My biggest issue with this method is that if you already need two hands,
then just use two hands,
and it stays nice and contained.
It's on a roll.
This is exactly as easy or difficult as it was to pull it out of the middle.
It's not gonna end up squishing itself down flat
to the point where if you try and pull one it lifts the whole roll.
In my opinion, using a rubber band to turn a roll of toilet paper into a tissue dispenser
is much more difficult than just using the roll,
and completely pointless.
By wrapping a rubber band around the handle of some pliers,
you have some convenient little pinchers that will hold small things
while you work on them.
[Music]
I love this.
This is simple and this is clever, and it works really well in my opinion.
These pliers even naturally spring open.
They've got a little spring built into them that holds them apart,
but when that's not what we want,
a rubber band easily overcomes that spring,
and they just hold things nicely together.
This is definitely something I will use.
After cutting an apple,
you can use a rubber band to hold the pieces together,
so it doesn't turn brown between cutting and eating.
We're gonna try two different tests.
One with a cut and rubber-banded apple next to a cut and laying open apple
to see how they compare in terms of turning brown.
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After about four hours,
there's only a slight difference in color
between the apple that was sitting open on a countertop,
and the one that was being held closed with the rubber band.
The other test will be a cut and rubber-banded apple,
and a cut apple placed back together
and both in Ziploc bags,
and we're gonna let that one go overnight.
[Music]
Here's the apple that had the rubber band,
and here's the apple that didn't.
Using a rubber band to attach a cloth to a wooden spoon
so you can use it for dusting.
Well, you can attach it.
That part is definitely true.
[Music]
It works but I don't get it.
You know what else works?
Just the cloth without the spoon or the rubber band.
You can dust things with just the cloth.
Possibly just as well and probably better.
You can see the mark where you have the exposed cloth on the spoon,
and that was dusting, and that part is so dirty
that it stopped picking up the dust really quickly.
And sure that means we need to dust our blinds more,
but if you're just holding the cloth,
you can use all of the cloth for dusting.
I think it's way more likely that the best way to clean is just use the cloth.
Just wipe the dust up with that.
It works just as well, if not better.
This to me is just absurd.
The basic idea is that if you're going to be going in and out of a door
that tends to close and latch by itself,
you can use a rubber band stretched between the doorknobs
to hold the latch down.
This can prevent it from latching and easily let you go in and out
as much as you need.
On this particular door,
the door knobs are wide enough.
The rubber band is missing the latch,
but a quick fix for that is just to twist the rubber band once.
If a single rubber band isn't holding the latch down far enough,
just throw on a second.
[Music]
The rubber bands do a great job and depending on your door,
you may need more than one or two but I would say this definitely works.
Say your hose has sprung a leak,
and it's spraying water where you don't want it to,
can you use rubber bands to stop that leak?
The idea is that by wrapping several rubber bands tightly around the hose
right where it's leaking,
you can actually stop the leak from happening.
It's quite a few rubber bands and they're Twisted on there quite a few times.
[Music]
It's still leaking.
Maybe I need more rubber bands.
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Waters flowing to the hose.
[Music]
Well, it looks like we may have stopped up the leak.
At this point, I would say that maybe this is a useful life hack.
It did stop up our little leak.
It wasn't a very big leak.
But there is one other issue.
What if your leak doesn't happen right at the very end of the hose?
What if your leak happens more in the middle?
How hard or easy would it be to fix a leak right there?
To stop up this leak,
we had to use a lot of rubber bands,
and they had to be on there pretty tight.
We were able to just wrap and wrap the rubber bands
because we were right near the end of the hose,
but if our leak is 12 feet into the hose...
[Music]
That's one.
I need to do 15 more of those.
I think it would probably be faster to just run to the store and buy a new hose.
That would take less time than stringing all 15 tightly round rubber bands
over 12 feet of hose.
I would say if you have a small leak near one end of the hose or the other,
you might be able to do an okay repair using rubber bands.
I would say that if your leak is more than about six inches
from the end of the hose,
it's not going to be worth the effort.
I think you'd be better off using something like some strong duct tape
or maybe a bicycle patch.
Rubber bands are great,
and there are a lot of cool life hacks you can do with them.
Some of them work amazingly well and are super useful.
Some of them are pointless or don't even work.
There are hundreds or thousands of life hacks out there,
and we want to start testing some of them.
Let us know what life hacks you want to see us try.
Some of them are gonna be great,
and some are gonna be total junk.
We want to figure out which is which.
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