Josephine YurcabaJosephine Yurcaba

Josephine Yurcaba is a Brooklyn-based freelance writer. She specializes in lifestyle content, women's issues, politics, and New York music. She has written for Bustle, The Daily Meal, The Village Voice, and Rolling Stone.

Here’s An Easy Way To Turn Any Bottle Into A Squirt Bottle

YouTuber Von Malegowski has invented a simple solution to half of your everyday problems. Malegowski, whose how-to and survival YouTube videos have received more than eight million views, invented a simple trick to turn any bottle into a squirt bottle.

You’ll need pliers (Malegowski used bent-nose pliers), scissors, a wood skewer and a metal skewer that both have pointed tips, a candle or a lighter, a cup of water and the lids of whatever bottles you want to reinvent, according to Malegowski’s YouTube video.

Here are five steps to turn your bottles into convenient squirt bottles.

1. Hold The Bottle Cap Over The Lit Candle Or Lighter

Hold the edge of the bottle cap with the pliers and move the cap in a circular motion over the heat source so that the heat is evenly distributed. Heat the cap until the plastic becomes malleable or soft enough to shape.

2. Press The Skewer Into The Bottom Center Of The Cap

Once the lid becomes soft enough, press the pointed skewer into the bottom center of the bottle cap. Malegowski says to be careful that you don’t overstretch the plastic, make it too thin, or break it. That means you should not break the skewer through the plastic.

3. Allow The Plastic To Solidify

Hold the lid in place on the skewer for a few seconds so that the plastic can harden.

4. Dip The Cap In Water & Remove the Skewer

Lower the bottle cap into your cup of water for a few seconds. The skewer should slide out easily.

5. Cut Off The Tip Of The Cap’s Pointed Tip

Once you cut off the tip, you can poke the skewer through a little to clear out any debris.

And, you’re done! Screw the bottle cap back on and try it out. You can repeat the process with larger caps or different products. Depending on what you’re going to put in the bottles, you might want to make the tip wider, which would mean using a larger skewer and cutting the tip of the squirting part lower down.

If you want to store whatever is in your bottle, then keep both a regular cap and make squirting caps for the bottles you’d like them to fit (in your kitchen, for example). That way, if you need to store whatever is in a bottle, you can just swap the lids out.

Thank you, Malegowski, for making cooking and eating 10 times easier.

You Should Talk Salary With Your Coworkers, According To This Video

Talking salary with coworkers can be about as awkward as watching Sex and the City with your parents when you’re 15. Maybe not awkward in the same way, but the two instances have similar levels of uncomfortableness.

But the first instance is definitely something you should do, no matter how awkward or taboo it might be. Though talking salary with your coworkers is often described as a huge “no no,” it can be useful in a few key situations.

For example, if you talk salary with your coworkers and find that someone who’s doing a job similar to yours with similar qualifications makes more money, then you can chat with your boss about a raise and feel totally justified in doing so.

Though it might peeve your boss that it happened, talking to your coworkers about salary is totally legal, so you cannot be fired or punished for doing so.

According to a great video by truTV, the right to share your salary is protected by the National Labor Relations Act. Adam of truTV said that employers actually benefit from their employees keeping salaries a secret because it “tilts pay negotiations in their favor.”

The video said the concept is called information asymmetry. Employees are often too afraid to ask what other people make, so they’re forced to stick with whatever pay they were first agreed upon with their employer. Employees assume that their employer is giving them all the information and is being totally fair when offering them a salary.

money photo
Photo by thethreesisters

The video shows a sad segment where the employer says, “I can only offer you $100 a day,” to a future male employee. The future employee responds, “I guess that’s what everyone here makes.” But Adam of truTV points out that this information asymmetry combined with prospective employees’ unwillingness to do some salary digging combine to perpetuate low pay and gender pay gaps.

In the next scene, the employer talks to an African American woman. Adam of truTV says that African American women only make 64 cents to every dollar that men make. So, the employer offers her $64 a day, and—because of America’s taboo when it comes to talking money and the assumption that employers won’t take advantage of us—she also assumes that that’s what everyone at the company makes.

The takeaway here is that you should talk salary with your coworkers, especially if you think either you or the entire office are being underpaid. But you should also do your research before you talk salary with a new employer.

If you’re asking the going rate, and if you need to eat (everyone does!) then you should not feel ashamed about asking for money for the good work that you do. Check out the video below for more information. Hopefully your boss doesn’t pull out a Nerf gun when you make pay information more symmetrical in your office.

Photo by AGmakonts

DIY Your Holiday Decor With This Amazing Shadow Box

Santa Clause decor gets old pretty fast, but that doesn’t mean you should do away with all of your holiday decor. Holiday decor is fun because it creates this enchanted atmosphere even though the month and the weather are the only real changes happening around you. But that’s half the fun of celebrating holidays—you can get creative with them, and create a reason to celebrate and make things feel cozier.

If you enjoy burying yourself in wrapping paper like I do, then you love DIYing all of your home decor. For the holidays, I make my own Christmas tree out of reusable items (in New York City, no one has room for a life-sized tree). But the fact that I make the items myself makes them that much more unique and fun to share with friends.

For this holiday season, try this DIY shadow box from POPSUGAR. They’re beautiful, festive and you could even use them as mood lighting for parties or holiday dinners. For the directions on how to make this and where to get the items, click here.

 

If you’re on a budget, though, try using plastic shadow boxes that you can find at most craft stores or online. Spray paint the insides of them gold or silver. Then, you can buy cheap craft brush trees online or in a craft store, and spray paint them white. Then, use stretched out cotton to create snow and these LED string lights from Pottery Barn to give your forest a mystical quality.

Don’t be afraid to stray away from the forest idea, though. Go for a snowy city scene, a sledding scene or maybe, if you want to get the kids involved, an imaginative scene with fairies and forest animals. There’s nothing you can’t do with a little paint, clay and paper. If you’re feeling a bit lazier, you don’t even have to create a scene. Instead, you could opt for something where you just fill the shadow box with traditional things that remind you of the holidays.

 

 

Anyway you do it, this DIY shadow box will be a beautiful, non-Santa addition to your holiday decor.