 Hello everyone, welcome back to Lone Fox. Today's video is a jam-packed one, and I swear, if you watched, I think literally a fly just flew through the camera's lens. What I was saying before being rudely interrupted by Ms. Fly was that if you watched today's video, I swear that your next makeover, your next transformation, your next little decor venture, it's gonna be that much easier because some of these decor tips and tricks are honestly mind-blowing. I know myself when I'm scrolling on TikTok or another social media platform and I come across some form of like home hack, I'm always like, why did I not think of this? Like how did I not think of this hack? And so today I'm compiling 20 of my favorite hacks and some of these are on the smaller side, some of them are larger ones, but all around, if you watch all of the hacks in today's video, I swear you're gonna find at least one thing, you're probably going to turn off your computer and go do right after watching this, so let's go ahead and dive on into the first. Now, have you ever had a taper candle that doesn't fit in its holder? For example, this one literally right here, right next to me. Does it fit? Because sometimes taper holders are a bit larger, there's different sizes of taper candles, but there is an easy workaround. If you have a taper candle and a holder that you really wanna use, and that is simply to melt the bottom side of your taper candle with a lighter or a match and let the wax drip into the taper candle holder. And as it's still hot, press it into the holder and it's actually going to melt into the holder and kind of stand in the exact position that you want it to. And let's just say you make it a bit crooked when you stick it in, don't worry, you can pull it right out, remelt it, and at some point you're gonna get it straight enough to where you like it, and it's gonna be stuck in the holder pretty well. My next tip is to remove a sticker residue from your decor pieces. Now, I know that there's a whole low dryer tip to kind of like heat it up and remove the sticker, which is great, but I always feel like there's still like a little bit of film up. It just landed on the camera. Absolutely not. But I always feel like there's like a little bit of adhesive left. Now, what I've always done to remove sticker residue, and I don't know why I haven't seen many people do this, it's just to simply flip your piece over, add a little bit of water from the faucet right on top, and just let it sit for 20 or 30 minutes. That water is gonna actually break down the adhesive, break down the paper label itself, and it's literally just gonna wipe off. It kind of gets really soggy and comes right off the top of your surface. So if you have like a brand new set of cups or like a whole dishware set, I find this a lot easier than having to heat up every single one, remove them all, and then wipe it down, you know? This is just kind of like a one step solution. If you're somebody that loves to decorate with flowers, this is a great tip for you. Now, if you have a vase that is oversized, you know, really large, which I love doing as well. This vase back here is pretty large, but I have some fresh florals and I have a really large vase I wanna put them in. Always realize that you can actually add a smaller vase into a larger vase, and it's gonna consolidate all your flowers. You can even elevate that smaller vase inside so that they kind of fill up the vase itself. For example, I have this really beautiful terracotta our house vase that I got during Christmas time, and I love putting fresh flowers in here. However, you can't put water in this vase, and also the entire vase itself is just so large that the flowers most likely would sink to the bottom. So what I did was actually popped a ramekin in the bottom of that vase, a smaller glass vase on top with water in it, and then arranged all my flowers on the inside of the glass vase with the water. So it still gets fresh water, it also raises up your flowers a little bit, and I feel like it overall just makes the arrangement go a lot easier and not as challenging with pieces kind of falling deeper into the vase. Now, if you've ever watched one of my living room makeovers in the past, you would know that I love sectioning my decor. I always do my coffee table sections, but it's actually something that I utilize in every single space in my apartment. And if you are new to decorating, or you just want a little bit more help with decorating, I always feel like sectioning your decor can just make your decor look a lot nicer overall. So in this bookcase I have in my dining room area, I always start off by adding my largest pieces of decor first, and I add these into the areas that I know that they're gonna probably be their own sections. And then in between those large items, I add in smaller items such as books, boxes, things to kind of fill in the other sections. But in this particular bookcase, I created four sections on top, three in the middle, and then four sections on the bottom. Once you have all of your sections created, that's when I go in with my smaller decor pieces, like little knickknacks or trinkets, and just add them to the sections. So I always like to have a little bit of space between each of my decor sections, because once you add trinkets and fill them in, it just looks like one streamlined, jumbled decor situation. Now, if you are a book lover or an avid reader, this tip might not be your favorite, but don't worry, we're not destroying any books or anything, but books are definitely a crucial element of design. I absolutely love using books in every single space I do. It's really easy to stack them up. It's easy to get a lot of them. But if you have some books that don't fit your color palette, which has always been something that's kind of happened to me in design, and you know, it does play a part. If it doesn't fit your color palette, it doesn't fit your color palette. And DIYing your very own book cover is super simple. So I actually go to Ikea and get the rolls of kid's craft paper, because I love the tone of it. It's like a simple off-white kind of lightish beige color. And what I actually do to wrap my books is extremely simple. I start off by placing it on top of the paper. I draw a line on the top of the book and on the right side of the book. I then flip it onto the spine, draw a line across the top, and then I flip it to the back and draw a line across the top and down the side as well. So that's gonna be the basic kind of length and the height of our book. Then what I do is I just add a couple inches onto each end and cut it out. Once your paper cover is cut out, just tape it on the inside of the front cover, then wrap it around the book and tape it on the inside of the back cover. And that is a really, really simple book cover. You can pull this off. It doesn't damage the book at all. And you can also totally write on the outside if you have cute handwriting or you can use like some small little letter stamps. You could put the book out there if you want to. I think that added cute element as well. These next two hacks are ones that I was taught by my dad. He has always told me these throughout the years of doing any makeover or absolutely anything or whenever I saw him kind of making over our house when I was younger. Let's say you painted a wall in your apartment and you needed to paint it back before moving out. A great way to find the previous wall color is just removing the outlet on a wall that has that color on it. So removing the outlet cover and just chipping away, once again, rude, but just pulling off that outlet plate cover and then just chipping off a little bit of the paint on the backside just enough using, you know, a screwdriver or whatever you can get kind of to chip off a little bit of that wall, but it's going to be hidden by the plate cover. So don't worry, once you pop it back on, no one's going to see the damage that you caused. You could bring it over to your hardware store, they could match it for you and you can go ahead and repaint that wall back to the original. But if you're somebody that wants to be a little bit more proactive about this situation and you know, later in a couple of years, maybe you want to paint it back, but you don't want to have to go through the hassle of chipping it off and color matching it. What I would suggest doing is just pulling off the outlet plate cover and writing the names of the paint on the inside. So what I did was I wrote the brand. So I wrote like Benjamin Moore, Sean Tilly Lace, and I also wrote the finish. I think it's really important to write the finish as well. You can even do, you know, the fireplace, the trim, the accent wall, whatever it might be. And then when you go to leave, you can just pop it off, read your little manual if you will and get the paint colors that are appropriate to paint it back. This next hack is one that I've heard of people using in the past, but I've never done it myself and it worked exceptionally well. I actually did it on this little flower vase back here. So if you have a larger vase or it has a, you know, a wide mouth at the top of it and you have some flowers that just don't fill it, you know, they kind of flopped the side like this, for example, I suggest just taking a little bit of clear tape. Now I'm using some gift wrap tape so you can actually kind of see the process of it, but I'm going to just create a grid over the top of my vase. And this is going to allow you to insert the different flowers or different stems or, you know, greenery into your vase so that it spaces it out. And it gives it a more full look without having to get more flowers or more greenery. So if you don't have enough to fill it up, but you want a full look, this is a really, really great workaround. This next hack is one I learned from TikTok. Probably about a year ago, I'd say, I came across a video where this guy purchased this little product called a Phil Stick. And what it was was essentially kind of like a crayon, like a waxy material, but how you would use it is you'd actually go over the top of any nail holes or any areas that you needed to fix. So let's say, you know, you're a renter and you're moving out again. This is a great product to just go pick up at the hardware store or on Amazon, I'll link it below for you. And all you have to do is just scribble this kind of crayon situation over the top of the hole and it fills it in perfectly. So you can do this on baseboards, you could do it on scratches in the wall. Anywhere that you would essentially apply spackle to, you can use the Phil Stick and I just find it to be a lot easier for a quick fix. And you can paint right over the top of it and you are good to go. Our next few tips focus on the bedroom and particularly the bed, which is always the focal of a bedroom anyways, which is great. So this is a really nice way to get smooth bedding. Because sometimes I know like linen is a very popular material for bedding, but it's always very wrinkly and creased, which kind of bugs me, not gonna lie. So a great way to get a smooth finish is after you lay down your sheet, just go ahead and take a spray bottle and fill it up with just plain water that has a really fine mist to it and just slightly mist it over the top of your sheet and then just kind of pull it as you're working with it and pull it. And as it dries, it's actually gonna dry perfectly flat. You can do the same exact thing with your duvet as well. And you can totally keep a spray bottle of just plain water in your bedside table and do it every single day to have a nice clean bed. And our next tip is how to put on duvet covers and pillow shams the easy way. So I am somebody that is always struggling with my duvet cover. You see me like literally standing on my bed trying to fidget with it. I'm trying to like get inside of it, put my duvet in there, tie the knots on the corners. It's just always a mess. But there's actually a really great technique to do this that a lot of people knew about and I never knew until recently and you guys, you gotta try this. So basically what you do is you're gonna take your duvet cover and flip it inside out and lay it on top of your bed with the opening towards the bottom. So once you have this flattened out on your bed, you're going to lay your duvet insert over the top of that as well. So it's just fully flat and we're basically creating a layer of duvet and comforter right on top. Then what you're gonna do is from the top of the bed you're gonna roll it down like a burrito all the way to the bottom. And then on the opening, on the bottom corner where that duvet opening is, you're actually gonna flip that corner over the top and wrap it around and do the same thing on the opposite side as well. And then just simply unroll it back up to the top of your bed and your duvet insert has now been inserted into the duvet cover. So simple and easy you guys. It's crazy how that hack works and as you do it a couple of times and get a hang of it, it's just a lot easier. You can roll it up and roll it out in like a minute. And you can actually do the same thing with pillow shams as well. Just flip your pillow sham inside out fully and put your arms inside the pillow sham grabbing the two corners. Then grab the two corners of your pillows and just flip the sham kind of off of your arms and onto the pillow, roll it down. And that is how to easily apply a pillow sham onto your pillows. I wanted to include this tip because it's honestly so cute. And I don't think this is something that you guys are gonna utilize every single day. But if you do have a guest coming and staying with you, I think this is such a cute little just added touch to their bathroom space. So I came across this on Pinterest. I think it was like a five minute craft style hack. And basically what it was doing was just taking the toilet paper and folding it into a triangle at the end, a simple triangle. And then you're gonna turn on your water faucet in your bathroom and just kind of let it run for a bit. Then turn it off after like a couple seconds of it running and just press your toilet paper roll underneath the faucet until you get a little bit of water on the tip of your point that you created. And it's actually going to create kind of one of those hotel style toilet paper rolls, which I think is really cute. If you've ever wondered how they got that look, that is how you achieve it. If you've ever come across furniture, decor, lighting that is just out of your price range, but you wanna find something extremely similar, Amazon actually has a feature within their app called Style Snap. And this is not sponsored in any way at all. I just love using this feature. So how you use this is you're first going to wanna come across an item that you wanna find a dupe for. So for example, I came across this really beautiful pendant light on McGee and Co. But it was like 700 bucks. So I wanted to see if there was an alternate version on Amazon. So I just screenshotted this item. You don't have to crop it out or anything at all. I went to the Amazon app and in the top search bar, there's a little box with a circle in it. Tap that and then upload your photo to Style Snap. And it's actually going to use its own kind of system to pinpoint what in the photo you are looking for and find you dupe items on Amazon. So as you could see, it kind of generated a couple of lights that look similar at a fraction of the price, which is really nice. And you can do this with virtually anything. And you could also upload your very own photos as well. I recently got a new doormat, which was honestly long overdue because I've had a home for the holidays doormat for three months. And it's literally been three months after Christmas. So I got a half round one, but I realized that the two that I've had are just so junky. Like doormats get so gross after like a month of use. So I saw a girl on TikTok. I'm going to link her account below for you guys. And she actually used Flex Seal in the clear finish and she sprayed the Flex Seal over the top. And it's supposedly supposed to keep your doormat in perfect condition. It's just going to keep your fibers locked together and they're not going to fray everywhere. Next up, we kind of have a little bit of a tool hack, slash home hack, slash DIY hack. And this is for any screw hook that you need to add virtually anywhere. And I know I have a hard time a lot of times when the screw hooks are smaller or they're really thick to screw them into a piece of wood, to screw them into the ceiling to hang a planter. So a great way to actually screw these in is to kind of get it started, start screwing it in with your fingers. But then what you're actually going to do is take a second screw hook and install it into your drill as if it's a drill bit. So you're going to put the screw side into your drill, tighten it up. Then you're going to hook the hook through your other hook and turn it on. They're going to basically kind of connect up and wind up together. And it's going to screw in your screw hook itself, which is really nice and convenient. So it's just a great tip if you need to screw in a bunch of hooks or you don't have the strength or you don't want to just ruin your fingers screwing in a hook. Now I've talked about this painting tip in multiple of my makeover videos, but I don't think I've actually ever included it in a tip driven video. And this is such an incredible painting tip for anybody that wants a clean line once they remove their tape because I feel like tape is very deceiving. You could put it on the best in the whole world but if you do not do this before you remove it, I swear it always bleeds. Like how does it always bleed? So a great way to make sure that it doesn't bleed is just to paint the original wall color over the top first. So you're going to put your tape down, then you're going to go in with a wall color that's underneath your tape or the wall color that is already on the wall. You're going to paint that onto the area that you're going to be painting your new color. And this is a paint that's actually going to bleed. So anything that bleeds is going to be the wall color. So it's going to be virtually invisible. And then once that dries down you can go in and apply your new color. Now on the left side of this tape I'm just applying the color as if you were just to do the tape on the wall. And when I remove this you could see how clean the line on the right is. If you want a super clean line or you're doing stripes on the wall or something along the lines of that this is a great tip. Just apply the first color and then your second color, remove and you're golden. If you're somebody that really hates seeing the cord fall if you have a wall mounted TV but you have a media console underneath your TV this is a great hack for you. So what I actually did in my personal bedroom was I ran the cord on the backside of the TV to one corner. I pulled mine to the bottom right corner and I just use a little bit of tape to adhere it on the backside of that bottom right TV corner. Once that is there you could just go ahead and pop a little piece of decor over the top of the cord that is now falling from the corner to behind your media console or behind your dresser, whatever it might be. And this is just such an easy way to where you don't need to drill any holes in the wall if you don't have to add a cord cover you don't need to do anything kind of additional. You're just using a little bit of tape pulling it off to the corner and adding a bit of decor over the top. Now if you're somebody like myself that loves to reuse candle canisters or the containers that candles come in this is such a great tip as well because I've always been one to kind of chip it out with a knife or something or try to like double boil it in a boiler but I actually found out that you could simply just boil some water on your stove top. So just put some water in a pot and boil it until it's nice and you know a rolling boil and then you're going to pour that into your candle and just let it sit for like 10 minutes. It's actually going to soften down all of the wax it's gonna rise to the top of the surface or it might even just mix into the water and then what you're gonna also be able to do is pull off the label because that hot boiling water is going to heat the vessel from the inside and it's gonna make taking off that label so much easier then what I do is I just soak up the inside with either some paper towels or just you know pour it outside or something but you're not gonna wanna pour this down the sink drain or in your trash can and then you have a little candle vessel which you could totally use as a matchstick holder you can use it as a drinking glass if you wanted to and I always love repurposing candle vessels like this. We have just two more for you guys but this is a great tip if you're doing a lot of caulking so let's say you're doing a board and batting wall a bead board wall, baseboards, whatever it might be if you're doing some caulking this is a great great tip and this is basically to eliminate how messy caulking can be so how I actually do this is I fill up a spray bottle with some water I'm going to do a couple pumps of just hand soap and you're gonna mix that up then you're going to pipe your bead of caulking across whatever you're doing I'm just using a reference here for you guys and as you can see on the left side when I do it with my finger it just gets really messy it kinda goes everywhere but if you actually spray a little bit of the soapy water over the top of your caulking it actually keeps it consolidated and in a clump so it's so much easier to work with it just moves out across the baseboard or across your molding piece that you're adding and it's such an easier cleanup process it's not dripping, it's not falling it kinda stays together which is so strange but it works so well and last but not least you guys this one honestly is just kinda like a cheat because I just didn't have a 20th one but this one is really great if you have yet to see my DIY faux tree video and you are wanting a really nice faux tree or a faux plant in your apartment but you know they are a little bit expensive you can actually create your own I created my very own for my apartment I just went outside, found a really large stick and I actually couldn't even find a stick large enough so I kinda like pieced mine together with a little bit of drill work I was drilling holes into the base and adding sticks here and there and then I went through with some faux leaves and actually applied them onto all of the branches afterwards and created my very own faux tree and I will link this tutorial for you guys but this is a great hack if you need to create a faux tree you can customize these which is really nice and you guys that was a mouthful and wow did that fly wanna make an appearance in today's video if you enjoyed this one give it a big thumbs up I would definitely appreciate it and if you guys have like more home hacks like this let me know in the comment section below I will also link above in the cards a couple other videos cause I've done a few other ones where I've done rental friendly hacks small apartment hacks we have 10 genius decor hacks which I did a couple weeks back and if you have not already give this video a big thumbs up I would also love to know which tip was your personal favorite one in the comment section below I love responding to you guys down there and last but not least you could subscribe to my channel if you would like I post brand new home decor and DIY content every single week and you could follow me over on Instagram and TikTok which is Lone Fox Home for even more behind the scenes content and I will catch you guys in my next one bye