A flattened carton under the engine overnight tells you whether the car is leaking and what colour it is. Brown is engine oil, red is transmission, green is coolant, clear is just the AC and nothing to worry about.
Before switching the car AC on, drive with all four windows down for thirty seconds to push out the trapped hot air. The AC then cools a much smaller problem, and it gets cold faster.
Route everything through one app and one card so the statement is the whole story. Five minutes on Sunday looking at the week is more effective than any budgeting app you will stop opening in March.
Where a sofa leg has crushed the carpet, sit an ice cube in the dent and let it melt fully. As the fibres take up water they stand back up. Blot dry and brush with your fingers.
A frame that will not sit straight usually has an uneven wall behind it. Stick a folded bit of cardboard to the low corner on the back of the frame. It stays level and the fix is invisible.
Half the bikes on Indian roads have the mirrors folded in. Set them so you can see the lane behind your shoulder, not your own arm. It is the cheapest safety equipment on the vehicle and it is already fitted.
Pressure read after a long ride is falsely high because the air has heated. Check in the morning before you ride. Correct pressure is the cheapest mileage improvement there is.
Washing the bike strips the chain, and a dry chain rusts within days in monsoon. Lube it after every wash, and wipe the excess or it collects grit and grinds itself down.
Sun destroys a bike seat faster than rain does. Any old bedsheet thrown over it while parked outside adds years to the upholstery, and the seat is not scalding when you get back at 4pm.
GaadiFuel light on and the pump is 2km away? Lean the scooter hard to the left for a few seconds, then start. It pushes the last bit of petrol in the tank towards the outlet. Enough for a kilometre or two.
Watch the display go to zero before filling starts, and ask for a round amount that is not a common preset. Both take three seconds and both remove the two most common ways of being short-changed.
The magnetic-box-under-the-frame trick is well known to exactly the people you are hiding it from. A spare with a trusted neighbour or in your office drawer is the version that works.
Put it in the cart and close the app. If you still want it three days later, buy it. Most of what feels urgent at 11pm is not there by Thursday, and you have saved the money by doing nothing.
Vendors drop prices near closing rather than carry stock home. Perfect for anything you will cook that night. Not for a week's storage — that is why it is cheap.
The water from rinsing rice carries starch and a little nutrition, and plants take it well. Let it cool first, and skip it if you salted the water.
That is all 15 of them. बस, इतना ही।
हर मुश्किल का देसी हल
132 jugaads from Indian homes. No shopping list, no subscription — just what people already do with what they already have.