We all like to think of ourselves as pretty cool individuals. However, life always seems to find a way to knock us down a peg when we least expect it. If you find yourself in any common embarrassing situations, we have great ways you can avoid the pain of humiliation. Go from socially awkward to putting your best foot forward with these 9 life hacks to save you from embarrassment.
Check Your Breath
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We have all experienced talking to someone who forgot to floss that morning. We would hate to be the person blasting bad breath at others. It’s impossible to smell our own breath because we quickly get acclimated to even the smelliest of breaths. We have a quick and easy way to tell if your breath passes the sniff test, without waiting to see your co-workers wrinkle their noses in disgust when you talk.
All you need is a single spoon. Use the tip of the spoon to gently scrape the back of your tongue and then let the gunk on the spoon dry. This should take about a minute. Once it’s dry give it a good sniff. If it smells okay, then you’re good to go! If the spoon stinks, you might want to grab your emergency mouthwash. To prevent bad breath in the future, make sure you brush your tongue when you brush your teeth and be sure to hit the back of your mouth as well.
Sneeze Quietly
That moment when you feel a sneeze coming on can be absolutely terrifying. You hope that a sneeze actually occurs and you aren’t left with that dreadful impending sneeze feeling tickling your nose. We hate when that happens. But if you do sneeze, you risk drawing the attention of everyone in the immediate area with your thunderous nostrils.
There are a couple of tricks that will allow you to sneeze quietly. When you feel a sneeze coming on, try holding your breath. This can help by disrupting the sneeze reflex and prevent it from occurring. You can also try coughing at the same as you sneeze. This will also disrupt the sneeze reflex and lessen the volume of your sneeze. You can also try clenching your teeth and jaw to suppress sound. Lastly, make sure nobody is watching in case they think you’re digging for gold and try putting your finger on the base of your nose and pushing up slightly.
Fix Your Zipper
We all hate that moment when our beloved zippers betray us. Although sometimes our over indulgences are to blame, sometime there is a technical malfunction that prevents our zippers from staying zipped. They allow us to wear our favorite jeans and fasten our cool leather jackets. We’ve all experienced that moment of panic when a clever friend advises us to xyz, examine our zipper or asks if we’re afraid of heights because it seems our zipper are so clever and not at all infuriating. Those comments can leave you blushing furiously and wishing you were anywhere else.
If your zipper refuses to stay up, there is a simple trick you can use to avoid having to carry around a spare pair of pants. Because that would just be massively inconvenient, especially if the zipper malfunctions on those as well. Just use a key ring! Slip the key ring into the hole on the zipper and loop it around the button of your jeans. This is a discrete solution to a potentially humiliating problem.
Prevent Pit Stains
Everyone sweats. Some of us more than others. With that in mind, perhaps patches of perspiration appearing on our clothes shouldn’t be quite so embarrassing, but they are. Even if we use plenty of antiperspirant, it can only do so much. We tend to associate being sweaty with being smelly. And when people see our armpit stains they tend to give us a wide berth. This can be unbearably embarrassing in social situations. But with a little prep, you can avoid this disaster altogether.
If you know you’re going to be spending the day in the sun, or working up a sweat, these tips can help prevent armpit stains. Let’s start with your shirt first. Avoid polyester or polyester blends. They trap in heat, which is great for when it’s cold out, but awful when it’s hot. Try breathable and absorbent fabrics like cotton, linen, or bamboo. If you want a little extra assurance that you won’t be sporting armpit stains, try using a pantiliner. It sounds weird, we know, but they’re designed to be absorbent. Just cut them to fit, and stick them to the fabric covering your underarms.
Quiet Your Stomach
When your stomach starts rumbling, it can cause major embarrassment, especially if you’re in an otherwise quiet place. And once it starts there is no stopping it. You just have to sit there feeling ashamed of your abdomen while everyone stares at you and laughingly asks if you skipped breakfast this morning. But interestingly enough, this phenomenon isn’t necessarily sign that someone is hungry. It could just be your intestines doing their jobs.
In the Greek language, the word for your stomach growling is “Borborygmus”. It’s an accurate onomatopoeia for your stomach growling. While keeping full is of course a good thing to prevent this, avoid a lot of gas producing foods to cut down on these noises. These food include Beans, Cabbage, Broccoli, and Dairy. Instead of eating 3 large meals per day, make sure your stomach is never running on empty by eating smaller amounts of food throughout the day. Your daily 5 cups of coffee can be another culprit, as the acidity affects your stomach. Try switching to tea instead or just drink more water. In fact, drinking water throughout the day is a great and simple way to stop your stomach from growling.
Fight Frizz
When your hair looks out of control it can make you look and feel like your life is out of control as well. Having frizzy hair and flyaways can be supremely embarrassing. Especially in the summer time, it can be nearly impossible to tame our errant strands. Add to that the fact that we’re constantly on the go and we may be tempted to just pop on a bandana and call it a day.
We have a couple of tips that just might help you out of hair-raising situation. Just pop a toothbrush, a dryer sheet and a travel sized container of hair spray into your purse or glove compartment in case of an emergency. If your hair gets too many flyaways, just spritz the toothbrush with the hairspray and use it to spot treat your strands. Make sure the bristles are soft so they don’t disturb your updo. This is a great way to control the amount of product you put on your hair. Even professional hairstylists use this trick on their celebrity clients. As for the dryer sheet use it to avoid static electricity on your hair. Brush it over your strands and it’ll stop flying and over the place. This works both as a quick fix and a preventative measure.
Clear Greast Stains
We try to appear well-groomed, properly coiffed and like we conform to basic standards of personal hygiene. Having stains on your clothes can really detract from your appearance and it’shymliating when people notice them. Maybe wiping your greasy fingers on your pants while you were eating french fries seem like a better option than grabbing a napkin but we assure you, it wasn’t. Even though the napkin was all the way in the kitchen and you were already sitting down. You can try using detergent pen, pre-treating it or washing it until the cows come home. But that stain isn’t going anywhere.
If you’re heading out for a big date or to go see the big game, you know you need your lucky shirt. A can of something you already have in the fridge can save the day. Grab some Coca-Cola and apply some to the stain. Just pour it on before you put it in the washing machine. Then, just add your regular detergent and wash normally. It sounds conter intuitive to put something sugary and sticky onto your already messy clothes, but it works like a charm. The carbonic and phosphoric acid in the soda helps to break up the grease.
Unstink Your Feet
While they’re not as immediately noticeable as bad breath, smelly feet can be just as embarrassing. You don’t want everyone in the vicinity to pass out from the wave of stench that occurs when you take off your shoes! While your current solution may just be to trap all of the stink inside your socks and shoes, there’s a much better way to deal with stinky feet.
First, you should know that there’s a reason your feet stink. They sweat just like any other part of you and they have about half a million sweat glands. Your socks and shoes trap the sweat inside where bacteria can thrive, resulting in a horrible odor. When you’re in the shower, merely letting the water run over your feet isn’t enough. Give your feet a good scrub and make sure to dry between your toes. Excess moisture can cause bacteria to breed. Make sure your toes are well groomed and free of any fungus. You can also give your feet a quick rinse in rubbing alcohol, which helps dry out any sweat. Make sure your socks and shoes are clean or just stick to sandals to allow more air flow.
Unsend that Email
Technology allows us to do so many incredible things we would never have thought possible a few decades ago. However, it also allows us to humiliate ourselves in new and interesting ways. Have you ever hit “Send” on an email and then immediately wished you hadn’t? Maybe you were trying to send your vacation photos to a friend but accidentally sent them to your boss who thought you were sick that day. However you messed up, this trick can help you unsend that incriminating email.
To do this you should be sending your emails through Gmail. Although you should be doing that anyway, because Gmail is just awesome. Moving on, just go to “Setting” from your Gmail homepage. Under the “General” tab, you’ll see an option called “Undo Send”. Select it and you’ll be able to select a cancellation period from 5-30 seconds. This means you have to act fast, but if you do send a regrettable email, you’ll have that many seconds to unsend it. It works by creating a delay from when you hit send, to when your email actually gets sent. So you’re not really unsending it as much as you’re preventing it from out in the first place.
