John Cox

Blogs · @wyome

Tagged diy · everything

www.homedit.com

I Left Baking Soda on Tile Grout Overnight and Didn’t Expect This

Baking soda works on grout not through scrubbing force but through overnight chemical action that neutralizes trapped oils, soaps, and acids causing discoloration and odor. Applied as a paste and left untouched until morning, it draws residue from pores so it releases with a single wipe, and the grout then resists moisture absorption and dirt accumulation in ways that previous scrubbing methods never achieved. The key insight is that time, not friction, allows baking soda to alter the grout's surface environment permanently rather than just masking stains temporarily.

Permalink diybathroombakingcleaning

www.homedit.com

I Tried Cleaning My Kitchen With Lemon and Didn’t Expect It To Work This Well

A hands-on test of lemon juice as a vinegar alternative across four kitchen tasks: it dissolved hard-water rings on granite, freshened wooden boards without deep-sanitizing them, and completely neutralized microwave odors via a boiled lemon-water steam trick, but left glasses streaky compared to standard cleaner. The takeaway is that lemon earns a permanent spot as a light, low-odor touch-up tool rather than a full cleaner replacement—worth keeping for the microwave trick alone.

Permalink diycleaningkitchenhome

www.homedit.com

I Left Vinegar to Work on These 11 Cleaning Tasks Around My Home

A hands-on test log of white vinegar as an all-purpose cleaner, going through a dozen specific household applications—coffee makers, windows, dishwashers, drains, shower heads, washing machines—and reporting which ones actually produced visible results rather than just repeating the usual folk claims. The one caveat worth remembering is to skip natural stone surfaces since the acidity degrades sealant, and the citrus-infused vinegar variant is a nice fix for the smell issue. Worth keeping as a practical checklist rather than a general endorsement piece.

Permalink diybathroomcleaningkitchen

Boing Boing

www.homedit.com

IKEA Shoppers Discovered a Different Use for This Bamboo Drying Rack

A French home-organizing creator repurposed IKEA's OSTBIT bamboo dish-drying rack—normally a countertop tool for air-drying plates and glasses—as a vertical, wall-mounted holder for rolled hand towels. Using adhesive mounting strips instead of drilling, she stuck the rack beside her bathroom mirror, turning its pegs into slots for neatly rolled towels, giving a boutique-hotel look with a renter-friendly, no-tools installation. It's a handy example of buying a product for one IKEA-catalog purpose and finding a smarter, better one.

Permalink diybathroomorganizationstorage

www.reddit.com

RISION

RISION Magic Smartphone Thermal Camera | Home Inspection

This is a product listing for the RISION Magic thermal camera, a handheld device that connects via USB-C to smartphones and computers to capture thermal images for home inspections and diagnostics. The camera features AI-enhanced dual-light fusion combining thermal and visible imaging, 320×240 super resolution, a temperature range of -4°F to 1112°F, and includes automated documentation and cloud sync capabilities through a companion app.

Permalink diyhometoolsgadgets

How-To Geek

Why a used $25 Kindle beats any Raspberry Pi display you can buy today

A How-To Geek piece argues that a used, jailbroken Kindle (often under $25) can beat an official Raspberry Pi Touch Display 2 as a Pi dashboard screen for slow-changing information. Its case rests on the Kindle's battery-powered, Wi-Fi-connected E-Ink design, which can be placed anywhere and stays readable in sunlight, and on the Kindle's ability to run its own fetch script, so one Pi could serve several units. The author concedes that the official display remains the better choice for color, touch, video, or fast refresh.

Permalink diyelectronicsraspberry pigadgets

Bob Vila

What to Do if Your Home Has Little or No Closet Space

This article provides 14 practical storage solutions for older homes with limited closet space, ranging from traditional furniture like armoires to modern alternatives such as portable closets and wall-mounted systems. The suggestions emphasize both maximizing existing closet space through organizational tools and creating new storage through repurposed rooms, built-in structures, and creative use of often-overlooked areas like door backs and under-stair spaces. The piece also recommends decluttering regularly and storing seasonal items off-site to manage the reality that old homes require more intentional storage strategies than modern houses with built-in closets.

Permalink diyorganizationstoragehome

How-To Geek

My morning RSS digest now runs on local AI, and I'll never go back to NotebookLM

The author built a local AI-powered RSS reader that automatically summarizes feeds using Gemma 4 running on Ollama, avoiding cloud services like NotebookLM while removing manual copy-paste steps and tier limits. The setup prioritizes privacy by processing everything locally, allows scheduled digest generation throughout the day, and can handle unlimited RSS sources, though it accepts the trade-off that smaller open-weight models won't match frontier AI reasoning capabilities. He plans to integrate it with his existing Discord bot and voice assistant to enable audio briefings and interactive questioning about the digests.

Permalink productivitydiyaiprivacy

Moss and Fog

This Living Garden Has Been Sealed for Decades | Moss and Fog

David Latimer sealed a glass carboy containing spiderwort cuttings and minimal water in 1960, watered it once more in 1972, and has left it untouched for over 66 years while it continues to thrive as a completely self-sustaining ecosystem. The closed terrarium demonstrates how plants can create their own water cycle through transpiration and condensation, and maintain a carbon cycle through photosynthesis and respiration, requiring only light as external input. Latimer plans to eventually pass the botanical heirloom to his children or donate it to the Royal Horticultural Society for continued study and preservation.

Permalink sustainabilitydiyscience

Savvy Gardening

Vegetables to Plant in August: What to Sow for Fall Harvests

This guide outlines which vegetables to plant in August for fall harvests, including turnips, kale, beets, cilantro, bok choy, radishes, mizuna, salad greens, broccoli, and carrots. It explains the practical timing considerations for late-season planting, such as counting backward from your first frost date and adding extra days to seed packet maturity estimates to account for shorter days and slower growth. The article also covers soil preparation, seed germination in hot summer conditions, and specific variety recommendations based on the author's experience gardening in zone 6a.

Permalink gardeningdiyadviceagriculture

www.tastingtable.com

Growing Onions Inside A Water Bottle In Your Kitchen Is Actually Pretty Simple

Repurposing a plastic bottle turns regrowing kitchen scraps into a genuine indoor growing system: the piece explains how to keep green onion roots alive in water on a windowsill for repeat harvests, then escalates that into a vertical "onion tower" made from a punctured bottle filled with potting soil, capable of producing both scallions and full-size bulb onions. Worth keeping for the specific staggered-hole-spacing technique and the practical care notes—watering, light, and monthly feeding—that make the vertical version actually work rather than just look clever.

Permalink gardeningdiykitchenvegetable

www.instructables.com

www.apartmenttherapy.com

I Turned a Secondhand Filing Cabinet Into My Dream Outdoor Planter — So Easy!

A DIY before-and-after piece where the writer converts a thrifted metal filing cabinet into a raised garden planter, walking through the painting mishaps (glossy enamel vs. matte hammered finish), fixing a missing bottom with scrap wood and drainage holes, and layering the interior using a hugelkultur-style method of wood and organic debris under soil to cut costs and boost plant health. It's a practical upcycling guide worth keeping for the specific technique tips — paint choice, drainage fix, and soil layering — rather than just the concept of "repurposed furniture planter."

Permalink sustainabilitygardeningdiyfurniture

www.apartmenttherapy.com

This Stylish IKEA Bookshelf Looks Like Custom Built-Ins for Way Less (Yes, Really)

IKEA's LÅDMAKARE is a $270 shelving unit that combines open display shelves with lower closed cabinets, offering flexible storage that blends seamlessly into rooms thanks to its open-back design and minimalist oak finish. The interior shelves are shallower than the side boards to accommodate cables, and the side panels have cutouts for baseboards, allowing the unit to sit flush against walls. The piece can be styled individually or combined with others to create custom built-in looks, used as an entertainment center or room divider, and configured in advance using IKEA's customization tool.

Permalink diyfurnitureorganizationstorage

mossandfog.com

Is Professional Furniture Removal Worth It? Bye Bye Junk Explains | Moss and Fog

This article weighs the financial and practical case for hiring professional junk removal services versus DIY hauling of bulky items, arguing that specialists often deliver better value when accounting for hidden costs (truck rentals, fuel, disposal fees), injury risks from improper lifting, time investment, and environmental compliance with municipal waste regulations. It provides a decision framework based on four questions about weight, access challenges, local rules, and physical capability, then identifies when DIY still makes sense (lightweight items, convenient municipal pickup) and red flags to watch for when hiring services.

Permalink safetysustainabilitydiyfurniture

www.homedit.com

I Put My Oven Racks in the Bathtub and Didn’t Expect This

Cleaning oven racks becomes dramatically easier when you soak them fully submerged in hot water with dish detergent in a bathtub rather than attempting to clean them in a sink or on a counter, because full immersion allows the grease to soften and detach naturally before any scrubbing is needed. The author discovered that the real problem with oven racks isn't how dirty they are but how unevenly they get cleaned with partial methods, and once the chemical and thermal conditions are right, minimal physical effort is required. After switching to this approach, the cleaning process stopped feeling like a chore, took less time and effort, and the racks stayed cleaner for longer.

Permalink diybathroomcleaningkitchen

www.wikihow.com

3 Ways to Make a Terrarium - wikiHow

This is a comprehensive guide to building and maintaining a decorative plant terrarium, covering everything from selecting appropriate plants based on their environmental needs (woodland, desert, or tropical) to assembling the layered structure of drainage material, charcoal, moss, and soil. It explains how to choose containers based on moisture requirements—open dishes for succulents that need dry conditions and closed vessels for tropical plants that prefer humidity—and provides detailed care instructions including watering frequency, light placement, and maintenance tasks like removing mold and pruning overgrowth.

Permalink gardeningdiyhome