From The Tips Box: Charging Stands, Travelling Light, Tile Floors

Lifehacker readers offer their best tips for standing up your smartphone, keeping your suitcase light when you travel, and keeping your feet comfortable on uncomfortable floors.

Every day we receive boatloads of great reader tips. From the Tips Box is where we round up some of our favourites. Got a tip of your own to share? Add it in the comments or send it using the contact tab on the right.

Make a DIY Smartphone Stand out of Two Credit Cards

Flynn Siy shares a clever DIY dock that fits any phone:

Repurpose unused plastic cards to a stable phone mount/cradle that can hold your phone on landscape or portrait orientation, and even have a charging cable access. You can read a full tutorial on how to build it here (or here on Instructables).

Save Old Clothing for Travel and Pack Light on the Way Home

Michael Kuhn finds a new way to keep his suitcase light:

Laundering clothing on a trip is a nuisance. You can do it in the sink, or the laundromat, or have the hotel do it. Sometimes none of these options works and you end up wearing the same grungie clothing a bit too long. Nearing the end of a trip the cleaning might cease and you have a bag full of stinky clothing to pack home.

Instead, stash away your clothing discards still suitable for travel; tops, bottoms, socks, underwear. Take them with you and use them. When they are dirty, throw them away. Not taking them back home lightens your baggage and leaves room for more souvenirs, or new clothing.

Leave your discards neatly folded on top of a trash can. That way the cleaning people know you did not forget them, and if they are still usable, they might be taken home and used by them.

This only really works if your old, trashable clothing is still somewhat wearable and doesn’t look like garbage. But even for those old trashed clothes, you could wear them when camping. Of course, it’d be nice to donate them instead of trashing them! Photo by Joey Manley.

Make Your Floor More Comfortable with a Hidden Memory Foam Pad

Cipheroid gives his feet a little extra love:

If standing on a hard tile kitchen floor for any length of time hurts your legs and feet, but you don’t want to spend big money for a puny gel mat, consider MacGyvering a comfy floor cushion using a throw rug and memory-foam mattress pad.

Buy a throw rug that fits the area you’re looking to cushion (in a kitchen, an indoor-outdoor throw rug will weather spills nicely). Then buy a memory-foam mattress pad in the thickness and size you want (a 1-inch twin size will usually do, and these can be found cheap online). Cut it slightly smaller than the rug, so the edges of the rug lay flush with the floor. You can use a little double-sided carpet tape to keep the rug from sliding off the mat.

Compared to a pricey gel mat, this is way cheaper, you can cover as large an area as you need, and your choice of colours or patterns is wide open. It’s a perfect option for galley-style kitchen layouts — you can cushion the entire width if you want.

Photo by Mike Sheard.

Keep Things Warm After They’ve Been Toasted

Woflencj shares a small breakfast tip:

If you fix 3 toaster waffles for breakfast and you only have a two slot toaster, toast 1 by itself first, then the other two with the first one on top to keep it warm.

Photo by Janineomg.