Mashable, a tech site, says you should buy a kiddie pool. Not for your kids, for yourself. As they point out, if you have a roof or backyard, fifteen bucks, and a garden hose or a big bucket, then baby, you've got a pool going.

(They claim you can also put a kiddie pool on your fire escape. I cannot endorse that particular variation.)

You're all set to leave for your well-deserved Christmas holiday when you realise you haven't prepped your home at all. Here's a list of all the energy vampires you should disable (or adjust) before you head out.

We are drowning the world in plastic. It washes onto our beaches, it sits entombed for centuries in landfills, it floats around the ocean in a cloud of microscopic particles twice the size of Texas. Most of it — 88% in Australia — never gets recycled.

Recycling it still takes 10% of the energy of making new plastic — not nothing. It would be nice to use a little less in the first place.

Whether it's a former roommate, an ex-partner, a friend, or some random partygoer whose name you've forgotten, someone is going to leave stuff at your home at some point. But hold on there, pal, that property isn't automatically yours now. Here's what you should do with it, according to common law.

I love spruce-up shortcuts. Company coming to your messy home? Just clean your bathroom. Look like shit today? Slap on some red lipstick.

Here’s mine: Replace your shower curtain, and you’ll feel like you have a whole new bathroom.

Whether you just don't have air conditioning or want to save money on energy, there are lots of ways to keep cool as the mercury rises. Here are some good ones.

The hacks in this video are, for the most part, terrible. You know they’re terrible, everyone knows they’re terrible, probably the people who made them know they’re terrible. But they’re so popular that this 20-minute compilation, which collects previous videos from the same YouTube channel, got over three million views in four days. So go ahead, indulge yourself.

If my home had a Game of Thrones-style family motto, it would be "Honey, can you call my phone?" It's the usual way to find your misplaced device. But it doesn't work very well if you leave your phone on vibrate.

The kitchen is truly the heart of the home, and anyone who's lived with roommates has, shall we say, a more nuanced understanding of that old cliche. Kitchens feed resentment and bitterness just as easily as they produce joy and, unless you and your roommates communicate directly, you're in for a very bad time. Here are some guidelines to help you get off on the right foot.

I suppose there are some couples who feel as though divide household chores and childcare exactly 50-50 and are perfectly happy all the time and give each other foot massages every night.

But for most people I know, every day is a particularly exhausting combination of whack-a-mole, an obstacle course and a flogging. And it can be difficult, while in the midst of the flogging, to not feel resentful if you think you’re taking on more than your fair share.

Video: Nothing says, “My life is totally together” like a perfectly made bed. In fact, we’ve been told time and time again how making your bed is the key to success. But if you find the act of making your bed takes too long, we’ve assembled the fastest methods for each piece of the bed-making process.

“What’s a product or service you should NEVER cheap out on?” asks redditor Kill_Dr_Phil. Thousands of redditors have answers. We’ve collected some of the most thought-out answers.

If your pet gets injured, your normal first-aid kit could suffice for most things. But it's a good idea to prepare a specific kit for your dog or cat so that you can be sure you will have everything you need in an emergency.

Most of us have a knife block in our kitchen, but not everyone has the knowledge of a master chef. When you need to peel, chop or serate something, it pays to use a knife that was designed for the task at hand. This graphic explains the proper use of the nine main types of kitchen knife, along with a few useful tips.

Your floor is dirty. Your rubbish bin is overflowing. You need to change a light bulb and do the laundry. You're always busy and household errands fall through the cracks. Here's an idea: get drunk.

I want the wallpaper from Phantom Thread. And I can have it, or at least a “reworking” of it, at Wallpaper Direct. I know that thanks to Film and Furniture, a blog and database that spots furniture and decor in movies and TV shows, and tells you where you can buy it.

We've talked about sauces that everyone should be able to make, and all of the meal options they can go into, but this graphic packs 12 of them into one handy graphic. Master a few or all of them, and your dinners will never be boring again.

Dear Lifehacker, I consider myself a pretty organised person. The rest of my family? Not so much. It's not that we're totally out of control or anything, but with three kids, there are lots of activities, messes abound, and schoolwork is always a hassle. What can I do to get us all more organised and in sync with each other?

This week we have a guy who's moving into his own place and taking the stuff he bought with him. The trouble is, his old roommates use some of those things and aren't being given much time to adapt. Is there a nice way to deal with a situation such as this?