College Life Hacks: Cooking ramen and cleaning jeans and socks

By Walter Douglas

Do #collegeproblems like microwaved Tupperware and faded jeans sound nightmarish to you?

Fear not: With these college life hacks you’ll have the best ramen on campus, perfect jeans and shoes with that brand new smell.

Ramen sans a stove

Throughout college, there have been points when ramen has been my breakfast, lunch, brunch and dinner.

I have never enjoyed the taste of ramen when it is microwaved, but I love the taste of stove-made ramen. The only problem is when you live in a residence hall you don’t have access to a stove most of the time.

Items you need: ramen noodles, coffee maker, water and a Tupperware container

  1. Open the package of noodles, break the noodles in half and place them in the tupperware container. I found doing it this way makes them fit better in the container and allows for the noodles to cook more evenly.
  2. Pour water into your coffee maker and allow it to percolate, but don’t put in coffee. Make sure the filter basket is cleaned so your noodles don’t end up tasting like chicken and decaf.
  3. After the hot water is in the pot, pour it into the tupperware. Make sure to spread the water over all parts of the noodles.
  4. Wait a few minutes to let the noodles absorb the water and then add your flavor packet and stir with a utensil. I prefer a fork, but you can use a spoon or whatever floats your boat.

Dirty jeans

This next hack is especially helpful for college students because it saves you from having to constantly buy jeans. When washed, jeans either shrink five sizes, become shorter or the color fades. Here’s how to fix that.

Items you need: jeans, freezer and a washing machine (optional part)

  1. Fold the jeans into a square.
  2. Place the jeans inside of the freezer overnight.
  3. Take the jeans out the next day and let them warm up so you don’t freeze your legs.

Optional — the last line of defense:

If your jeans are so dirty you can see stains then the freezer method will get rid of the odor but won’t get rid of the stains. To properly wash jeans follow these steps.

  1. Turn the jeans inside out. This will decrease how much the color will fade.
  2. Put the jeans in the washer and allow for the cleaning process to finish.
  3. Take them out and do not put them in the dryer. Putting jeans in the dryer is a terrible thing to do because the heat will make them shrink.
  4. Put the damp jeans on a towel rack in the bathroom or anything that they can hang from and dry.

Smelly shoes

Every person owns a pair of shoes that they wear on a day-to-day basis; but, by wearing a shoe constantly it will become smelly. Here’s how to fix that.

Items you will need: shoes, plastic bag (should be able to fit shoes in them), freezer and fabric softener.

  1. Take a pair of smelly shoes and place them inside of a plastic bag.
  2. Tie the bag so air can’t escape from the bag.
  3. Place the bag inside of the freezer and let them stay in there overnight.
  4. Take the shoes out of the freezer the next day and take them out of the bag.

You are now the owner of fresh-smelling shoes. Do you wear the shoe constantly and don’t have time to repeat this process every night? Here’s how to fix that.

  1. Place a small amount of fabric softener inside of the shoes.
  2. Wear the shoes with the fabric softener in them.

Now your feet will smell like the softener.