30+ Life Hacks With WD-40 That Make DIY That Much Easier

It may surprise some fishermen to learn that WD-40 can help reel in the trophies, but it’s the truth. Not that fish are particularly attracted to WD-40 in and of itself, but they do like shiny things, and a quick application of WD-40 will make a fishing lure a whole lot shinier than it was before.

That said, WD-40 is toxic to wildlife, so what the fisherman plans to do with the fish is pretty important. Be careful where it is used!

It goes without saying that no one likes stepping in gum as they walk down the street. It’s gross, and the extra mass on the bottom of the shoe throws the very process of walking out of whack. Needless to say, it’s a huge pain.

Thankfully, WD-40 also covers this scenario: a quick spritz on the sticky menace will either make it fall right off by itself or make it super easy to remove.

Even the best lawn mower in the world is going to be jammed by stubborn clumps of grass from time to time. Stopping the lawn mowing process to clean it out is a huge hassle.

WD-40 makes for an easy solution to this serious problem. Applying the substance to the bottom of the lawnmower before and after each use helps keep grass from sticking to it.

Kids are without a doubt a blessing, but with crayons in their hands, they can be a curse on the cleanliness of a home. No surface is safe from a kid with a crayon, and cleaning that surface usually takes hours of hard scrubbing.

News flash: WD-40 can make the job way more manageable. Spray it on the afflicted area and gently wash it away with a rag, and in no time flat, the problem is solved.

Living in cold places has some nice benefits from time to time, but no one likes waking up early to warm the car up and defrost the windows. WD-40 can serve as a solution to this problem as well.

By spraying it on the windows and wiping away the excess substance, ice won’t be able to stick to the glass. Of course, this means regularly applying it before actual frost occurs, but it’s still a nifty use.

Slugs, snails, and other pests are the bane of any carefully maintained garden. They ruin plants in no time, making days or weeks of tender care and work useless. Thankfully, WD-40 is a great repellant for all these critters who can’t stand it.

Spray some around the pots or flowerbeds — not in them, around them — and rest easy. The best part is that WD-40 is waterproof, so the barrier will remain even through rainstorms.

Why do scissors need to be cleaned? Well, pairs often used for arts and crafts can build up sticky residue over time, making it harder to cut things with them. Once again, WD-40 comes to the rescue.

Spraying it around the nooks and crannies of the scissors will help dissipate the residue and make them easy to use again. It’s also much cheaper than buying a new pair.

Glue, candlewax, you name it: sticky substances are challenging to get out of a carpet. The project is always taxing and frustrating; frankly, no one wants to do it. But the good news is that WD-40 has some use here as well.

Spraying it into the sticky area, giving it time to sink in, and wiping it all away with a sponge can go a long way toward getting sticky residue out of a carpet, even if it doesn’t completely eliminate it.

Untreated wooden surfaces can often look very rustic and attractive. But they can also prove difficult to keep clean because they take on stains quite well. It’s something that can ruin otherwise gorgeous hardwood.

But a little WD-40 on that stain and wiping it away with a rag or sponge will make that hardwood look brand new. It’s but one more surprisingly effective way to use WD-40 to clean the house.

Even the best showerhead will eventually break down or at least begin to suffer regarding performance. Maybe it’ll start making annoying noises, or the water pressure won’t be as high.

Either way, it’s a problem no one looks forward to, and a spritz of WD-40 can help alleviate the problem. This is not to say that the substance will make the showerhead last forever, but it can undoubtedly add months or years to its lifespan.

Air conditioners will eventually get clogged with dust, and there are just no two ways to do it. Of course, dust filters exist, but they eventually get clogged with the dust they filter out, and cleaning them is a pain that takes far too long.

Spraying down a dust filter with WD-40 will make it harder for the dust to stick to it, keeping your air and filter clean for longer. It’s just less work overall and cheap, too.

Mildew looks disgusting, smells bad, and presents a significant health hazard to anyone nearby. It can’t be allowed to sit around, and WD-40 is a good way to get rid of it and reduce the chance of it growing a second time.

Spray it on, let it sit, and wipe it away. With those simple steps, even heinous mildew can be eradicated easily and efficiently.

Rings are generally made to fit a particular person’s finger, but sometimes they just get stuck, and that’s not a particularly desirable scenario. The traditional fixes for such a problem include soap or vegetable oil.

But WD-40 is an equally viable, if not superior, solution. After all, WD-40 is good at making things slippery, including rings and fingers. A quick dab usually solves a stuck ring in seconds.

We’ve all noticed those black streaks at the bottom of our cars, which are the result of tar coming off the many roads of this world. One could rightfully worry that cleaning these tar stains could take hours of work on one’s knees.

But as always, WD-40 makes everything much easier. Spraying WD-40 on the tar stains will make them super easy to wipe off, saving hours of time and hard labor.

We’ve all had a time where a zipper just gets hopelessly stuck, and no amount of tugging and pulling will get it free. WD-40 can help with that. It’s just a matter of spraying it into the pully and slowly, gradually moving the zipper back and forth to work the substance into the teeth of the zipper.

With a few minutes’ worth of patience, the insane grip of a stuck zipper can be relaxed, and the item in question can be functional once again.

Whether you’re a chalk artist or a parent who wants their child’s artwork to be memorialized on the driveway, rain poses a serious problem for chalk artwork. WD-40 is a great way to waterproof these works of art so they last longer than they would otherwise.

Don’t worry — WD-40 won’t make the chalk permanent, so if it has to come up eventually, there’s no problem. But at the least, it’ll make it last longer.

Legos are notorious for sticking together very well, but sometimes they do it a little too well. When the time comes to take a creation apart and start anew, it can be difficult because the Legos are stuck.

But there is a way to make it a lot easier. With a well-aimed application of WD-40, it can be much easier to deconstruct a Lego creation and save a lot of time and frustration in the process.

Vinyl records are old school, and that means most of them are physically old and often scratched. These scratches can often cause a record to skip in the middle of its recording, which nobody wants.

Applying a layer of WD-40 to a vinyl record can help it run smoothly and prevent skipping when listening to one’s favorite song, which is all you need to keep the good times going.

The more one uses a hairbrush, the more hair that gets stuck in it. Unfortunately, it also gets a lot harder to keep that hairbrush clean. Picking out strands of hair bit by bit is a real hassle.

Once again, WD-40 can simplify the whole process. The accumulated hair clumps will come off easily by spraying the hairbrush with it and then running a comb through it.

Regarding things WD-40 can do, its ability to make wooden handles splinter-proof is worth noting. As wooden handles get old, they start to splinter, but a coat of WD-40 can stop that from happening, at least as quickly as it would normally.

It’s just one way WD-40 can help in the garden, as no one wants to get a splinter while tending to their plants. And needless to say, no one looks kindly on splinters.

Pianos sit out in the open and have many small cracks, which generally results in the keys getting dust or grime between them, which isn’t good news for the instrument.

WD-40 is a great option for spraying between the keys to clear out that dust and grime, keeping the keys sharp and responsive. The home pianist will be grateful for maintaining their tool of the trade, and the flow of music will continue.

Glass behaves in strange ways many people don’t understand. Exposed to a dishwasher’s warm and moist environment, they expand just slightly, and if they are stacked when being put away, they may get stuck as they shrink back to their original size.

Using brute strength to pull them apart could break them, so spray some WD-40 between them and watch the stack slide apart easily. Why risk broken glass all over the floor or in one’s hands?

WD-40 is a great tool for caring for leather, as it helps it retain its softness and suppleness. This also goes for leather furniture, which often tends to get cracked over time due to sunlight or general wear and tear.

Using a cloth, one can massage WD-40 into the leather of their favorite sofa and ensure that it remains in as good a condition as possible for as long as possible.

There is very little that WD-40 can’t do. Case in point, it can even be used to clean silver. A coat of WD-40 and a gentle wipe down is enough to give silver a little extra longevity, keeping tarnish away.

Now, WD-40 may not be able to remove tarnish once it exists, but it can certainly be used to keep it off of the silver in the first place.

Driving through heavy bug zones will quickly make a car grille look like a bug net, except all the bugs are splattered and dead. It’s not pretty, and WD-40 can help alleviate the problem more than most people think.

First, it’s a great option for cleaning off the bugs already on the grille. But once that’s done, a layer of WD-40 on the now-clean grille will make it harder for bugs to stick to it.

Plastic furniture is great when summer rolls around — everyone needs a place to sit on the lawn. But outdoor activities tend to make plastic furniture look a little worse for wear sooner rather than later.

Still, no matter how dirty they get, there’s no need to throw out plastic chairs and buy new ones: a WD-40 and wipe maneuver will make them look good as new in no time at all.

Waxing skis and snowboards is extremely important during the time in which they are actually being used, as it is critical for removing surface tension against the snow. Eventually though, the wax that was initially beneficial can become harmful if it builds up too much.

Thankfully, WD-40 can take care of wax buildup with fairly little trouble, ensuring that the board remains a sleek and frictionless missile on the snow. All it takes is a spray and wipe.

These crustaceans can pose a serious problem for boats, as they stick to the hull and literally grow from there using the calcium deposits that are under the paint. If there are enough barnacles on the boat, they can cause extra drag, making it so the boat needs more power to move through the water.

Barnacles are hard to remove as it is, but adding WD-40 around the barnacles will make them much easier to scrape off. It’ll definitely be good for your boat’s long-term integrity.

Fishing line is magic. No matter how well it is kept in a tackle box, it always manages to get tangled. It’s uncanny, really. When this happens, most people feel inclined to just throw out the jumbled mess, and who could blame them?

But rather than waste all of the fishing line, consider using WD-40 and something as simple as a toothpick or a pin to untangle it. The problem will be solved in no time.

Weeds are bad for any garden. Even the pretty ones have a nasty habit of hurting the other plants around them, so they must get pulled quickly. Unfortunately, pulling thistle plants can be painful because they usually have sharp thorns.

WD-40 makes for a pretty good weed killer, fortunately. Just spraying it on these weeds will kill them quickly and make it easier to pull them up. All in a day’s work, in a fraction of the time.

Lipstick stains are nice when on your face but not so much when on your clothes, where they tend to be very difficult to remove. This too is something WD-40 can handle, though it shouldn’t be a surprise by now.

Spraying the dirtied area and letting it sit for a while is more than enough. After that, all one has to do is wash the clothes as they normally would — yet another handy thing this miraculous substance can do.

Rust does no one any favors — it only weakens metal integrity and makes everything dirtier than anyone would like. Believe it or not, WD-40 can take down rust too, without much trouble.

Rather than throw away a rusted tool or piece of equipment, consider applying WD-40 to the object in question and sit back. With a good wipe after a bit the rust will come off a lot easier than one would think.

This one may seem odd, but a little lubrication on a shovel goes a long way to making a digging task easier. The shovel will have less friction between it and the dirt, so sticking it in and pulling it out of the ground will be easier.

Secondly, dirt clumps won’t stick to the shovel if lubricated with WD-40, making the whole process much less tedious. It’s an exercise in efficiency.

Ever try to get a bumper sticker off a vehicle? It’s a real pain. It’s hard to get off at all, never mind in one piece, and even if that happens, sticky residue is often left over. The same goes for price tags and any sticker.

Thankfully, adding WD-40 to the back of the sticker as it is peeled away makes it much easier to remove the whole thing without any of the aforementioned hassle.

It’s weird how surfaces related to cleaning can get so dirty, but bathroom glass often manages to get water stains on them over time, and cleaning those stains is one serious chore most of the time. WD-40, as always, offers a solution.

Simply spray down such surfaces after a shower or bath, and those water stains will be gone with little more than a wipe. Cleaning such surfaces should be simple by nature, right?

We’re not going to say that WD-40 can magically repair cracks and scratches in a phone screen, but an application of the substance can make the damage look a lot less severe.

It’s as simple as applying a coat and wiping it down with a cloth. The cracks may not be repaired, but they will be much less of an eyesore, and considering how often phones command our vision, that’s a good thing.

No one likes wasps because wasps like no one. They hate us all equally and try to make our lives miserable as often as possible. Like most insects, it’s a good thing wasps can’t stand WD-40, making it a pretty solid DIY bug-repellant.

If there’s a particular spot wasps really like to nest, adding some WD-40 there once a year will generally be enough to keep them away, since WD-40 is also waterproof. And is there really any situation where less wasps is a bad thing?

By now, it’s pretty obvious that WD-40 can make it easy to get rid of stains of almost any nature. Toilet stains are no exception. WD-40 can make it much easier to get rid of stains on the inside of a toilet bowl.

Furthermore, a layer of WD-40 on the inside of a toilet bowl will make it harder for stains to form in the future since things won’t stick anymore. The uses of WD-40 go beyond what most expect.

The use of WD-40 extends even to shoe cleanliness. After all, stains are stains, regardless of the surface. Applying WD-40 to a shoe stain and wiping it away with a cloth or rag is about all it takes to remove almost any stain a shoe could get on it.

Needless to say, this is especially useful when it comes to white shoes, which are notorious for being easy to get dirty.

Like many things, the uses of WD-40 include cleaning tiles. We don’t recommend keeping a layer of WD-40 on tiles all the time, as walking on them could be dangerous.

But with the typical ‘add a coat, wipe it down’ method, it’s easy to clear stains and grime off tiles with much less effort than is usually required. Regular methods don’t even really need to be used considering how effective WD-40 is, adding yet another benefit to its use.