Lifestyle expert Justine Santinello has the answer to those household head-scratchers.
Have you ever looked at the two holes at the bottom of your sneakers and asked, "What the heck are those for?"
Lifestyle expert Justine Santinello has the answer.
“Most people think that these are here to ventilate the foot, and they do that, but they are here to give you that nice tight fit on your foot,” she told Inside Edition.
If you are wondering what the pom-pom at the top of some winter hats is for, Santinello can trace it back to early sailors.
“Sailors used to wear these hats and they put these pom-poms on there, so when the sailors were out at sea and the waters were rough, they wouldn't bash their heads. It gave them extra protection, just by putting that little pom-pom on their hat,” she said.
Those little flaps on the side of children’s juice boxes may look like they serve no purpose, but they are actually there by design to help you hold the box properly and avoid a spill.
“Hold your juice box from the flap instead of squeezing,” she said. “Because you know when you squeeze and it makes a big mess everywhere. If you hold them from here, no mess.”
Pasta spoons have a hole on the cradle part, which may look perplexing, but it's actually there to help you measure out a single portion of spaghetti.
“Take your dried spaghetti and put it into the hole like this, and when you have that all filled up you know you have one portion size,” she said.
On childproof medicine bottles, the caps can be flipped upside down and because they have ridges in them, they can be places on top of the container to make it easier for adults to access.
Have you ever noticed the tiny 12m symbol found on all shampoo, lotion and makeup bottles?
Santinello says it is an indicator to let you know that the product will be good for 12 months once it is opened. Sometimes a tag will say 24m, which means it's good for two years.
Have you ever wondered why your bread has different colored tags?
The color of the tag tells you the day of the week on which the loaf was baked.
“Supermarkets get deliveries of fresh bread five days out of the week. Now, the color of the tag will tell you what day out of the week the bread was delivered. And it goes in alphabetical order. There are blue tags, green, red, white, yellow,” she said.
A blue tag means the bread was delivered Monday, green means Tuesday, red is Thursday, white is for Friday and yellow tag means it came in on Saturday.
Some items in your home may feature a number inside a triangle on a piece of plastic. The number is in reference to how safe the plastic is and how good it is for recycling.
“They use numbers 1 through 7 in the triangle,” she said. “You wanna make sure, if you're storing food and beverages, that the number inside the triangle is either 1, 2 or 4. Those are completely safe to store food and beverages. The others are safe, but you probably don't want to store your food in there.”
Click here for more information on the plastic numbers.
