Why 5 Minute Crafts Just Isn’t Realistic

As you might’ve been able to tell from my previous articles, I’m a lady on a mission for finding cheap, actually decent ways to live your life. In fact, I was just reading this article here about life hacks to fatten your wallet—a topic for a later time. I am by no means an expert, but I spend a lot of time on the internet and I like to share the things I find. I’m thinking everyone is cognizant of 5 Minute Crafts. At least, those who craft should be. I have many a time watched their short little videos and been sucked in by their charming jingle tunes and fun, colorful presentations.

But you see, I have a problem with 5 Minute Crafts. First and foremost, a lot of what they do definitely takes longer than 5 minutes. And second…it’s sort of unrealistic? Don’t get me wrong, they’ve covered a lot of stuff and some of it is totally doable. But a lot isn’t.

I want to write about why some of these crafts are ridiculously obtuse, and I want to laugh at them. Please enjoy the following rant.

The Jean Chair

May I present to you the first 55 seconds of this video 41 Awesome DIYs For Your Home. First of all, how many people just have several pairs of jeans just lying around, ready to be thrown away for this project? Jeans are hella expensive, no one wants to just throw them away like this. But say you do have jeans at your disposal—who just has poly-fil sitting around their house, waiting to be stuffed into jeans? Those are just my first two concerns, that doesn’t even remotely cover that actual crafting of this dumpster fire.

How are staples supposed to adhere the jeans together effectively? Have you ever tried to staple a fabric before, never mind jean fabric?? It’s not going to stick! And my girl Jenna Marbles in her attempt to create this monstrosity asks they real question here: how do they even close together the middle? How does the chair keep its structure? Disregarding the fact that this definitely will take you more than 5 minutes, the craft itself is not doable based off their creation design.

How to Make This 5 Minute Craft Work?

For starters, you’re probably going to have to go out and buy 4 pairs of jeans from a consignment shop to make this project not cost you a ton of money. In fact, even buying jeans from a cheap place, you’d still probably save money just buying an actual chair. I digress.

So you buy the jeans, but instead of stapling them, you sew the legs shut. Stuff them with your poly-fil as well as some sort of structural device to keep the legs straight. I’ve thought about this part a lot—what would work? I was thinking maybe straightening metal clothes hangers, or a lining the leg with a thicker, sturdier foam before filling the rest with the stuffing. Not sure.

Finally, the middle. Sew it too. Why didn’t they just say sew the pieces together? Why not make a new channel called 30 minutes crafts? Whatever, let’s move on.

Nail Polish Remover Hack

If you skip ahead in this video to 1:15, you’ll see a nice little polish removal hack. Don’t have remover? Who cares! Grab some lemon and vinegar, because that solves all DIY problems, and use that to remove your polish.

Except no. That’s not how that works. Please refer to this nice article here. According to the author, Michelle, this won’t work because:

1. Lemon juice and vinegar are dilute solutions of relatively weak, high pH acids (low pH = more acidic). They’re about pH 2, which is not acidic enough to dissolve anything quickly.
2. The reason nail polish remover works is that it’s non-polar, and can get in between the nail polish molecules and separate them (which is what we see as dissolving). Water is too polar to get in. Vinegar and lemon juice are both mainly water, so it’s very unlikely that anything will happen, in terms of dissolving.

That’s all a direct quote by the way. So no 5 Minute Crafts, this won’t work. Thanks for nice DIY lie. I looked up a couple of other at-home polish removal recipes, curious about what I might find. What I saw was toothpaste, a glue-water-basecoat concoction, and even using new nail polish freshly applied and removed to take off the old. I will admit, I have not tested any of these (except the last one, I tried that, and of course it didn’t work), but I feel like it’s safe to say—just go out and buy some nail polish remover.

Hot Glue Hacks

As I was watching this next video, I realized that I actually do like a lot of the initial hacks provided for hot glue stuff. While a lot of these definitely would take longer than a 5-minute craft, they are somewhat helpful. I would like to follow this statement up with 13:28 and onwards. Granted, they did title this segment Overcomplicated Glue Hacks, so kudos to them for recognizing it, but everything they list is ridiculously obtuse.

One of my favorites is the hot glue spoon. In what universe would you ever need to craft a spoon out of hot glue? It requires you to have an actual spoon for a mold! The hot glue shoes are also a bust. First off, I actually tried this one. They don’t stay on your feet, and they’re not exactly comfortable. And, once again, they took longer than five minutes.

What Did Work for 5 Minute Crafts

Like I said at the beginning, not all of what 5 Minute Crafts does is unusable. I personally think they just post way too much way too fast and run out of ideas. My favorite part of the hot glue video was when they used it to create a stand for a laptop so that way it could expense heat easier. I also thought the match idea was clever at 6:31, though I haven’t tried it out so I don’t know if it would actually work like that. The problem with a lot of these idea is that they rely on the dried hot glue to be structurally sound, and I can tell you that with my crafting experience, it won’t be for long.

The Overall Problem With These Hacks

The nature of the title 5 Minute Hacks suggests the ease of crafting whatever it is they’re showing. The problem with this is that most of 5 Minute Hack’s stuff is a lot more complicated than they make it out to be. Not only that, but some of their “hacks” are just plain incorrect. They have put out so much content, and I have barely stuck my pinkie toe into this, so I plan on writing more about it going forward.

In the meantime, if you are looking for some craft ideas that, granted, might take you longer than 5 minutes, then I implore you to check out my article on 22 Great Life Hacks or my article on DIY Kids Crafts and Games.