”Return by Death.”


We’ve all got a little extra time in the house these days, and two of the most enjoyable ways to use it are a leisurely soak in the tub and an extended pleasure reading session. Japanese Twitter user @Deeeeese7 decided to combine those two activities by hopping in the bath with a copy of one of the volumes of the Re:Zero−Starting Life in Another World light novel series (which also has anime and manga adaptations).

Unfortunately, her reading material ended up literally in the bath when she dropped it into the water. Thoroughly soaked, she must have had no choice but to throw it out and order another copy, right?

Nope! Instead she employed a super-easy trick that restored her book to pristinely dry and readable form.

All she had to do was place the book inside a Ziplock bag, without sealing it up. Next, she stuck the bag in her freezer, with the book standing up.

The next day, she took the chilled tome out of the freezer and laid it flat on the floor, with a heavy sofa cushion on top of it (she says any flat weight, like a dictionary, should work just as well).

Then all she had to do was wait until the book thawed back to room temperature, and the pages were as good as new: flat, untorn, and easy to separate and leaf through!

“Return by Death,” tweeted @Deeeeese7, echoing Re: Zero protagonist Subaru’s famous line used whenever he utilizes his ability to bounce back to a point in time before his unfortunate demise. Other commenters impressed by the paperback resurrection added:

“If only I had known about this 10 years ago.”
“This is similar to what they’ve recently started doing at museums to help restore historical manuscripts.”
“Re: Zero Degrees Celsius.”
“So does this mean the book is…freeze-dried?”

As counter-intuitive as freezing something to remove water may seem, the life hack @Deeeeese7 shared is similar to what happens if you put a wet paper towel in the freezer. The water crystallizes and becomes less damp to the touch, and as long as the books pages are thawing gradually enough, the liquid will evaporate before the paper can become soggy. Ostensibly, it should work with any sort of liquid, and other Twitter users said they plan to use it the next time they have a book that’s damp from a coffee spill, getting caught in the rain, or falling asleep and drooling on an open textbook that suddenly became their pillow.

Really the only downside to @Deeeeese7’s technique is that it takes a day to compete the process, but as long as you have a second book to read, you can relax with another long bath while you wait for the first to freeze and dry out.

Source: Twitter/@Deeeeese7 via Jin
Top image: Pakutaso
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