Last weekend I drove to my parents’ house to celebrate my dad’s birthday. I bought them dinner at a little French bistro, then we went home and enjoyed a Spiderman-themed cake my sister provided. (Why Spiderman? She’s a comic book historian, and they were “out of Batman.”) The cake—a carrot cake with cream cheese frosting—was quite good, and my stepmom sent me home with a slice. She set the cake on a plate, placed a little plastic “pizza table” in the center of the slice, and covered the whole thing with a clear shower cap. That’s, as they say, a hack.
“Finding clever uses for crap you would usually throw away” is a lifehacking mainstay: Organizing wires with bread clips, using a rubber band to loosen a stubborn screw, any of these 14 uses for binder clips—all fall into that category, as does anything involving the white plastic “table” that comes stuck into the center of your pizza. The official name is “pizza box support,” but that’s not as fun as “tiny pizza table.”
Whatever you call it, this thing is quite good at offering support, either for a pizza box, or your phone, or—as you can see in the above photo—the plastic protecting a slice of to-go carrot cake (or any cake, for that matter). I know there have to be even more uses for the little thing, and I have a suspicion that you clever readers have a few.
So please, if you do have a hack, a trick, or a use for this unassuming piece of plastic, please share it with the class. The most useful and creative will be compiled into a roundup to be shared with the internet at large, so bring your best.