Like many people, I was just home visiting my parents for Thanksgiving. As tradition has it, my dad makes the turkey (he grills it!) and I do all of the sides and desserts. My mom, brother, and husband usually float in and out of the kitchen to watch and chat while I work. Once in a while, someone will come in to chop an onion (I always cry so hard!) or help me find a casserole dish. This year, my mom happened to be in the kitchen at just the right time to help with a surprising task.

I was trying — and failing — to open a jar of mustard (seriously, if you haven't made our Thanksgiving slaw, you need to do it now) when I realized that all of the guys were outside, staring at the covered grill for some reason. My mom saw me struggling with the jar and told me to hand it over. There was no way she was going to be able to open it with her tiny, little doll hands! I said as much and passed her the jar anyway. What she did next blew my mind: She pulled on one of her rubber dishwashing gloves and used that hand to magically open the jar. Like it was nothing!

Use rubber dishwashing gloves to help open stuck-on jar lids!

What a smart and surprising trick! I have, at home, some of those little squares of rubber that are supposed to be able to help open any jar, but they're never all that handy. For one, they're not actually grippy enough to loosen a hard-to-turn jar lid. They're also usually too small to fit on larger jars — like pickles, or bloody mary mix — which I almost always struggle with. But rubber gloves, well, they'll be as large as your grip is! And they've usually got extra treads to help you hold onto stuff — whether that's a bowl or a mustard lid.

As if any of us needed one more reason to have a pair of rubber gloves in the kitchen, right?

How do you open tough jars?