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Like many households, we have a roll of masking tape in the kitchen junk drawer, and frequently use it for all kinds of crafts, labeling, and miscellaneous nonsense. But the edge is often torn in a way that makes it tough to peel up next time. I thought my husband was smart when he came up with the idea of cutting the tape and carefully folding over the edge to make a flap. But it turns out there’s a better way.

As Austin Kay notes in this TikTok , you can fold the tape into a triangle just before you rip it off. Hold the triangle down with your thumb, and you now have a clean edge on the tape, and a tab on the roll. As a bonus, each piece of tape has that tab on one end, which you can use to easily peel it off the floor (or wherever you have put it) when you’re done. Kraft Washi Tape

How to Tear Masking Tape Perfectly Every Time

I first ran across this hack on Reddit , where commenters got into a lively argument about whether this is really how it’s done in the film industry. So I’m not going to make any claims about authenticity—but I will say that this method has a lot going for it.

One downside is that if you don’t want the tab, then well, you have a lot of tabs to tear off your pieces of tape. If this is a concern, you can always save the tab for your very last piece, before you put the tape back in the drawer.

I tried the technique on various rolls of tape around my house. The first time I tried it with masking tape, I found it was tricky to twist the tape to get that nice little triangle. But after a minute or two practicing, I was getting a triangle tab that was functional (if not as neat as Austin’s) every time.

How to Tear Masking Tape Perfectly Every Time

Color Anti-Slip Tape It works with duct tape, too. It’s easier to make the nice neat triangle with duct tape than with masking tape, and it tears very nicely once you do. (Rather than yanking the whole thing at once, I found it worked best to pull at an angle so the side of the tape near your body tears first.) It even worked shockingly well on gorilla tape, which is thicker and stickier than regular duct tape and is harder to tear. I normally just go and get the scissors, but I was able to get a perfect edge tearing it this way. All the rolls of tape in my house now have little triangular tabs on them. You’re welcome, next person to use them.