Never break a nail or chip your polish while opening up a can of food ever again.

As you might have assumed, a fair amount of Allure staffers have long, flawlessly polished nails. Those of us who haven’t been visiting salons during the pandemic have been perfecting our nail-care and manicure skills at home, and seeing the results bring us a little joy during a weird time. A fair amount of Allure staffers also have (and adore) cats — another source of joy. But that joy can be instantly squelched if we break one of our beautiful nails opening cat food for one of our beautiful cats. And that’s why we’re thankful for the hack Kat Dennings shared on her Instagram Stories.

On Monday, January 18, Dennings did her best infomercial impersonation, starting a short string of videos with, “Good morning. Are you a person with long nails, but you also have a cat that eats food? Hi. I’m Kat Dennings. And this is a hack for you.” Dennings shows off her long, red manicure while holding a can of cat food with one of those dreaded tabs that threatens to break your nail or at least chip your polish.

“Go into one of your drawers and take out a little hair barrette. I know you have one — we all do,” Dennings continues, holding up one of those classic, triangular snap clips. She then demonstrates how she uses that to get under and lift the tab instead of risking any harm to one of her nails. “It’s the perfect curved shape. Slides right under. Boop!”

Boop indeed.

Dennings has shared a lot of beauty tricks and hacks on Instagram over the last few months, and while this might not seem to qualify as true beauty hack — its purpose is opening a can of cat food, after all — it works to protect your beauty and implements a beauty accessory in an unexpected way. If that doesn’t count as a beauty hack, we don’t know what does.