Yet more things we've done to make life easier

[listsandbudgets]

Welcome back everyone. Thank you for the hundreds of ideas... now lets keep making life easier

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Thank you

Love this thread apart from the endless comments about duvets and bedding hahah

I thought of another one since the last thread - bit of Velcro on the back of each piece of toddler puzzles - they can then be stored vertically on a shelf and the pieces don’t get lost!

Not an original idea, saw it on TikTok.

Wait, you manually stick (for example) twenty pieces of Velcro to each jigsaw puzzle? Have I misunderstood?

I have two…

Not sure if these have already been mentioned but tumble drier balls! My mum got me some and I rolled my eyes as she has a bad Amazon habit, but they are absolutely brilliant. They are wool type balls which absorb a lot of the moisture and bash everything gently back into shape. Excellent.

Also, if anyone is in the market for a new vacuum for wooden floors, I can recommend the Dyson with a laser beam (!) it’s amazing! I thought my floors were pretty clean but nope! When you vacuum with this you can literally see paths of dust you are hoovering through, so satisfying.

love this

Signing in for more tips!

Don’t know if this counts but I taught my 2 and 3 yo the “trick” to put their own coats on (where they flip it over their head) and they’re so excited to do it, I don’t get any coat arguments now.

@listsandbudgets thx 😊

Following

Only adding this as I can’t see how to save the thread otherwise (!), but last time I sorted out my kitchen cupboards (including chucking out the 20 year old spices!) I re-organised my tins of food, so they are vertically stacked by type, in rows, from front to back in the larder cupboard, so you can see at a glance if you are running out of something (previously they were all jumbled up so I never knew what I had!). Sorry, I know, it’s a really boring (and obvious) one, I’m just not very digital media literate (where’s the save thread button gone?!!)…

Every time you go upstairs, take something with you that needs to go there, the same coming down.

A niche trick, but if your kids have jigsaws of the sort that come 4 different puzzles in a box, then once you have done each jigsaw, mark back of each piece of that puzzle with a colour.
So if your kids are like mine and hurl them all back in the same box when they’re finished, it’s easy next time round to separate them out again.

It sounds that way, I'm assuming toddler puzzles means the ones with pieces that sit inside the wooden frame, sometimes there is only 6 or 8 loose pieces

Yes, this! The sort in a frame with only a few pieces.

Here's another - my fridge sharpie/marker pen. Everything in the fridge with a shortish use by date like yogurts, quiche, raw meat and cooked meat gets the use by date written in big letters on the SIDE of it in sharpie, so I can see it when I open the fridge and get reminded to use stuff up in time. Dates are usually printed on the top, which makes them easy to overlook, especially if you're short like me and have a tall fridge.

We’ve got a wicker basket at the top and bottom of the stairs for this. Works fairly well

I do this with letters (could do numbers or shapes) so I only need to use one pen. Bonus is that child then can sort the pieces out themselves (in theory!!)

We live in a town house with a bathroom on each floor - we keep a basket in each one with spare hand towels, toilet rolls and soap, and top it up once per week (reminder set on phone), so that no one gets caught without and needs to traipse down a flight or two of stairs to get supplies. Also keep toilet cleaner in each one so that no-one has an excuse to leave the bathroom less than fresh!

We got a lot of wooden puzzles from one of my SILs when her kids where no longer interested in them. She had painted the back of the puzzles in different colours so that you could easily see which piece belonged to which puzzle. So one puzzle had red backs, the other had blue backs etc.

Following on from @WhatWouldTheDoctorDo I bought a wire wastepaper basket for each bathroom - it holds 4 loo rolls but I also put a fabric drawstring bag in the bottom of each tampons and pads in so that no one is ever caught short. Once my period was over I'd go and restock.

Has been brilliant except for the one time I had a new cleaner start and she helpfully went around the house emptying all the bins including these......

A toddler can get the stickers off the sticker sheet by themselves if you peel off alk the negative space first. This has sometimes bought me enough time for a cup of tea.

The Lakeland plastic zippered
Laundry holders for bras and delicates. So brilliant to be able to put these in a gentle wash.

Except that they get lost in the house!

Three season duvet - game changer

I have just stuck some stick on hooks inside my daughter's wardrobe to hang all her accessories on.

I've also clipped all her hair clips onto a piece of ribbon and hung from one of the hooks. Very quick and easy to clip them back on and off and find them when we need them.