Your mum/life hacks?

[Emlou07]

Aibu to want alllllll the 'hacks' for an easy life

Please share

My tip is get a stick vacuum cleaner. It's been the best thing. For some reason it was a big hassle to me getting the big one out and plugging in the cord, this one I just grab and whiz about for a few minutes.

But the battery only lasts for ten minutes you say? That's whats great about it! Knowing no matter what, I will only be doing this chore for a maximum of ten minutes means it doesn't seem arduous and I have no problem doing it any time I have a few minutes to spare. If I don't finish all the rooms, i just do different ones next time.

I wish I had thought of the two e-mail addresses idea! Going to instigate that.

A product called ‘colour catchers’ (in oz) changed my life. Throw a single small sheet (it’s like blotting paper in texture) into the clothes wash and it’ll absorb any colour that leeches out of strongly dyed or dark clothes. Seen it in Italy (different brand) so it must not be hard to source around the world.

Saves me separating colours, whites and darks. So saves time, water, detergent and my sanity! Def worth the $.

Disclaimer: it purports to work with bright red and white items in together, but I’m not brave enough to try it myself! I have done it with multicoloured + white items (stripey kids tees) and it’s been fine.

Slow cooker.

If you buy fresh herbs, chop them all up and freeze in ice cube trays like the pesto one. Great for soup as you can just chuck it in.

Hang socks up by their toes so you can roll them straight into a bundle and ready to go in the drawer.

Keep empty toilet roll tubes for crafts, same with old wrapping paper and bits of tissue.

Loving all of these 'life hacks'. I now know....

• If I am cold, to wear more clothes
• To wrap presents where I am going to hide them to save me doing minimal exercise
• To dangerously plug my washing machine and tumble dryer in the bathroom
• To "train" my family to put cups in the dishwasher
• That an oven may have a timer, and if so to use it
• To give my child a frozen ham sandwich rather than spend a minute or two making one

All very good ideas, and very clever.

I have some of my own.

• Pay bills on time to save bailiffs coming to your door
• Don't put your head in the microwave
• Eat your cereal in the shower to save time
• Save money on regular haircuts by shaving all your family's hair off

Keep them coming everyone!!! :-)

If your partner is at work and youre home alone with a breastfeeding baby who won't settle because they can smell your milk; try wearing on of your DPs worn tshirts. Worked like a charm during long, lone night shifts

Thanks Mitel.

There's always one on every thread.

At least once a week, make a meal whose leftovers can be turned into something else e.g. Bolognese that can be turned into chilli. It is cheap and saves time at least once a week!

Keep a meal's worth of non-perishable ingredients in reserve for at least one super easy meal for occasions when you suddenly have no time or energy (things like pasta and pesto / fish fingers and chips etc).

Put a cap of vanilla essence in an oven-proof mug in your oven at a med/low temp for a couple of hours before guests come round to make your house smell amazing

When using fresh herbs, freeze leftovers before they go off in olive oil in an ice cube tray and then chuck them into things to add flavour.

If you have fresh flowers in vases change the water every 2 days to make them last much longer

Have a pretty basket at the bottom of the stairs for things that need to go upstairs and encourage family members to take it up with them when they are going anyway

Dry items on radiators when the heating is on anyway to avoid needing to iron them

I wish I had thought of the two e-mail addresses idea! Going to instigate that.
If you have Gmail, you can do this very easily without having to create new addresses.

If your Gmail address is [email protected], then that will work, and so will [email protected] and so will [email protected] so you could have [email protected] and then create a filter to put those mails in a filter, bypassing the inbox.

I'm WTAF'ing at PJ's after swimming being filthy and a hygiene issue . No, DS (at about 9/10) did not find it embarrassing as a number of kids did it, and it was dark. No, it's not over his wet trunks. He was finishing that session (which has now been moved much earlier) at around 9pm, sometimes a bit later, and a 20 minute drive home afterwards and was utterly shattered at that time of night after some serious exercise.

I wish as an adult I would just put on
PJs after swimming.

So many awesome hacks here! To the foodies amongst you, any way to cut up fruits like banana, apple & grapes & have them last without going funny? Thinking for pack lunches 😬

You can buy frozen pesto and ginger, no need to piddle around with ice cube trays

DSs clothes are labelled with their surname only, saves relabelling when handed down. (Or if you're super organised, name them with names beginning with the same letter and just use 'initial surname' ). This only works if you have a fairly uncommon surname though. No point doing it if you're a Smith....

DS1's clothes have 1 dot on the label, DS2's clothes have 2 dots on the label. If clothing gets handed down, then it's easy to just add 1 dot to the label. Makes sorting clothes soooo much easier.

Freudian thanks i will have a gander at google!!

We tend to fold clothes when they are dry and we were getting lazy about unfolding them again to put on hangers to put away.

We have two big wardrobes that were just a hanging rail up at the top and a lot of unused space underneath it, so we took the rails out.

Instead we put three big shelves in each wardrobe so we could just put folded clothes straight onto them, and we put the hanging rail back but under them so there's room at the bottom to hang things like suit jackets.

We can now (if we wanted to) hang the same amount of clothes as before, but we can also put folded clothes straight onto shelves.

We've basically quadrupled our storage space in each wardrobe and ensured that newly washed and folded clothes are put straight in the wardrobe rather than dumped on a bed or chair because nobody can be bothered to unfold them and put them on hangers straight away.

All the clean washing is now immediately put away, it takes a fraction of the time, we've taken three bin bags of broken and out of shape coat hangers to the skip.

It's easier to find things, we can store more, and we're not fighting through a clutter of clothes on an over filled hanging rail to find what we need.

It is the best thing we've ever done in terms of keeping the house clean and tidy or speeding up a boring job.

You can buy frozen pesto and ginger

In some countries, yes.

I bet Mitel feels so much better for that...

Install "followme app" on DH phone then you can see where he is when on his way and always have tea on the table just as he arrives, it's great as if he pops in for a pint or to visit his mates house en route you don't end up with a burnt dinner!

I always spell my name a slightly different way on sign up forms, think Smyth rather than Smith, anything addressed the wrong way goes in the bin.

If your kids have any toys that they don't like, get some glue and cover them in glitter. They can then be re-wrapped for next year.

If you go to the shop, think about whether you need some food, and then buy that food. If there is an offer such as 3 for 2, and we think that we will eat more of that food before it goes off, then we buy it on offer. This saves money.

If you have some cheese that has some mould on it, don't throw it out. Cut off the mould and give the cheese the child that you like the least.

We find taking children on holiday expensive. If you give the children to grandparents to look after, then you can go and have a better time with the money that you have saved. The children may also learn something about the war - childcare and history lesson in one.

I hope Mitel hasn't killed this thread as there's some useful stuff- obviously some is obvious and some doesn't apply to everyone, but I'm not self centred enough to imagine it should all apply to me.

My tip is to do duvets 'burrito style, just google burrito duvet, much easier even with a king size.

Tip no2 is to store stuff in the fridge on food groups/ categories so you know what's in there and you'll know that something needs using up. Ours is roughly cheeses and little jars on top, milk and big stuff on second shelf- usually leftovers and raw meat and leaky stuff at the bottom so not everything gets covered if a lid comes loose etc.

Have a pop up mesh basket from Ikea for each visitor to put their stuff in, ie phone, charger, wallet, vape, tablet, book, kindle, etc. Colour code each visitor. This has saved clutter on all surfaces when we have a houseful, and hours of searching for things, especially when departing.
This also works for each child in the house and gets taken upstairs with them at bedtime.

Cheshire - agreed. Lets just ignore Mital and she'll get fed up and move on. This thread has some really good stuff. I don't freeze a lot of food that I really should.