To ask for your ultimate life hacks/time saving ideas/easiest recipes/money saving tips all in one go.

[shakeituntilyoumakeit]

I’ve been unwell and off work for a money and the combination of getting back on my feet and January and kids and school and washing and ALL OF THE THINGS to be a bit much at the moment and need some ideas on how to make life easier.

I’ve just started making overnight oats for everyone which is very cheap, very quick, vegan, a nice kids activity for them to learn to chop fruit and pick what they want and thought of the time I could have saved over the years. This combined with the fact it’s really healthy and it’s a nice activity to do with the kids made me want to reach out for hive mind collective wisdom.

What am I missing! I’m looking for your smuggest tips!

No, you use the one underneath when you take out the first. So you actually only change them half as much.

I do the bedding in pillow case too,simple and time saving.
I double cook things from scratch but tend to run out of freezer space and no room for another anywhere(my next house must have a garage).
I meal plan,we forgot this week and now have a few days of eating fridge contents to avoid waste,some interesting meals ahead
I had my DD having school meals,she's now at college so makes her own packed lunch,planned for the week.
Teach your kids which things can be worn more than once before putting in the laundry basket.
I use plastic pegs for sealing bags,much cheaper than clips and don't come undone in the freezer.
I also have unlabeled stuff in the freezer,not time saving but makes life more interesting.

Be strategic with the laundry!

Sort the washing as you hang it on the airer:

•Socks hung up in pairs for easy folding
•Husbands T-shirt's next to eat other
•My T-shirt's next to each other
•Same with underwear
• one trouser load a week, and all in airer together because of the space they take up compared to smaller stuff

Then it can be folded off airer and put straight into drawers....I don't iron!

Separate wash for toddlers stuff, don't buy them white stuff so everything can go in together and it saves you doing two half loads of white/dark and coloured.

Service wash at laundrette for bedding and towels - invest in extra bedding so you can change bedding fortnightly, but take a full load to laundrette every 4 weeks (assuming your can find space to store a dirty set for 2 weeks), probably the best £15 we spend!

Other stuff:

•Toothbrush, toothpaste and facecloth in kitchen/downstairs toilet so toddler has no excuse to escape back up stairs after breakfast and before we leave for nursery
•sticky notes on fridge for meal planning. Big square ones with regular meals written on, small tab ones with ingredients you need to cook the meals. big ones in vertical line down one side of fridge door (5/7/14, depending how many meals your planning for), stick small ingredient ones next to each 'meal', take away the ingredient ones for anything you know you already have in fridge/freezer/cupboard, take a picture and you have a meal plan and a shopping list good to go on your phone.
•add some tab stickers for snacks, house stuff, toiletries and other bits you need regularly, and they can be stuck under food list as and when stuff runs out/needs replaced
•ikea kallax and boxes....everyone has a box for their shoes, that goes in kallax unit at front door. We have boxes in there for other stuff too..one for hats/scarves/gloves, one for de-icer and scrapers, one for shopping bags and so on

Portion up and freeze mince / chicken breasts in ziplocks but flatten them, defrosting is way quicker.

Order spice pots with their own tsp inside for accurate outcomes in recipes.

Fridge organisers! I have a small fridge but don’t have to sift through it as most things have their own tray. Cheese, yoghurt/cream, half used fruit/veg.

If you don’t own a tumble dryer fold bed sheets and big items of clothing before putting on radiators , irons them nicely.

No fridge space? Keep bottles of drink outside if you can during winter.

Always keep a tub or food waste bin beside you when prepping food, less mess on your work surface, all part of “clean as you go”.

Bike inner tubes, cut into strips, make really strong ties for gardening, camping.

Porridge cooked overnight in the slow cooker (especially with added stress apples and cinnamon) is great. It's lovely to wake up to a warm breakfast.

Stewed apples, not stress apples 🙄

• Batch Cook soup. It’s cheap and there’s always a meal only a couple of mins wait away.
• Never Pay full price. I rarely buy the same brand twice in a row, kids get whatever cereal/snacks is on offer at the supermarket, I am not loyal to any brand. Also, I rarely buy online without a discount code.
• serve Tesco 32p garlic bread with a lot of meals to make it go further.
• iron for 20 mins even if I cba, as it means the important stuff gets done.
• Fold the drying straight out on the dryer to cut ironing time.
• Employ the kids to help eg put daddy’s socks in his drawer and fold Kitchen cloths (dd6), find own underwear and pjs and put away (dd8), fold washing/hang washing in wardrobes (dd11).
• Write a list of what you want to get done or write stuff down as you do it.
• Once I’ve tidied I look for 10 more things to put away or chuck out, Less stuff means less stuff to have to deal with.

Oh I forgot Greek yogurt + frozen mango makes something that resembles soft serve ice cream. It’s virtuous (and cheap) but tastes very indulgent.

Are overnight oats cold?

Frozen sandwiches? Wha? Help.

Tbh, I've stopped cleaning excepting filth.
Sometimes eat just cheese, garlic, pasta, chilli.
I sometimes buy new clothes instead of washing some.

Honestly, I don't belong here. I'm probably a man.

I wash individual people's clothes together. Seems easier to sort it at the dry end, and I know if there are 5 clean t shirts for DS for the week ahead because I've just washed 5, iyswim. I don't have to sort out laundry afterwards as each load just belongs to one person or else it's sheets and towels.

I must have saved thousands of hours over the last 30 or more years by not ever ironing, anything!

• a tiny lie because I once ironed some white linen trousers for my holidays but other than that my iron (yes I do have one) is somewhere but it can stay there for the next few years too.

My neighbour is the opposite and irons everything! Bed sheets and pillow cases etc and even tea towels. She can not be convinced it is not required and she even says she finds it theraputic to stand ironing for 2 hours. She won't even do it sitting down.

The lady a few pages up who has a small bag within her bag containing bits and pieces, I have always done that and you can buy organiser handbag inserts (Primark did them for a couple of £ but not sure if they are still on sale). They have several little compartments for eg. keys and pens and headache pills plus tissues and lipstick/mirror kind of things all stay in there and I just swap the insert into my new bag if changing it for the day.

I must stop buying handbags. How many does a women really need?

Insisting on things like coats hung up as soon as we come in the door and shoes in the porch.

I have a free notes/memos app that I only use for recipes
I send recipes I've found to it and if I don't like them when I've cooked them, I delete them

I keep it completely separate from other notes apps so it's easier

Various lists on google keep - shopping lists, to do lists, general going away list and keep updated. All in different colours for easy access

Some of these are so over the top they are definitely using more time than they save.

Mine are mostly to do with delegating: have trained my crew from infancy and as young adults they do their own washing, clean their rooms and bathrooms and change their beds, do the hoovering for pocket money and things like emptying the dishwasher as requested. They will also each cook once a week when I’m not feeling the cooking vibe (I have four of them).

I’m hoping no one will notice that I don’t actually do much any more.

Also a pot keys go into as soon as we get in the door, so no searching for keys. Another little pot for stamps. A drawer with lightbulbs, fuses, etc.

Don't have four cats.
Meal plan.
Put all your leftovers into a tupperware in the freezer. After a week, you will have enough to make soup.
Don't have four cats.

I wash everyone’s clothes separately.

DH and I, 2 DC each have our own laundry basket. When it’s full, I was for that person. Goes in, goes in tumble dryer or hung up if cannot be dried, goes back in their basket and back to their room.

I’ve found it saves me a tonne of time in sorting. No more whose socks are these?

Each DC (9 and 5) will bring their basket down when asked and take it back and put away when done.

I tried having a set day for each person for a while but it didn’t really work out. So now I just do it when the basket is full or nearly full.

Towels I do in a separate load and sheets.

I also meal plan and keep an updated list on my phone of what we have in the freezer and pantry. This will be the start of my meal plan for the following week - so sill look to use what I have first.

I also keep a list of ‘jobs’ to get done on my phone - things like book tickets for x, pay y, call z etc. When I have a free minute and sit down with my phone, I go to my list and do something from it first before I waste time doing anything else.

Finally, do things as soon as you see them. See an email from kids school about xyz, respond immediately.

To peel an orange with less mess - this really works:

Ignore all the advice that you need to defrost food before you cook it.

I batch cook curries, chilli and spag Bol. I use frozen prepped onions or base veg (carrot, celery, onion) and cook it all up, decant into single size aluminium containers and bung in the freezer. I also use individual spices not those very expensive spice packets.

When it comes to cooking the frozen portions I heat the oven to 170 fan and cook the individual alu portions from frozen for an hour and they are perfectly heated up. Just loosen the foil edge and keep the lid on to avoid the contents from drying out.

The post above should be about reheating cooked portions. That said I don’t defrost mince if I’m making a spag Bol or chilli, I just bung the frozen mince into the pan. I’m not dead yet and have been doing this for years, same with frozen prawns in curries.

Identify what is annoying/wastes your time and figure out/research ways to fix it.

For example, my garage kept getting leaves blown in which I needed to sweep up. I keep the garage window or door open to allow condensation from drier to escape which let the leaves in. I got good at getting my son to sweep the leaves up. What made our lives much better was when I got some mesh and tacked it on outside the window so it can stay open and no leaves get in.

My kids kept flooding the floor when they had a shower. I reminded them to be careful but nothing changed. I used that shower annd realised the curtain wasn't wide enough. Now there are 2 overlapping shower curtains and no puddles.

I also totally agree with not ironing, my mum irons bedding and underwear, why?!

@MelanieFrontage my MIL irons socks 😂😂 always gives me the giggles.