Simple things that I should have done years ago to make life easier

[malificent7]

My lovely cat has been waking us up at 5/6am for 6 years.
Last night I had the genius idea of closing the lounge door so she couldn't come to our room.
Hence we slept longer. Why did I not think of this earlier? I love cat snuggles but love a lie in more.

Am I thick or does anyone have similar stories?

Knowing cats, she's probably weed on your sofa to show you she's actually the ruler here.

Or shredded your carpet

Or knocked everything off every shelf

That's what my cat would do!

I read this in a book but it took a lot of stress away. If the dishwasher is full of clean stuff but you have a few dirty things but neither the time or energy to unload. Put the dirty things in and wash it all again. It was a revelation. I don't use it often but I'm grateful I can do when I need to

If I close the door on my cat she scratches the carpet next to the door and on the door itself while manically meowing. Tell us your secret of getting your cat to accept this! Also… does it work on early waking toddlers 😁

PicaK, my DH would thank you for that tip. He would rather stand and wash dishes by hand than simply empty and refill the dishwasher! 🤔

I love threads like this - I moved into this house six years ago, and hung curtains I already had in most rooms whilst I got around to buying new ones - for five years, the curtains in the hall way were too short, and the curtains in the study were too long. I had priced up new ones (big window - so over £500) until one ☝️ day i realised that if I swapped the curtains over they would fit! After five years!

Not just me then!

I was expecting a shredded sofa and a dirty protest but nada. She is currently curled up on my lap having a cuddle.

Emptying the dishwasher is a 3 minute job? I don't think I could bring myself to do this.

Don’t you just leave the dirty things on the sink untill you’ve got round to emptying the dishwasher?

I think you keep running the dishwasher and adding more dirty things until you run out of things and finally cave and either unstack the now overloaded dishwasher, buy more plates, or buy a second dishwasher and accept that the first is now haunted.

<raises hand>
After years griping that there is nowhere to sit in our teeny kitchen, and we can’t do anything to extend for probably a couple of years, we…. bought foldable bar stools. Now there’s somewhere to sit. 🥳

We did this, we got to night 3 and he did a wee on the sofa, he never, ever, ever goes inside. So now we dutifully continue to get up and let him out every day at 4/5am, suckers! 🙄🙄🙄

As I reach my final decline in to incontinence, madness and a hairy chin, these are the things I wish I had cared less about:

Crockery. Just buy white. Don't get precious about "best". Yes, it's nice to have something for best, but it's only stuff.

Curtains. Eyelets are the only way. Banish curtain hooks from your life. Ignore MIL or others who go on about box pleats, pelmets, curtain rails.

Don't get overly sentimental about stuff. Otherwise you end up with boxes of Christmas/birthday cards, school projects etc. I don't have any of that stuff from when I was a child and it hasn't been an issue. Ever.

Mine is dishwasher related too. I realised one day that there is no law against running the dishwasher more than once a day if you have a lot of dishes. I no longer wash up the extra dishes, I just run the dishwasher when full and then fill it again🤦🏼‍♀️

Buy hooks for your washing line that hangers go into. When washing is dry, straight into wardrobe with no faffing.

We use plastic cups / tumblers and every time someone comes in they have a drink of water so between my kids and their friends always around the house and no one remembering which was theirs so they take another.. we have a LOT of these cups filling the dishwasher. Plus they never dry properly and drip all over coming out of the dishwasher. A few weeks ago I got a new basin filled it with hot soapy water and they are chucked in as they go, rinsed and left to drip dry once or twice a day. Don't know why I didn't do it before, there used to be about 20 around the worktop and it stressed me out.

This is great advice. I really wish my mother would adhere to your third suggestion - she has a large house full of old stuff that she never wants to get rid of/sort out.
In the end me and my sister are going to need a few skips to clean out all her crap. And no it's not even sentimental stuff, most of it is broken, unused items from the last 30 years.

If clothes are clean enough to wear again they can hang up or go into drawers with other clean clothes.

For so long I had an irrational dilemma about this.

Related, but one day I realised I didn’t need to store dirty laundry in the bathroom or bedrooms. Everything that needs to be cleaned can go into the machine and wait in there until there is enough of it to wash.

Everyone has their own cups/mugs with designs in to do with their hobbies, sports teams, etc. They get reused throughout the day with just a light rinse when changing drinks. We also have nice ones for the occasional visitor.

Love this! Now going to clear out school stuff that I haven’t looked at in years, not sentimental either and I’ve learnt to live for the moment and today, not in the past.
Also agree… white crockery…, timeless!

We had to clear out a family home a few years ago. OMG! The stuff that had been horded over the years was horrendous. We didn't want any of it, but felt unbelievably guilty about getting rid of it. We charity-shopped a lot of it, but most of it went to the tip. I wouldn't wish that on my relatives.

I had a massive declutter, it felt good. I had newspapers that dc had been in and had kept the whole bloody paper so just took photos of the articles. I also took photos of their drawings instead of having hundreds of paintings rolled up and never looked at. (Four dc who loved art from a very early age who are now grown up and living away from home).

I need to do that to my own 'art' (did art A-level, so some of it is huge and... not that good).

@MagicSpring I did it to my own too! Things that I wouldn’t display in the house felt pointless to keep especially the huge ones that took up a lot of space.

Thank you😮