Housekeeping life hacks that changed your life

[Newmumburnout]

A bit dramatic of a title 😂. Wanted to start a new thread for great ideas we can share where something easy and small has made your life so much easier ! having a 1 year old and 3 pets and it's a chore to keep on top of everything. Even if it's not housekeeping please share !
Mine are:
Getting as much as possible delivered on a schedule. One being hand wash. I use the brand raindrop they supply a lovely bottle and send tablets to refill so you don't have to keep buying plastic hand wash bottles and they are always full.
Making chicken and rice bowls in one pot. When I cook dinner I will make a few lunch pots, you add rice, chicken, stick , veg etc with whatever spices and cook for 30 mins in one glass tupperware pot. That's it, eat from the.same container after warming up !

Anyone else ??

Which brand of electric spin scrubber do you recommend?

The two minute rule - if you have two minutes spend it tidying up. When we have longer, we clean something bigger - fridge, etc.

Consider how much work something is before adding it to the household. E.g. unnecessary stuff that needs dusting or regular maintenance, buying clothes that don't need ironing, etc.

I reduce housework. E.g.
My loo brushes/roll holders are fixed on the wall, not floor. So not having to be moved to clean.
I've coated the shower glass so scum doesn't stick & is easier to clean. Also use a squeegee after every shower.
We've minimal stuff so less to dust, tidy.

Washing done when there's a full load. Put away immediately after coming off the line.

Really it boils down to do things now, not later, and keeping our house uncluttered & finding ways to reduce the work required.

I used an empty fabric conditioner bottle for the citric acid gel cleaner I made. I made four times the amount so a good quantity. It was one that had Fairy outdoorable in it and when I took the plastic wrap off, it was quite a pretty bottle.

My best ever discovery was to use my electric leaf blower to blast all of the pet hair out of the doors. Works like a dream 🙂🙂

Once the dishwasher is done but still hot, I turn all the mugs / bowls with concave bottoms on their sides. Those annoying pools of water run off and evaporate instead of dripping during unloading.

I use whiteboard pens to write shopping lists on the inside of my food cupboard door as I run out of items. a bit of bleach on a paper towel clears it.

I write the use by month/year on cereals boxes in fat felt tips so the family don’t eat later dates

I use a recipe book called Lucy’s Food (Lucy Cullin) for planning meals, each recipe has all sorts of tips that go with it. There’s a lot of make ahead things and suggestions for base items like an onion base which I zizz up in a food processor every now and again and freeze flat, breaking off bits as I need it for recipes. Theres also a whole section on menus from summer parties to last minute dinner parties and informal suppers with friends.

Yep. Or use a silicon-bristled brush. Picks up human hair too, wherever it gathers.

I do this too with masking tape! Tearable, writeable and comes off cleanly when you want it to, unlike most labels.

Baking paper on tops of kitchen units, using autoglin car glass cleaner on windows and mirrors and a steamer to do bathrooms

I do all the housework - cleaning, dusting, hoovering, laundry, watering houseplants and outdoor plants, anything else - on Sundays while listening to back-to-back podcasts. It takes all day and I'm pretty tired by the end, but then I don't have to think about housework at all for the next six days, except for doing the washing-up once a day. I've done it this way for years, including with DC and pets in the house, after it started to seem like my life consisted of work-commute-clean with no time for anything else; this was a way to claw back evenings (which were then spent working or snoring and drooling on the sofa) and Saturdays. I now wfh but have stuck with the Sunday schedule as doing housework on other days feels like more work! Doing all the housework in one go is also fairly good exercise as you only tend to sit down for short breaks.

I tried to establish a similar schedule of doing any work in the garden on Saturdays, but the weather refused to cooperate - so my super-efficient gardening hack was to pretty much abandon the garden and just cut it all back every six months or so.

My only other housekeeping hack is that I cannot cook, so I don't waste time doing it 😁

This isn't advice, merely sharing my laziness. Spray warm radiator with furniture polish, diluted zo flora or wipe fabric conditioner over the top. My mother always thinks I've been furiously cleaning before her visit because the house smells 'clean' 🙃 😉

A small question regarding housekeeping hacks: How do you clean inside the radiators??

A hairdryer is great for blowing the dust out of radiators - just make sure you have the hoover handy before you begin! My DH has an electrical air duster blower for cleaning out computers, that's also really good for getting dust out of radiators and other hard to reach areas.

A cupboard downstairs where everyone each has their own shelf for their bag, books, hats, scarves, etc to go when they get home.

I do this too. By Sunday evening everything is sparkling and organised and I can relax, and it makes me feel much less despondent that Monday morning is looming.

I'm sure it's been mentioned on this thread already but a Karcher window vac has changed, if not my life, my attitude to cleaning windows.
It's changed window cleaning from the task I dreaded most to one I almost enjoy. Now it's so quick to do and the windows actually look better! Before they used to look worse half the time because I couldn't get rid of smears.
Other window vacs are, doubtless, available.

We have the BEI & Hong electric spin scrubber - bought on Amazon. Currently on sale. Highly recommend. Linked below
Amazon link

Don’t buy refillable bottles, just save the ones you finish and use them!

I think there's a drill attachment you can buy that does this if you have a drill

My mum gives me large ice cream tubs and I line with a ziplock bag and pour in my next batch of shepherds pie mix/bolanaise mix/pie mix/casserole etc.

then freeze. Once frozen remove from the ice cream tub and I have ice cream rectangular chunks of meals which stack perfectly in my freezer. I’m going to adopt the masking tape labels as sometimes freezer roulette has yielded some very odd results.

(I pop back in an ice cream tub to thaw during the day - just in case the ziplock bag has got a small hole).

I reuse my zip locks, once when I was in a bit of a mess and had lots that need a proper wash I turned them inside out and bunged them in the washing machine with a dishwasher tablet on a low temperature wash and then hang them to dry on the washing line. I noticed on the tv recently an add showing them in a dishwasher

Getting a dishwasher. Batch cooking.

Or just toilet paper so it flushes!

Yes, humidifiers are great, I have a tank cupboard which is warm and large enough to hold a concertina dryer and a dehumidifier. Everything dries super fast.

Exactly 😎

I put left over bolognese sauce/ chillis/ curries/ cottage pie base etc in large zip lock bags as opposed to Tupperware and spread them flat. They take up much less space in the freezer and are quicker to defrost.