What small household fixes have made everyday life noticeably easier?

[HardyPinkPanda]

I’m between jobs at the moment and have decided to use some of the time to basically snag my own house.

I’m going through every room and making a note of all the little things that have mildly irritated me for YEARS, but which I’ve somehow just accepted as part of life. You know the sort of thing - not actual problems, just things you regularly curse under your breath and then continue living with for another five years.

So far I have:

1. Ruthlessly slimmed down the kitchen cupboards so I could lose one cupboard and fit a tumble dryer. Every winter I normally spend approximately 46% of my waking hours hanging damp clothes around the house and rotating them like prize livestock, so I’m disproportionately excited about this.

2. Reorganised the Tupperware so every container now lives WITH ITS OWN LID. No more rummaging through 17 lids while slowly losing the will to live.

3. Thrown out about 12 random, ancient, slightly raggedy towels that had been granted permanent residency in the airing cupboard. It now has SPACE. Things are FOLDED.

4. Replaced the sieve that hasn’t had a handle since approximately 2020. Why did I just... live like that?

5. Put bigger shoe storage by the door, so we no longer have the traditional hallway shoe landslide.

6. Rewired a switch so it finally works the way you instinctively expect it to work rather than requiring a tiny moment of irritation every single time.

Honestly, none of this is exactly world peace, but the cumulative improvement to my quality of life is ridiculous. I keep thinking, WHY DID I PUT UP WITH THIS FOR SO LONG?

So humour me: what tiny, boring, seemingly insignificant thing have you changed/fixed/bought/reorganised in your house that has made you disproportionately happy?

I want the really mundane ones. The things nobody is putting on Grand Designs but which have genuinely made your day-to-day life better.

Basically, tell me what else I should be wandering around my house looking for 😂

Magnetic soap holder on the wall - I more grimy soap stains to scrub off the sink, it just hangs in the air.

Toilet roll storage - just looks nicer than a bag of Andrex on the floor by the toilet.

Mug wall storage - looks nice in the kitchen and gave us some cupboard space back.

A handheld steam cleaner - little stains that nothing would shift have completely gone and it cleans my oven like new without needing any chemicals at all.

This one is probably only good for those with babies - one caddy for upstairs and another for downstairs. The amount of times I’ve realised what I need is in the caddy upstairs when I’m downstairs settling her and vice versa, so now we have plenty of everything on both floors. I include a lot in this - usual stuff like nappies and baby wipes but also moisturiser, toys, extra blanket, spare thermometer, calpol etc. It’s a godsend when you’re running on 2 hours sleep.

Bedding sets folded and stored in one of the pillowcases. Makes making the bed a breeze.

I have three cordless hoovers - one on the landing which mainly does the landing, one doorstairs, and a Eufy for the living room. I also have a cleaner. I hate vacuuming and it’s the only thing that makes it better!

Love the spice racks @lechatnoir do you by any chance have a link to them?

Great thread! I too have periods of snagging my home and looking for hacks. Some I did to help cleaning/storage routines and general upkeep:

After 25 years in this house, with the hand towel always draped over the side of the bath in our tiny bathroom, or falling on the floor, it finally occurred to me to get a small towel hanger that hangs over the radiator (the room configuration means that there is nowhere on the wall to put a towel rail). Life changing!

I also always found cleaning the bathroom a bigger chore than it really was. I eventually realised that this was because the cleaning stuff was stored at the other end of the house. Now I keep basic cleaning spray/cloth in the bathroom and funnily enough, it seems far less work now to keep it clean.

I now keep multi-surface cleaning spray in sight next to the kitchen sink too. Kitchen stays cleaner than when spray used to live out of sight in a cupboard.

Like others I got tired of precarious Tupperware stacks. I chucked anything lidless/topless and all food storage boxes are now in one cupboard attached to their own lids.

I go through all my clothes regularly, mend, check fit, and aim for one in one out. Total clothes have to fit in my available bedroom storage - no putting extra clothes in the loft.

Keep a box always on the go for charity shop donations etc - if unsure, leave things in the box for a while to evaluate. Donate regularly.

Store bed linens as complete sets folded together - so sheet, top sheet if used, duvet cover, pillow cases in one bundle stored in the relevant bedroom ready for use.

Meal plan for leftovers - actively use things up so that the fridge doesn't accumulate odd little pots of bits and bobs for days.

Keep a household maintenance ongoing list of small things that need fixing and every so often - say weekly- choose one task to complete. Or have a 'snags day' and get a few things done in one go. The point is planning in the time.

Declutter regularly in a way that works for you.

I don’t know if this helps anyone. A poster on another thread mentioned she doesn’t like using big boxes of laundry powder because it ends up getting everywhere and making a mess. I also use tubs of stain removal powder (Vanish or own brand equivalent). When these are all used up, I save them (and their scoop) and transfer laundry powder from the big bulk box to them and use the scoop to put it in washing machine detergent drawer. Maybe a bit too much of a faff for some but it has helped me!

@Seasidewalker Some time ago I started including a quick wipe round the basin and toilet as part of my morning shower routine, and got as much as I could off the surfaces and into the cupboards. It's made a big difference and cleaning the rest of the bathroom doesn't seem to take as long as it used to do.

Love this! Do you have a link for it by any chance? Thanks in advance!

I don’t have Tupperware anymore.
I used ‘soup cubes’ to freeze the food and and then store it in bags.
One big advantage is that it takes much less space in the freezer and obviously you can reuse the cubes

Link to show the type of soup cubes. Bought them in SHEIN as they were MUCH cheaper.

Soup Cubes

So many good ideas here! Mine which have been game changery are...

Utility room:
Pull out airer mounted to the wall high above the radiator, and a sort of material - not a pulley system, literally just pulls out and folds back flat
Pull out shelf (from caravans) just above the radiator for things which need to dry flat, or wet shoes (lots of cycling etc. so wet shoes in the winter)
Motion sensor light for when you've got arm fulls of washing (on a timer so it goes off automatically too)

Kitchen
Those lazy Susan type things in the fridge for sauces and things. 3 of them !
Tupperware stored with lid
Permanent marker pen lives in the kitchen drawer for writing on the tupperwear what's in them - no need for fancy labels etc., just use a whiteboard marker over it to take it off. Or just cross it out and write something n ew on it - it wears off after a few washes !
Decant pasta, rice, tea bags, anything I can., into jars - saves things falling over, spilling, and royally pissing me off...

Upstairs vacuum and downstairs vacuum kept upstairs/downstairs (the luxury of combining lives later on is we both had a vacuum cleaner - cordless ones) - means upstairs gets hoovered more often because nobody has to go and get the cleaner

Bathroom and toilet cleaner kept in those rooms

3 laundry baskets - blacks & darks, colours, whites. Just carry a basket downstairs, no sorting, then put the clean folded clothes back in teh basket to carry upstairs again.

There are probably more and I'm taking inspiration from the thread 😀

Oh. And black marker pen for D or K on the base sheets / duvet cover - write it on the label inside. No need to sew or iron on markers and it doesn't show.

Bought a chef-quality frying pan that'll last forever, instead of repeat-buying cheapo supermarket non-stick buggers (that'll probably give me cancer from ingesting the non-stick coating) and are useless after about 20 uses.

I'm about to order another, bigger version of the De Buyer pan I've just bought.

Oh oh and I'm on a roll here! Coat hangers. Things of the devil. We have two long pokey out pole things which stick out of a wall in the utility room (actually they're super high and drilled into boxing which is covering a steel) that the hangers sit on. Because somehow we either have loads of them or none of them depending on which stage of washing/putting away/ironing I'm at...

🤣🤣🤣

Amazon basics dry cat food dispenser - only need to refill every few weeks
whiteboard marker for writing on tupperware for freezer - once contents used rubs right off.

@CornedBeef451 @AInightingale my cat fountain is like this go for stainless steel not plastic, I live in a hard water area and it does need descaling regularly but I can scrub it, the plastic one just got all crusty. It’s too heavy for the cat to knock over, one of mine likes to dip a paw in. It’s mains operated, but I’ve never had any worries about it fusing or anything.

This thread is brilliant, a couple of other things I’ve thought of. I go away regularly with work, so I have a toiletries bag with spares of everything - toothpaste, deodorant, body lotion, etc - all I have to pick up is my electric toothbrush.

You can get sticky-backed blackboard/chalkboard. I have a large rectangle stuck on the side of one of my units, and a couple of chalk pens in the pot. I use it for meal planning and also a running shopping list. As soon as something runs out, I write it on there, take a photo before I go shopping and nothing gets forgotten.

uniform size plastic pots and a cable tidy are on my list!

I have a lot of bakeware, I enjoy baking but some of them only get used very occasionally. They are stored in a cupboard upstairs, but I have a list of every shape and size which I keep with the everyday baking tins. If I want a particular size I can look at the list and know that I have one. I’ve also printed out a chart that helps you convert from round to square tins tells you what proportion of the mixture you need.

Sorry, I can’t remember which poster was asking about the airing cupboard. I think the only answer is to corral stuff; buy baskets and put eg hand towels in one, bath sheets in another. Every bedding set in its own pillowcase is a must. I’m still mourning the loss of my airing cupboard when I had a heat pump fitted

AI or not thanks for starting this thread… it’s a mine of information!

Yes, they clip on easily and stay put. They are great (we also use them when camping to keep food warm when we've got limited cooking space).

I've started with motion sensor lighting (both indoor and out). It's brilliant because I live in an area where street lights are a foreign concept, and I never have to worry about lights being left on, or getting dirty marks all over the switches.

Beds with under-bed storage are excellent.

Privacy film... it is AMAZING! I can now wander through my house with my hair as wild as it likes to be, without shocking passing delivery people.

I also have shelving in my oversized boiler cupboard. My toiletries look fantastically organised! Also, shelves in what was probably an old larder, although I aspire to get a chest freezer in there one day.

Extra plug sockets, to make it easier to vacuum the stairs and landing (without having to unplug and put it in somewhere else).

Socks are all black and all match.

8L water dispensers for my dogs. The youngest used to drain ceramic bowls, play hockey with them, and smash them. The cast iron one still needed filling every time I came home. An 8L one lasts her a week!

I aspire to pan drawers, eventually, and a kitchen where the cupboards go all the way up to the ceiling, for maximum storage.

Love this idea. Could do with safety pins/nappy pins? )

I’ve been thinking how of these might really improve my life. We have hard floors, so want sure if it would work. Can I ask what type you have?

Same here, when my house was remodeled I had the washing machine in utility room upstairs.
Never have to schlep laundry downstairs (dry stuff with in the dryer, or in heated rail next to washing machine or occasionally on the flat roof adjacent.

Level wood floors throughout. One big shag pile rug in one of the rooms. Ceramic tiles in the kitchen area

I'm channelling my niece who stayed with me recently, working mum of two small children and the most efficient woman i know! She wipes as she goes whilst she's waiting for the kettle, showering or whatever. I stand there moaning about how x needs cleaning but in that time she's given it a swish 🤷‍♀️. It definitely helps up keep on top of things.

I would take out all of your plugs from the sinks. Mine were disgusting. If you have ones that are pop up
or on a lever. I had to replace one as I couldn’t get it clean, but I cleaned the others and wondered what terms I had been near!