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 😂

We live in an apartment so the majority of mine are space saving attempts.

1. Put a hefty shelf above the door into our flat (which then leads up a stair case) DH’s motorcycle helmet, boots etc go straight on this rather than coming up into the flat.
2. Nice wooden hook things dotted on the wall by the front door. They hold baseball caps, and a string bag of sunglasses and suncream and beanies in winter.
3. Ottoman storage bed in spare room for linens.
4. Towel storage shelf above bathroom door

We need these, boxes I bought aren’t weather proof

We put up a rail with butcher's hooks over the sink - so much space saved in cupboards**

DD gave me a label maker which connects to my phone. Now I routinely label things

• clear plastic wallets for sewing patterns, no trying to stuff tissue back into the envelope. Then a label for the spine of the ring binder so that I can easily locate the correct pattern. I have a lot of patterns
• sewing bits and pieces go in lidded pots in a caddy, the lids are labelled so that I can see from the top where to find quilting pins/different coloured buttons etc
• homemade jams etc are labelled with contents and year so we know to use up the old ones first

I bought one of those wrapping paper storage bags and now all my wrapping paper, ribbons etc are stored so neatly, no needing to hunt into cupboards for it all.

I'm going to be stealing some of these other fabulous tips.

Marking love these!

Can you post a link to where I could buy one?

I have been awake half the night (pregnancy insomnia) and have written a long list of things to do in our house off the back of this, so thank you for all the great ideas!

I have a box of cards, mostly birthdays but also a few new baby, with sympathy, engagement cards, so I can quickly get and send one if needed. I stock up as a big batch from Whistlefish every so often as they are nice cards and in a big batch are good value!

I prefer bar soap to shower gel and am very pleased with my magnetic soap holder which attaches the soap directly to the shower tiles-space saving and no more soap dish gunk.

When we needed a tumble drier, we put one on the worktop in the utility. It saved having to get rid of a cupboard.

@AlwaysPurple this is the one I have: www.amazon.co.uk/Phomemo-Bluetooth-Maker%EF%BC%8CPortable-Thermal-Compatible/dp/B08SQPRYLS/ref=sxin_13_pa_sp_search_thematic_sspa?content-id=amzn1.sym.62990140-84d8-46c7-bc71-3dfcea3af145%3Aamzn1.sym.62990140-84d8-46c7-bc71-3dfcea3af145&crid=KMO7YS4CT2GV&cv_ct_cx=phomemo%2Bprinter&keywords=phomemo%2Bprinter&pd_rd_i=B08SQPRYLS&pd_rd_r=4191383b-3ff2-44b0-a58c-e9be74fc53a8&pd_rd_w=lSCI0&pd_rd_wg=FmsLF&pf_rd_p=62990140-84d8-46c7-bc71-3dfcea3af145&pf_rd_r=1KABS6XH0YBFJK35EQXR&qid=1789625500&sbo=RZvfv%2F%2FHxDF%2BO5021pAnSA%3D%3D&sprefix=phomemo%2Caps%2C300&sr=1-2-fbc3951e-6c4e-4104-85d5-8dff376e781b-spons&aref=UCaBjDLOqX&sp_csd=d2lkZ2V0TmFtZT1zcF9zZWFyY2hfdGhlbWF0aWM&th=1

@AlwaysPurple you dont have to buy the branded labels for refills there are plenty of unbranded options

Can’t claim this as it was already here when I moved in, but hooks and a clothes rail on the inside of the airing cupboard door. I hang socks or small items on it, they’re too much faff to peg out.

We made the back part of our garage a mini add on utility room with cupboards for extra food we buy when on offer. The huge drawer freezer we bought so I could batch cook lots of meals as DH hospital appointments took up 14 days a month made a huge change to my quality of life but it was always dark and I needed a torch to find things but I got a large almost a4 size rechargeable light recently which comes on when go into that bit of the garage.

Our downstairs is all hard floors so bought a hydrovac which Hoover's and mops at the same time! It's really good at picking up too.
Added bonus that the previous shark hoover has now become the upstairs hoover too

The wardrobe one is so clever!!

I'd heard of putting the hangers on backwards and turning them around once used but that didn't work for me. Also using a second wardrobe and bringing things over to the main wardrobe as you use them....but who has a spare empty wardrobe?!

Left to right sounds so simple!

PP mentioned steam cleaners - they are great and especially for bathrooms if you've got tiles and grout. Ours has just stopped working after a lot of years hard work! We had a Karcher, which was the size of a small cylinder vacuum cleaner and had various attachments for floors, nozzles etc. I hate cleaning but I love the steam cleaner! It's really handy for defrosting freezers.

We need to replace ours has anyone bought one recently? The new Karcher seems to get mixed reviews.

When DS was younger and used to wet the bed, I found rifling through the cupboard to find new bedding in the middle of the night infuriating. I started to make up a bed bundle, so sheet and pillowcases folded and placed inside the folded duvet. I then just had to grab and go. I still do this now 15 years later, because we have different sized beds/duvet covers in our house, I always know I am getting the correct sized sheet with the correct sized duvet if that makes sense.

Can you link to the soap dispensers please? I’ve tried a few but not had any luck, tube too small or too hard to press etc.

I have follow up questions on the boxes .. how efficiently do they get back to the utility room?

I tend to sort out the laundry in my room and put each pile directly into each person's room for them to sort where it inevitably sits whenever I left it until I nag. Feel like if it was in a box then it would remain in the box until their wardrobe was empty, at which point they'd empty the box to find the item they wanted and it would stay on the floor 😅

Still reading through the thread but:

Washable coverless duvets (but make sure your washing machine drum can take the size of king/ Super king.)

Ready stocked toilet bag, make up bag and meds bag for travelling - reduces packing anxiety

Condenser tumble dryer as pp mentioned - I have had a round wooden table top cut in the past, with a pretty cloth over and stood a lamp on it when not in use so it can work in a bedroom or other space.

Reading glasses in most rooms.

Booking Task Rabbit to Tasker for odd jobs, flat pack assembly etc.

Haha we had loads of these too! We put ours of freecycle- useful for chefs.

My resolution this year was 'just one thing' where I had to do one thing a day and I bought a diary to write them down in so I could see all the progress I made. Had I continued it all year I would be such a streamlined person of the future by now (but I didn't).

Tiny things which made a difference were putting up hooks for things - a hook for the peg bag under the pulley so it didn't just sit on the floor, a hook for a hand towel in the utility, a hook for my towel on the back of my bedroom door (I do like hooks....).

Another time saver was colour coding bedsheets, we are in a king size while ds is in a double. All double sheets are blue now and all our sheets are basically not blue.....!

I'm reading back the thread and am finding it hilarious how many posts are to do with adding hooks.....😂

I will be using a lot of these. Some, I already do

• no Tupperware. Just Ikea glass dishes with bamboo lids (no plastic to crack or clips to break) that can go in fridge, freezer or oven. All stack. Just the 1 litre size
• Souper Cubes and Ikea freezer bags (wash and dry on those stands with extendable arms) for portioned batch makes such as pesto, tomato sauce and leftovers
• Breadcrumbs, cooked pulses etc in freezer bags frozen flat and then stacked vertically so I just pull out the one I want
• Clear worktops and sides - taken me years but easy to clean. Had to massively declutter to fit everything into drawers and cupboards. I try to Kondo - only move one thing to get to anything.
• Ikea shower racks that fit on pole - all use same shampoo, conditioner etc to minimise bottles. Magnetic soap holders by every sink. Bar of soap lasts weeks compared to liquid that seems to evaporate in our house.
• Always have two complete dinners in freezer for CBA days.
• Robot vacuum/mop that empties itself and washes its own mop heads. Still have to do 'proper mopping' now and again, but floors always look clean now.
• Only two sets of bedlinen per bed. One on the bed and one set in a packing cube in the relevant bedroom.
• I only ever put on a load of washing if I know that I will have time to fold, iron and put away the same day.