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 😂

I have a similar thing for baking trays, another for pan lids and I use a magazine file like this https://amzn.eu/d/03CSDj4p to store all the cling fim, baking paper, tinfoil, freezer bag boxes in.

That cupboard is a thing of organisational beauty

I have these tubs in 4 different sizes. All lids fit all boxes. As previously mentioned, freezer stacking is very efficient.

My "tupperware" I use the most is old Chinese-takeaway boxes.
The boxes stack inside each other, so that's easy. The lids are a bit more tricky as a pile of lids will fall over and spill all over the place. I now store them all together inside the re-purposed soft-plastic bag from a small loaf of bread

I had communal school socks for my sons for years. Now each of them (and DH) has a pattern/type of socks and pants and heaven forfend they want a change!

I have a stack of named boxes in the utility room and all clean dry washing goes in the named box then up to their rooms. I give DH all the household washing like towels/tea towels etc and he's got some complicated Japanese towel folding system going on in the bathroom which I don't care about. We've all got our own colour/pattern towels too.

I shall follow the sheet labelling thing though, that's a problem. I usually solve it by only washing and drying one set at a time but over the winter that's not easy.

This is radical. I have about five laundry baskets. They are all piled high. If I got rid of them...

A few years ago we bought a new dinnerware set online and the first plate was broken in transit. They ended up sending 3 sets so we never run out of plates bowls etc I'm considering having two dishwashers to serve as storage and alternating always clean stuff. We are lucky to have the space for this. 3 growing boys who never stop eating!

Also the dishwasher is soooooo worthwhile. Robot hoovers too.

How can you tell that?

Cat water fountain... I think whoever posted that has possibly changed my life!
I'm forever kicking, FFSaking, slipping and generally feeling murderous towards the cats because I'm a clumsy twat! Hello Amazon...

Ooh for my lids I hung them like this on the inside walls! Another little pleasure every time I need one!

Loving this thread. Thank you @HardyPinkPanda for starting it. So many good tips.

A hack I've come to love is having clutter free work tops in the kitchen. This means the kitchen is easy to keep clean and always looks clear and tidy. I also apply this to the bathroom. Saves so much time for cleaning.

Storage is my best friend. Been a huge fan since the DC were little and I had loads of different boxes and baskets for all their crap toys. I still like everything well stored now. That way everything is easy to find, access and it seems to be more manageable to keep an eye on clutter breeding.

Are these the ones that act like a loofah with the soap bar inside? Great idea!

I used to have a nylon puffy thing which got a quick rinse after the shower. One day I noticed a faint smell that built up to a horrible stench - it was the sodding bath lily. Binned it and haven't bought one since. Yuk!

I put all our flour in jars to stop weevils
I also leave the big spoons/ scoops I use for floor/oats etc inside their jars permanently.

Another one I thought of, hang washing out to dry on its coat hanger. Saves the job of pegging it out and un pegging before you hang it on its coat hanger anyway. Also means it goes straight in the wardrobe and never risks getting crumpled in you laundry basket

Storage baskets on the lower shelf of the coffee table. One for him, one for me, one general. Takes very little time to drop things into them so the room looks clearer and calmer.
Switching a socket set in the kitchen to one with USB sockets too. With hindsight should have got it with USBc too.

I use one of those strong plastic suction hooks for my hairdryer. Works a treat and no drilling required.

Oh yes and cupboard storage. I got racks from Ikea to store chopping boards and saucepan lids standing up.

and I got cupboard storage where it adds like a freestanding shelf, so instead of having say 4 bowls stacked on top of each other, there’s 2 on the top and 2 on the bottom, easier to get. And a rotating spice rack wheel thing.

Ceramic knives. Game changer for someone like me who likes super-sharp knives but not sharpening them.

A bit niche but I raw feed my dogs and use a silicone spatula to prepare it. For YEARS I only had one and it was always in the dishwasher so needed washing by hand before I could feed them. They would be going crazy with excitement while I did this.

One day I was in Ikea and splashed out on two new spatulas at the grand total of £1 each. I've no idea why I didn't do this years ago!

On a slightly related note, I've recently bought one of those dustpans with the long handle and the clippy brush like they use in McDonald's. My bathroom floor is now completely free from cat litter as a result. People refuse to believe me when I say that these purchases have been life changing 😆

When we refurbished our utility room we threw out so much crap from the cupboards.....which prompted us to design it with fewer cupboards, in the hope we would accumulate less "stuff". That was over a year ago and it seems to work so far. We also got an old school ceiling drying rack which is great. Washing dries quicker and no floor space taken up with the clothes airer.

Getting some good ideas here although many of my storage/organisation ideas are thwarted by not everyone being on board. We have a basket by the front door for (winter) hats, scarfs, gloves, etc (summer) caps, sun hats. DH bypasses this every. Single. Day and puts his hat or cap on the kitchen or hall table. I bought underbed shoe storage boxes for our bedroom. Mine get used, his don't. After being fed up with dirty and "not quite clean but could wear again" clothes on the floor, I bought a lidded box for them. The clothes are now left near/next to/on top of the box . Arrrggghhh. When DC move out I am seriously thinking about having my own (tidy-ish) bedroom!

I've just moved into a new build and have been enjoying making the space work for us. A 'temporary' £10 clothes rail in the cloakroom cupboard to hang coats on as hallway doesn't have anywhere has made me the happiest. They were flung over the back of the sofa before. The robot mop and hoover has been great too.

I bought a Shark vacuum/mop it’s great for the kitchen and smaller bathrooms that the usual hoover is a bit cumbersome for.

Got rid of almost all the empty glass pudding pots and terracotta cheese bake dishes that has just been living in the plate cupboard. I use maybe 2 of each. There’s so much more space now!

After years of keeping all my cleaning stuff under the kitchen sink, I have put cleaning items needed in both the en suite and family bathroom. Now when I’m in those rooms and think they need a clean I can give them a quick wipe round instead of leaving and meaning to go and get the cleaning items from the kitchen then forgetting till the next time I’m in those rooms.

Spice and herb jars I keep on a pretty circular ceramic cake stand. DH enjoys cooking so we have quite a collection. He puts things back, whereas he doesn't on the rack.

We now keep the slow cooker in a cupboard rather than on the worktop after having a good clear out.

Put the DC shoes in their bedroom and coats on the back of their bedroom door at night so they put them on as part of putting their uniform on and come out of their bedrooms ready to go, so much quicker! (We're a shoes on household!)

I have so much love for this. I also used to live with things being not quite right, or not quite finished. We've done the plastic tubs with lids, and the shoes by the door. I would love to get the tumble dryer one. Your prized cattle comment was brilliant. But how did you lose a cupboard, did it require much expense refiguring the existing cupboard?

I did something similar over the summer -

I threw out all my old, damaged toxic frying pans and replaced them with a set of cast iron pans. No more burnt food every time I cook🤣.

I put up blackout curtains in my bedroom, I moved I. Four years ago and just had blinds, the difference to my sleep is game changing. Why did I not do this sooner!

I finally put a number on my front door and a new light bulb in the outside light that hadn’t worked since I moved in🫣.

i threw out any shoes I haven’t worn in two years. The space is immense - why did I keep shoes that didn’t fit property/were wildly out of style/smelly? I got rid of 11 pairs.

I shouldn't be commenting as I read as there may already be an answer, but similarly @SethTrek , did the change to the kitchen cabinet require much in the way if effort and funds?