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 😂

Extra deep kitchen worktop so stuff can be stored there without inconvenience.
Plate rack: invaluable, a timesaver and plates don't get chipped. Storage for glasses and saucepans also associated with this.
Magnetic knife rack: tidy, safe and convenient.
A kitchen is a workspace and why waste time and space with cupboard doors? Shallow shelves work better but not to everyone's taste
TV on lo-o-ng folding bracket with all cables buried in wall and equipment hidden in cellar so all we see is the screen.
Remotes for lighting.
Storage with drop-down hatch behind WC for rolls and bathroom cleaning materials.
Completely organised storage of tools (all hung on hooks) in shed so no time is wasted looking for them when there is a job to be done.
Also true for cleaning and gardening tools.

It’s already been said but the hallway clutter dilema of shoes, bags and coats that hand on the stairwell, bags that sit by the sofa and muddy shoes that look like clutter.

We now have a storage box each that fits about 5 shoes. Each family member has their own box and the rule is that the shoes you wear the most goes in there - everything else must be kept in your room and you must put the shoes in the box as soon as you come in. We all have a hook which fits 2 coats, with a shared coat wardrobe that lives upstairs for the coats we don’t wear often but need the storage. We have a large ottoman box for bags which we dump bags in.

To prevent us saving lots of clutter in storage we turned the storage cupboard into a kids play area, which means there is a place where all of the “living room” toys go and it doubles up as a snug. Means we’ve kept the living areas toy free unless the toys are actually being played with.

Biggest tip is watching the families behaviour and then buying once we’ve figured out how we behave. It’s helped us buy the right storage rather than buying a bunch of stuff that doesn’t quite fit our lifestyles.

It's something I built myself. I was worried about putting a lot of work into a cupboard that would only have to be ripped out if we needed major work done or a new boiler.

It's in two halves. The lower half sits in front of the pipes and it contains shelves for towels and a cupboard for the laundry basket. It's attached to the wall in the conventional way, but with short rawlplugs that stay in the wall rather than long plastic fixings that go right through the wood. So it can be dismantled if absolutely necessary. I think I've done that only once in 20 years!

The top half is just a light frame and cupboard door hiding the boiler itself. We take it off whenever we get the boiler serviced. I fixed vertical battens to the wall, and the frame attaches to those with three or four wood screws. The boiler is in a corner of the bathroom, so the structure is L-shaped and only has to attach to the wall along two vertical edges.

It's made of pine, plywood and cheap mouldings, and painted with some flavour of Farrow & Ball white. I'm not much of a cabinet maker, but I've had to teach myself carpentry because our house is so small and wonky.

Can you post a picture please 🙏🏼

Ditto . Please.

The bamboo lids have no clip or strong seal, they just sit on top. No use on the move.

Great thread OP! Following for ideas 😁

I was asking if they were the ones. If they're not, which ones are?

A quicker fix is to attach a grab ring or ball to the end of the cord.

Sorting out the mess of shoes on the floor of my wardrobe - it was an embarrassing mess.

I got the set with doors for the shoes/trainers that I wear most. The boxes stack easily and can be configured to varying heights etc depending on how low your clothes hand. So handy to easily see what you want, open the door and grab a pair.

I got the box for shoes that I don’t wear so often. The grids can be pushed back to accommodate different sizes of footwear. So easy to pull the box out, easily see what you want, unzip the bag and grab your chosen pair. The floor of my wardrobe is now so organised, love it.

I use wine-rack cabinets for shoes. Boots don't fit.

BEHOLD
The Leifheit wall-mounted kitchen roll, foil and clingfilm dispenser 🤩 You’re welcome 😊
amzn.eu/d/02zISskx

A touch less automatic rechargeable foaming soap dispenser. It uses liquid hand soap mixed with water 1-4 ratio so it works out economical on more expensive nicer smelling hand soap and no messy sticky soap dribbles. About £10 on temu.
A teapot with integrated strainer basket type thingy for loose leaf tea, just empty the used leaves in the compost, no separate strainer needed- again more economical but also means I can use mix of breakfast and earl grey tea.

Sorry if this has already been mentioned (I’ve not RTWT) but I was so sick of the corners of fitted sheets pinging off the mattress and having to pull them back on every damn morning. I’ve replaced them with M&S extra deep fitted sheets - total gamechanger. If you have a Sparks card and wait until they do a 20% off homeware a few times a year, they’re very cheap too.

I use mine for making custard in the microwave. I use custard powder, measure by guesswork and it takes about two minutes. (And if I'm alone, I could even eat the custard straight out of the jug...)

Yes!!!!! So easy to do and has helped my inbox no end

I've said yes over the page but pointed out that your link has the bamboo lids rather than the plastic clip on lids that I referred to earlier in the thread when asked if they are secure on the move.

This poster was clarifying that the bamboo lids aren't secure.

I think this thread deserves to go in Classics. So many others descend into arguments so it's great to see such positivity and mutual support. Thanks to the OP.

Me too.

This thread has just made me spend £57 on storage items!

I'm militant about plastic storage boxes, we have a standard model of small medium and large and nothing else is allowed!

My biggest recent win is a fixed 3 week meal plan. It takes into account if I'm WFH that day, what evening activities the children have, who needs to be fed etc. Then that just cycles around every 3 weeks. No more meal planning or deciding what to eat each day. Then batch cook on Sunday evening, freeze some of that for future weeks and take some previous meals out the freezer for that week.

Also Tesco now let's you create your own custom lists, so I've created one per meal and then the online order is just a case of once a week looking at the next week's meal plan and going down each meals list.

It's massively reduced the whole mental load and time taken to sort out food for everyone.

An easier and better option is password managers like Bitwarden. They are more secure and will sync across all your devices.

I was the same until recently (years of hunting for a matching lid!!)

Mine are sorted and tubs/lids are numbered as pairs 😬 Feels very grown up to look for Lid 3 and Tub 3!

Thanks. Shame about the lids not being secure.

I need to do this, not for me, for dp!

With tubs - I have what used to be the perfect tub from the take away, but they don't use them any more, so I bought the same on eBay. Perfect single serving for freezing, also good for leftovers. Got rid of the mismatched ones.

But, no good for taking salad to work, the lids are not secure enough and they leak. Only useful for fairly dry food, upright. So I do use them for sliced apple and nuts. But actual lunch I put in a Systema ones with prop clip on lids.

But then I also like some smaller ones for other things, like taking a bit of loose green tea on holiday!