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 😂

@Twatterati @Pineneedlesincarpet I can't believe I spent an hour thinking of all different symbols to put on my lids when I could have just numbered them. So much easier!!

I need this @itsturtlesallthewaydown

I need to know how you achieved no 3. TIA!

Scratch my last comment - that’s genius!

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Vanke-Rechargeable-Emergency-Battery-Self-Charging/dp/B0FMJXMDL1/ref=sr_1_8?crid=3CBV9RUCHZ7WK&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.8xBQioGv3i3M4S3MwoMs6ICytlaAdQ-Iq_GGmkJBPEBARyhN8YpIdKbkyJMtVe76_XKXaELR2jNQxnOv5kSbk57ciqJB4X5vRrFZblRNcVN4DpnqhAG0MurtRtf_oiQeaF01SE4X7hmeRHiGL3u9C97U1IKAqhVF0VDzP9NQ240DRu5FV7MUO2NFabILNeBkp71DGn34sd-H5LLM5zHZhtqeRrIuFNHubSAl5veFTH8RtAaSBSvFPGsPqFLHRWtFulCQf8ElCcopdlbT_16xxkavwMoX-sid9CJ5GEZVu48.6aEgwI3A2-FgebjgO97A_CWdqOarHlzGzBxkWDGHq3c&dib_tag=se&keywords=power%2Bcut%2Blight%2Bbulb&qid=1790016063&sprefix=power%2Bcut%2Blight%2Bbulb%2Caps%2C241&sr=8-8&th=1

Here. They recharge automatically whenever the light is on so they will always be fully charged. When the power is cut they still work. You can also get usb rechargeable versions but they are not as useful as those that recharge when you use the light.

yes but I like to see the lists. I'm also far more likely to get one of the kids to do a job from their to do list if they can tick it off on the actual board.

This box is £15 at Hobbycraft. Looks the same size.

I got spice storage bags. They take up way less space than the glass jars. I just label them & keep them all in a little tub.
I also recently got fitted sheets that have an extra grippy strip around them so they don’t keep coming off the bed

I have made a slim frame behind my mirror with shelves to hold loads of small bottles that were cluttering up my drawers. It doesn’t look like much but it’s such an easy thing to do.

This looks amazing!! Tell us more?!

It’s a simple slim frame using roofing batten so about an inch deep and I’ve attached my mirror on some hinges so it doesn’t look like it’s anything different to the mirror just hanging anyway. Inside is jewellery and all of those small annoying bottles of stuff that is usually hard to see.

Since I started reading this thread on Saturday, I now have (with some help from DH):

• better spacing for the shelves in the airing cupboard (lowered one, added one, added a half width right at the top) - now there are towels for the two bathrooms kept separately, plus bedding (sets in pillow cases!)
• a new washable runner for the utility (no more dog paw prints)
• another set of tongs for cooking
• ordered a spoon rest! No more stains on the worktop!
• thrown away two annoying scratched non-stick pans and two roasting pans which were well past their best (wasnt sure if it was burnt food or rust!)
• moved a spare pair of scissors to the bathroom drawer for cutting tubes for those last bits of toothpaste, instead of wandering around the house
• ordered a second cutlery basket for the dishwasher which now sits in the half sink rather than having cutlery festering in the sink that I then have to fish out
• sorted a new wood store after our old one rotted
• bought a £4 step stool so I can read the meter myself
• moved an airer onto the empty worktop in the utility room, freeing up loads of floor space
• bought 3 litres of shower gel in refill packs
• bought a blood pressure monitor so I dont have to go to the pharmacy/GP so often
• added a calendar entry to order repeat prescriptions every month
• ordered a silicon dog food mat so the gross fabric one can be binned
• wrote a list of life admin I can do on my phone on the train
• set up weekly autopay for school lunches instead of risking DS spending a month's budget in two weeks!
• added loads more snags and hacks to the To Do lists... DH and I now have 32 tasks between us!

I'm not the OP. I use a similar system. The website I use is Elfster. You can use it for secret Santa. It saves the list each year so only takes a few minutes to sort.

Thats some list in 48hrs!

I'm really quite tired! 🤣

I don't have much to offer, but a glorious thing is the 3 day roast. Works particularly with chicken and pork.

You buy, say, a massive pork belly. No more effort to roast than a piddly one. Our butchers let's you buy the pigskin on it's own too. That's epic sliced up, covered in salt and thrown in the air fryer for a tonne of crackling.

Do a huge amount of spuds, a cauli cheese twice the size. Two trays of Yorkies. Extra veg. Pack of chipolatas. Stuffing.(Or not quite as much as all this if you don't have a multitude of gannet children resident). It's barely noticeable that you cook two heads of broccoli instead of one.

Day one, yummy roast.

Day two, same again played up "left overs" reheated for 20 mins in the oven. The flavours have developed overnight and this tastes just as good as day one.

Day three, hog roast buns. Shred the remaining meat, poke in some of the leftover crackling and stuffing. Dollop of applesauce. Epic, best of the three days.

Only have to cook once to cover the 3 days. Super in the winter too.

Lamb shoulder. Day one roast, day two leftovers, day 3 (but made on day 2 by adding lamb mince to the shredded shoulder and veggies, and topping with crushed roasties) shepherds pie.

Massive chicken. Day 3, mix shredded chicken with coronation sauce and have with jackets.

How did you do this exactly? I read you post about roofing batten but in the photo it looks like the shelves are recessed into the wall or is this an optical illusion? Is the whole thing backed by and sticking out from the wall?

I repurposed a bit of a cupboard with wall mounted clothes racks on one side and a cubby for each family member on the other side (ours are built in but you could achieve the same with a unit from IKEA or similar). A dehumidifier sits on top of the cubbyhole unit. It has made laundry a breeze - it is taken straight from the racks to the child's cubbyhole, and then the kids are sent to retrieve clean laundry from their cubby at the weekend. It's the best thing I ever did logistics wise in the house.

This water bottle drying rack is the kitchen gadget you never knew you needed.

No more annoying water bottles falling over and rolling off the counter top after you've washed them out. They just hang around upside down drying themselves until you need them again.

Get your repeat prescriptions set up with an online pharmacy - they will remind you ahead every month and then it all arrives in the post - I use Pharmacy2U but there are loads

Mirrors are heavy! What kind of hinges did you use?

Nothing special. Just from my local diy shop. It’s been up for a few years now so seems to be ok.

Any type of small wood should do. I made a square with pieces across like shelves and attached it straight onto the wall with L shaped brackets. It sits out from the wall just enough to not look like anything more than a mirror just hanging up.

Bought a new oven tray from John Lewis that is so non-stick that all it needs is a quick wash in hot soapy water. Nothing sticks to it - no more scrubbing.

Just be careful with non stick. As soon as it gets a scratch it will be releasing microplastics into your food