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 😂

@unimog

I bought a carpet sweeper a couple of months ago. It's brilliant, I love it.

Understood. In one of our houses, the kitchen was so small that the washing machine was under the stairs !

I have a giant forever shopping bag with so many cables and leads in it going back decades and stuffed at the back of the cupboard under the stairs. There used to be four of us using gadgets.

There's a box with a dozen old mobiles, four or five old tablets thrown in. Four old laptops in the cupboard and a computer tower on the desk. Can someone tell me how the heck I get rid of them all?

You can actually buy wooden things made for this exact purpose. I've got one.

Ive just bought some USB to USBc little adapters from Amazon for my USB sockets. Brilliant

Take them to the recycling centre. I took a pile recently. They have scarce metals in them.

The washing up gloves were constantly getting knocked into the sink and getting wet inside, which is revolting when you put them on to wash up. I had one of those plastic sock hanger things that gradually disintegrated with age, but I kept a couple of the dangly pegs. One is hooked on the inside of the cupboard under the sink, and I peg the washing up gloves there. No more soggy gloves. (Nothing else in the house is tidy though. Small steps.)

Take a sledgehammer to them and take them to the tip.

Sounds therapeutic!

😁

Actually, there is a good reason for this. Even if you have deleted all files and data and reset to factory settings a good techie could retrieve it. How do you think that the police can access deleted child porn files and other stuff.

Taking a sledgehammer to the screen/keyboard, as often seen in films, is no use though. It's just the hard drive that need smashing.

I've bought those shelves on legs to double the amount of storage space in my kitchen wall units & I've ordered those expanding drawers with adhesive tracks to put in my base units so I don't have to scrabble to the back of my base units to reach stuff at the back. Amazon & Tiktop shop have loads of brilliant stuff to increase storage where space is limited. I've just moved back into my flat after spending a period away due to being ill & then caring for my mum until she passed away, before my flat was a complete tip, so bad I couldn't function in it, while I was away my ds & son in law have worked with decluttering people to get it cleared, I've had the whole place redecorated & new carpets, I'm determined to keep it nice now, I'm gradually unpacking everything that was packed away, finding a home for everything, I'm just waiting for the rest of my living room to be clear of boxes so I can order my new furniture & get the rest of my bedroom sorted.

I've just bought electric salt & pepper Mills that turn on automatically when they are tipped so the grinder bit is on the bottom, not expensive, just from Tiktok shop.

We were struggling with lack of kitchen storage space. So I got rid of the oven, and installed a 3-drawer unit that holds all the pots and pans.

We hadn't used the oven for over a year, anyway: since I bought an air fryer, everyone had been using that.

It's been a year now, and no regrets!

I changed the lights on the stairs for motion-detector lights. No more fumbling in the dark for the light switch. No more letting people "take a chance" by running down the stairs without switching on the lights, and no more getting out of bed at midnight because someone's left the landing lights on!

Yep. We know.

I thought of another one - I got sick of never having enough serving spoons, so I bought a six pack of serving spoons intended for catering companies. They are completely inoffensive looking, and it is genuinely lovely to always have a Big Spoon when you need one.

You might. Many people don't.

Yes - and also, everybody who knows now, didn't know at some point in their life.

I decant washing powder into an airtight plastic tub because there isn’t room for a big box under the sink. When I get any new purchases with silica packets, I chuck them in with the washing powder into, it stops it all caking up and going solid.

@Nat6999 I'm sorry about your Mum and all those struggles; caring is so difficult, it isn't something you can do and get anything else done. I wish you all the best in your newly renovated home. Well done to your DS and SIL for assisting. It'll be beautiful once finished I'm certain.x

Genius. I'll remember that. Thank you.

I put a small amount of butter into a dish and keep it in cupboard above worktop where bread is cut and cooking done. When needed it is room temperature and good for spreading on bread - uses far less than cold butter so healthier. But there is not enough butter in the dish to go rancid before its used.

I think the Americans have cracked it with their sticks of butter. Just a small portion out at a time.

I unwrap and cut new packs of butter into four. Then wrap them up and freeze them. I take out one quarter at a time to defrost and use.