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 went a different route - got rid of all the doubles and replaced with SuperKings. Every sheet now fits all beds.......

Got rid of all my mismatched crockery and cutlery and replaced it with my wedding dinner service. There’s no real resale value for dinner services as they’ve fallen out of fashion, so we may as well enjoy them rather than just digging them out for Christmas once a year. Every night I eat my dinner from a Wedgwood Signet Platinum plate using Wedgwood cutlery and it is absolutely delightful. I even stick them in the dishwasher. I’m sure that’s not particularly good for them over the longer term, but they have been promoted to workhorse and that’s what they’re going to do.

Yup - similar list here

DH had the idea of keeping the list in the suitcase... probably his best idea yet!

On my windows i have plastic ridges where the handles shut, they pop off all the time and I curse them. I should glue them, but no. 15 years I have lived with it, its become a joke between me and husband now. Same with the parquet flooring, some of the tiles are lose and need sticking down, we however continue to have them stuck to sockless feet and just curse them also!

HEPA air filter in the living room and each bedroom. Less hayfever, less dusting, and if one of us gets a cold or flu it rarely spreads.

Have robot hoover

Spray mop

Lots of plastic stackable boxes with seperate sections for

Vehicle paper work
Bills
Banking
Property maintenance
Birthday cards
Tapes
Glues
Gloves
Xmas cards
Craft items
Gardening & seeds
Stuff to make

Recycling bins in kitchen
Paper
Recycle cans, plastic, glass
Non recycle

String is in a special string hippo

This is funny as I actually sorted the tupperware cupboard today and binned a load of margarine tubs and takeaway containers that we keep "just in case". Fed up of pulling a load out looking for a matching tub and lid so for now it is tidy 😅

i very rarely iron - instead I put my clothes away and then have a steamer in my bedroom with a hook and clothes hanger nearby so just steam clothes daily - it takes a minute or so. My kids have learnt to use it too.

I have hooks inside of the cupboard below my oven so have the oven gloves hanging inside.

Couldn’t manage without my spray mop! Baskets by both back and front door with a towel to wipe the dogs feet.

This is on my to do list-cupboards are a pain!!

I have the luxury of a lot of kitchen storage so one of my game changers has been storing Tupperware with the lid ON!

Its not really little but it's the kind of thing everyone says they should have when they hear about it but few actually do it. My laundry chute. My husband built it. He took out the floor/ceiling between the airing cupboard upstairs and pantry cupboard downstairs, secured a large pipe to the wall, cut a hole and fitted a little door in the bedroom wall. So now i put my washing through the little door and it lands in the basket in the kitchen. It has changed my life, no more struggling down the stairs with armfuls or heavy baskets full of washing. Its already there.

I’m feeling quite smug reading this thread because almost all of the relevant tips to me, I’ve already done.

I do have one significant snagging area though so asking for specific tips. I’m going to try rolling towels as part of it. Suggested by a PP.

I have a cupboard in the hall upstairs. Known as the airing cupboard. 3 shelves quite far apart. Top shelf too high for me so it doesn’t really exist. Middle shelf bed linen. Bottom shelf towels. I seem to be the only one in the family that can take items out without messing remaining items up. I periodically have to rip it all out, refold and replace.

how can I manage it better? There must be an answer.

I have a lazy susan (apologies to any Susan's here - it's just what they are called!) on one of my kitchen shelves. All the tins and jars get put on it and it is very easy to see what you have available just by spinning it round.

A dedicated roll of masking tape and a Sharpie for labelling freezer contents kept in the drawer with the Tupperware boxes (lids on).

I'm going to bullet point the advantages for extra organising points: 😇

• no irritable searching for a
pen someone else has used and failed to return to The Big Pot of Pens
• no trying to decipher contents of box written in unsuitable pen (see above)
• no irritable scrubbing of pen (suitable or otherwise) from plastic lid

Minutes saved, a few. Aggro saved, huge.

I have a rotating round clear plastic container on my bedside table which holds everything I need or use - it was sold as a spice bottle holder for kitchens, a bit like a lazy Susan.

I went through all my plastic containers last year and got rid of any that did not have lids, were discoloured or were of no real use

I need these!!!

I wonder if you could get a pull down shelf for the top bit Nemorth so you can use it?

Such a small thing but I love my little label printer. So useful, especially for labelling plugs so I know which device I'm unplugging.

We did this with our crystal glasses which were wedding presents 😊
No point in them sitting in a cupboard.

A pair of cheap (from Home Bargains) reading glasses in every room.

I started putting clothes that are kept in drawers so they are kind of vertical next to each other rather than in piles. Makes it much easier to find what I want and it stays relatively tidy. I put clean things in at one end and then I can see the things I never wear as they collect at the other end, and then I can chuck them out.

Same with towels in IKEA mesh drawers in the airing cupboard - clean ones go in at the back and you take out a new one from the front, so it means they all get used equally.

Line trays with baking parchment so things don't stick, Lidl is good for that.

Keep resealable bags to put greasy, smelly waste in, like the baking parchment once used. Keeps smells at bay in the bin.

Wash out and reuse zip lock bags and re use unless they contained raw meat.

I love threads like these. Here's my contributions!

• I have a clippy-hook on my house key so I can easily snap on and off additional car or bike keys as needed. Easier than restringing keys and no worries about misplacing half my keys.
• Using a password manager religiously, so I don't have to faff around resetting passwords.
• I recently put my shampoo and conditioner in pump bottles like at a hotel. My husband rolled his eyes, but they fit the space so much better and I think look tidier! And they are different colours so I'm not squinting to see which is shampoo and which conditioner.
• The laundry is in the basement of our apartment building, so I got a laundry trolley on wheels instead of a basket to lug about. Much easier!
• We have a small bedroom (see: apartment) and I don't have room for a bedside table. I found a beside-the-toilet shelf which is only 15cm wide - perfect for balancing my phone and glass of water, makes a massive difference vs nothing at all.
• A tip I picked up from a similar thread - I have a chalk pen for writing on Tupperware. It comes off in the dishwasher. Easier than faffing with tape and sharpie.

Stick a list on the freezer of what is in there and what drawer.

Just bought this to replace the plastic bag we currently use thanks!

My first thought was elastic bands around the rolled towels, but in my house that would mean elastic bands strewn around the area. Maybe towels should have a dangly bit that ties around and tucks in at the end.

Actually, from the 1930s household tips book I use this one: Spray the windows with window cleaner spray. Then wipe till it is squeaky clean with old scrunched up newspapers (oh, how it really squeaks, the newspaper I mean, when you wipe the window with it - it is pure music!)