Household tips

Teeni has tagged me for a meme. This time, I am supposed to share some amazing household tips that will revolutionise the way you live. Okay, she didn’t exactly say I had to do that. But I do have to share some household tips.

Okay, here goes …

1) Laundry (or washing, as we call it here in New Zealand) is a chore that many of us love to hate. Personally? I don’t mind it. I would rather do laundry than wash the dishes (especially since our dishwasher broke and Rob we haven’t fixed it yet). Being one of my more preferable chores, I have a couple of tips in this area:

a. Use cold water when washing your clothes. This saves a gazillion dollars when it comes to your monthly electricity bill.
A lot of people use hot water because they believe it will kill the germs in their clothes (more on killing germs & bacteria in point b. below). But did you ever consider the fact that instead of killing germs, hot water actually kills the enzymes in your detergent? Betcha didn’t! But it does. So stick with cold (or lukewarm, if you must) water.

b. It has come to my attention that many people in the Northern Hemisphere do not hanging their washing outside. This amazes me. I understand that if you live in a perpetually cold/wet place, you may need to use a tumble dryer. But I recently found out that most houses in Florida don’t have clotheslines. Um??
Here in NZ, almost every house has a clothesline in the backyard. Most Kiwis hang their washing outside most of the time, unless it’s raining or really really windy. Me? I hang mine outside all year round (we have a covered carport with washing lines).
Something many people don’t realise is that air-drying is actually much safer than tumble-drying. It reduces the amount of bacteria that can still be in your clothes, even after washing. This is particularly true for washing hung out in the sunshine. Better still, often stubborn stains that have not gone away in the wash will be gone after a couple of hours in the sun.

2) This next tip concerns the sneaking of vegetables into your kids’ meals. My kids love broccoli, tomatoes, potatoes, peas, and capsicum (sweet peppers). I do not have to disguise these vegetables; they eat them willingly. Other vegetables fall into a decidedly “grey” area, such as carrots, beans, cauliflower, sweetcorn and spinach. These vegetables are sometimes eaten, and sometimes not (it’s a “mood” thing). However, both my boys have a strong dislike for kumara (sweet potato), pumpkin and mushrooms. Your child(ren) may not like ANY vegetables. If this is the case, you need to try doing what I do.
I grate vegetables into almost everything. When I make lasagne, shepherd’s pie, meatloaf, spaghetti bolognaise (basically any mince dish), I also include grated carrot, pumpkin, mushroom and courgette. Have my kids ever noticed? No. Not once. Even though there are orange and green “bits” which are visible to the naked eye, they have NO CLUE. I also mix some mashed pumpkin and/or kumara into mashed potatoes sometimes. It changes the colour slightly, but you can usually get away with that.
Try it. It might work for you. If it does, you can thank me later.

3) Do you spend 10 minutes every morning running around the house looking for your keys? Or your cellphone? This is an easily solved problem. Simply put your keys (and your phone) in the same place every night. We have a hall table right inside the front door. Above the table is a wall-mounted key rack. As soon as we step foot in the house, our keys are hung up and our phones are placed on the table. Easy.

4) I couldn’t really do this post without mentioning some scrapbooking tips. I’m sure many of my readers will already know these “tricks of the trade”, but I’ll share them anyway:

a. Always store your ink pads upside down. This forces the ink to drain to the top of the pad, and they won’t dry out.

b. Okay, this is more of a “sewing” tip but since I don’t sew clothes (only paper), I am calling it a scrapbooking tip! To quickly thread a needle, rub the end of the thread with a crayon or candle. The wax will make it stiff and easy to thread through the hole.

I don’t really feel like tagging people today. That’s sooooo yesterday (get it? because I tagged people – for an award- yesterday?). But seriously, I’m not going to do the tagging thing this time. However, if you want to do this meme, feel free! I’m sure I could learn a lot from all of you.