Crappy Housewife Tip of the Day

Need to soak a pot that has a long handle, so won't fit in the sink? Stick a bowl underneath it!

Crappy Housewife Tip of the Day

Don't soak plastic dishes in the sink.

I know, I know. I soak EVERYTHING. I even soak counters and floors! But plastic is a different story. I hate washing plastic. Despise it. No matter how much soap I use, or how much I scrub, once I rinse it, there always seems to be a greasy film, and I end up having to wash it again. This is a pain, and the more greasy surface area there is to scrub, the more of a pain it is. Soaking plastic in a sink full of dirty dishes ensures that every square millimeter of plastic is covered in dirty dish slime. It's a lot easier to just focus your scrubbing, rinsing, and rewashing efforts on the comparatively small section on the inside of the container that is actually dirty.

If the inside of the container is crusty or gross, you can still soak the inside by filling the container with water in the sink, but not putting the plug in, so the outside doesn't get tainted.

Crappy Housewife Tip of the Day

You know that circular piece of cardboard that comes with a frozen pizza? (Or the take and bake pizzas from Aldi's - our favorite!) Use it to transfer the pizza to and from the oven, and then as a disposable cutting board for slicing the pizza. If you eat on paper plates, you can have an almost-dish-free dinner!

Crappy Housewife Tip of the Day

Have blankets and sheets to fold, but no capable adult to recruit into taking the other end? I have a super-simple, highly effective folding partner, who is always willing and available, and never lets go of their end and drops it on the dirty ground: gravity. If you have stairs in your house, you probably have this partner, too. Just stand somewhere high, and let the sheet hang low. In my old house, the best place was the hallway beside the banister on the second floor, dangling over the stairs. In my new house, it's halfway up the first floor stairs, hanging over the downstairs hallway. All you need is enough height to let the whole length or width of the sheet hang loosely without touching the ground. Fold the top, and the bottom will follow. It's so easy and effective, I actually use this method even when there is a recruitable adult nearby!

Even the dreaded fitted sheets aren't too hard with this method. I just turn one corner inside-out inside the opposite corner, then do the same thing with the doubled-up corners. But, in general, I use the "wash it and put it right back on the bed without folding it" method whenever possible.

Crappy Housewife Tip of the Day

I try not to start a load of laundry if there are clothes in the dryer waiting to be folded and put away, because dry clothes can sit indefinitely, but wet clothes need to go in the dryer within a very limited time-frame, or they will start to stink. But, occasionally, there are exigent circumstances (like a diaper blowout, or I just forgot), and I end up breaking this rule. Then, once the washer cycle finishes, I am faced with a dilemma: Fold and put away all the dry clothes so I can use the dryer, or let the clean, wet clothes sit and get mildewy. One option requires too much effort, and the other option is kinda gross.*

So, here's my stopgap solution: Open the dryer, and take out a few of the biggest, bulkiest items. Towels, sweatshirts, and the like. Fold them, and put them away (or just drape them over the banister, for now), then add the new, wet clothes to the remaining already-dry clothes, and dry the whole lot together. I think the new stuff actually dries faster with some dry stuff mixed in, and the previously dried stuff (which had been sitting for who knows how long) get dampened and de-wrinkled. Everybody wins!

*I realize that "Just take the dry stuff out of the dryer and stick it somewhere else temporarily" might seem like a good solution to this dilemma, but in my experience, it's not. When things get taken out of the dryer and aren't immediately folded and put away, they are indistinguishable from dirty clothes. I have rewashed the same clean clothes too many times to see this as a labor-saving tip.

Crappy Housewife Tip of the Day

If you wait long enough to sort the mail, it mostly becomes obsolete, and much easier to sort.

Crappy Housewife Tip of the Day

When it's time to vacuum under/around/behind the recliner (or any other relatively moveable chair), just flip it forward upside down. Then you can pick up all the crap that accumulated back there, (So much crap! I can't believe I just did this two days ago!), and vacuum the whole space in one go without having to dig out the crevice tool.

Okay, so maybe moving a chair to clean under it isn't exactly revolutionary, but if you flip it carefully forward on its axis, then it's super-easy to get it back to the exact position it was in before you moved it. Before I started flipping my chair over, I sometimes spent so much time trying to get the feet back in their carpet grooves that it was hardly a time-saving technique. This way, it's a quick matter of "pivot forward, vacuum, pivot backward."

Added bonus: If anyone has been eating carelessly in the recliner, and it is full of crumbs, flipping it forward will dump out most of the crumbs, saving you even more crevice tool time.