Crappy Housewife Camping Tip of the Day

Pajamas are not to be worn outside of the tent. There's no reason to get them grungy, too.

One exception to this: You can wear your pajamas outside the tent if they double as your clothes for the day. For example, if you are a baby and your clever mom figures out that a footed sleeper, coupled with a brimmed hat, protects 95% of your body from bug bites and sunburns without chemicals.

Crappy Housewife Camping Tip of the Day

You know the clean clothes you put on today will be just as dirty as yesterday's clothes in five minutes, so here's a tip: just pretend you woke up five minutes earlier and put on yesterday's clothes!

Crappy Housewife Camping Tip of the Day

Prepare as much as food as possible at home before you go. I know, I know, forethought and preparedness are not the Crappy Housewife way, but this is one instance where it's totally worth it. This year, I made our foil packet dinners ahead of time at home and froze them. My foil packet dinners involve raw chicken, which is a huge pain to clean up when you are camping and have to drive two miles to fetch water and heat it over the fire. I set up a little assembly line at home and assembled the packets in about half the time it would have taken on the camping trip, and the clean-up took about a quarter as long, what with the hot running water and all.

We go camping with a big group, so if each of us prepares two or three meals ahead of time, we have hearty, home-cooked meals for most of the trip, without a lot of on-site prep. Soups and stews are especially good make-ahead camping meals, because if you freeze them early enough, they will be solid bricks of ice and keep your cooler cold until you use them. I didn't even buy ice until after I thawed my stew on day three.

There are certain meals we always make when we go camping, because they freeze well, or require little to no fresh ingredients. Freeze ahead meals usually include: beef stew, vegetable potage, pulled pork, and foil packet dinners. Non-perishable meals for later in the trip usually include: spaghetti and chili. Sometimes I'll pick up some ground beef to add to the chili, otherwise, it's an all-canned recipe.

Another food work-saver we do when we go camping: Breakfast and lunch aren't fancy. Cold cereal, instant oatmeal, pop tarts, fruit, coffee, sandwiches, yogurt, granola bars. If you really want a hot breakfast, make sure to do it on an easy lunch/dinner day, or better yet, do breakfast for dinner one day.

Crappy Housewife Camping Tip of the Day

Bugs are attracted to the smell of clean bodies, soap, and shampoo. So not showering isn't the lazy option, it's the smart option!

Crappy Housewife Camping Tip of the Day

If you can squeeze it in, pack the dish drainer. I know it seems ridiculous, but it could save you 30 minutes per day in drying and putting away dishes. When you're done washing dishes, just put them in the drainer, throw a towel over them to keep the trail spice off, and just grab them right back out of the drainer for the next meal. You can put them away overnight if you feel so inclined, but as long as they are clean, they should be of no interest to nocturnal creatures (unless you are camping somewhere with very civilized bears who prefer to use cutlery).

Crappy Housewife Camping Tip of the Day

All the kids' clothes are going to get stained anyhow, so don't bother packing anything nice. Anytime you can't get a stain out of something, just stick it in the "save for camping" box (which you may occasionally dig into on "don't feel like doing laundry" days). Now you can let your kids (or your husband, or yourself) crawl in the dirt without worrying about all the scrubbing and pre-treating you'll have to do when you get home. This is also a great opportunity to pack ugly clothes that you have received as gifts from relatives. This comes with an added bonus, because you will probably take lots of pictures on your camping trip, which you can then send to said relatives, who will be touched that you appreciate their gift so much. "Look, Aunt Ellen, we're wearing the matching puppy tank tops you crocheted for us!" We love them so much, we only wear them on special occasions when no one we know is around.

Back from vacation!

A huge thank you to my faithful web-gnome Erin for posting my tips for me while I was away on vacation, far from the internet.

Where does a Crappy Housewife go on vacation, you might ask? The answer is, "Somewhere with an even lower threshold of clean than home!"

We camped for nine days with a bunch of friends, and we spent much of the time we saved by not having to clean things playing games. It was a blast! Click here to read Sara's account of the gaming side of the trip.

Stay tuned for Crappy Housewife Tips: The Camping Edition!

Crappy Housewife Tip of the Day

It can be a great laundry-saving trick to engage in some activities clothing-free (such as eating messy food and cleaning grimy tubs), however, there are some activities it is best to always approach clothed. Ironing and frying bacon are on that list. Trust me. You don't want to learn this the hard way, too.

Crappy Housewife Tip of the Day

Thinking of making eggs as a quick and easy dinner, but not sure how much energy you have for the clean up? Before you ask anybody, "How do you like your eggs?" first consult this handy reference guide:

Types of eggs, ranked by ease of clean up:
6. scrambled
5. omelet
4. over-easy
3. sunny side up
2. poached
1. soft-boiled/hard-boiled
0. raw

Crappy Housewife Tip of the Day

So, you're doing the dishes, and your sink is full of hot, soapy water. You reach for a mug, only to discover that it's full of stinky,moldy, old coffee (or some other liquid nastiness). You don't want to dump it in the sink, with all the other dishes, and pouring it in the trash is just asking for leaks. What should you do? Dump it in the toilet!

Crappy Housewife Tip of the Day

Don't use matching cups. If all the cups are the same, then when you set your cup down, you will forget which one is yours, and have to get a new one. If everyone has a different cup, then the next time you go to get a drink you'll be able to use the same cup, thus saving dishes.

Crappy Housewife Tip of the Day

Invest in some paper plates. Yeah, I know they're not good for the environment, but they can really help curb the growth of Dish Mountain if you use them anytime you're not having a sit-down meal. Sometimes you need to invest in your sanity.

(Besides, I have a hard time believing that a thin paper plate will have much of an environmental impact, especially when everyone likes to tell me that washing my cloth diapers is just as bad for the environment as using disposables. If that's true, then washing a plate is WORSE for the environment than using a paper plate. At least paper plates decompose.)

Crappy Housewife Tip of the Day

Make friends with the adult children of former crappy housewives. They don't judge you for your house and picking up after a crappy housewife is second nature to them. You might find that your house is a little cleaner every time they leave. (The latter does not apply to children who have gone on to become crappy housewives themselves, but they still won't judge your house.)

(Submitted by the web-gnome.)

Crappy Housewife Tip of the Day

If a dish only had water in it, it's not dirty. Just stick it back in the cupboard (or in the dish drainer to dry). Some examples of not-dirty dishes: measuring cups/spoons that were used to measure water, glasses that were used to fill the Brita that you couldn't fit under the tap because the sink was too full of dishes, pitchers that were used to water plants.

Addendum: Drinking glasses that somebody drank water out of are dirty, please don't put them straight back in the cupboard.

Crappy Housewife Tip of the Day

Keep leftovers in empty yogurt tubs, take-out containers, spaghetti sauce jars, and other containers that would have otherwise just gone in the trash or recycle bin. That way, if something dies in them, you won't feel bad just throwing out the container as well.

Crappy Housewife Tip of the Day

Keep leftovers in glass/ceramic containers. Mold can't penetrate glass, so you can still get them clean even after you find them at the back of the fridge growing an impressive colony of blue fuzz!

Crappy Housewife Tip of the Day

Put leftovers in the fridge in see-through containers. You're more likely to eat things you can see. And you can tell sooner when things have gone bad.

Crappy Housewife Tip of the Day

When food goes bad in your fridge and it looks/smells so bad you want to throw out the dish instead of washing it, try this instead: freeze it. When it's frozen, there's no awful odors, and you can pop the whole frozen mess out of the dish easily and throw it away! Then quickly rinse the dish before washing. Easy moldy-food cleanup!


(Submitted by Amy) 

Crappy Housewife Tip of the Day

Don't clean out your fridge until garbage day. Once the rotten food is out of the cold-induced hibernation of the fridge, it will start to smell really bad, so you want to get that stink out of your house and to the curb as quickly as possible. By leaving this task until garbage day, you make sure that moldy leftovers remain in stink-stasis until the last possible minute.

Crappy Housewife Tip of the Day

 Are you sure it's laundry day? Are you sure it's not "buy more
underwear" day?