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.

Crappy Housewife Tip of the Day

When you get dressed in the morning, stick your socks in your back pocket, instead of on your feet. You never know what you might step in between your bedroom and your shoes, and it's easier to clean bare feet than socks.

Crappy Housewife Tip of the Day

Every once in a while, don't clean up at all for a play date. Just call it "Social Darwinism": nature's way of weeding out the wrong kind of friends.

Housework HORSE: Official Rules

Brief Synopsis:

HORSE with housework. Poker-style bidding.

How to Play:

1. Issue a housework challenge to one or more members of the household. Announce what task you plan to tackle, and how long (or how many, depending on the task) you plan to spend doing it. For example, "I'm going to spend two minutes unloading the dishwasher," or, "I'm going to pick up four toys from the living room floor, and put them away."

2. From the time you complete your task, the challenged party (or parties) has one hour to respond. They may choose one of three responses:
a) Call. They agree to do the same (or equivalent, by agreement) task that you did. If they are successful in competing the task, play passes to the next player, until everyone has met the challenge. Then the round is over, and no one gets a letter.
b) Raise. They agree to do the same (or equivalent, by agreement) task that you did, and also add an additional task of their own choosing. If they are successful in completing both tasks, play passes to the next player, until everyone has met all of the challenges.
c) Fold. If the challenged player does not wish to complete any of the tasks, they may fold, and take a letter in the word "HORSE" (or some clever alternative that has to do with housework). Failure to respond or complete your task within an hour is treated as a de facto fold.

3. Keep a tally of everyone's letters in a prominent location. If someone spells the word HORSE, they lose, and something terrible will happen to them. You can decide what the punishment is for losing, but I'm leaning towards the dirtiest, most hated household chores.

Some Ground Rules:

1. All challenged parties need to be at home when challenged (and not about to leave for a scheduled activity).

2. You must state the parameters of your task BEFORE embarking on it. You can't raise the stakes just because something took you longer than you thought it would, or because you got some cleaning momentum and kept going past the end of your declared time limit. (Aside: You are allowed, even encouraged, to do more than the challenged task; it just doesn't count for the game.) You also can't retroactively issue challenges. I can't spend an hour doing dishes, then sit down and say, "Okay, now you spend an hour doing dishes or you'll get a letter."

3. If you choose a task that only you are capable of doing, or that can only be done once, you must be reasonable in your consideration of equivalent alternatives.

4. Game may be paused by mutual consensus (or parental fiat) for meals or other family activities.

Tips and Tricks:

1. Bid small at first. It's easier to get up off your butt to do a small task than a big one. Once you're both up cleaning and have a bit of momentum, you can raise the stakes.

2. If everyone calls, no one gets a letter. This can be a good thing, and it works especially well when playing with small children, because they like it when everyone wins.

Special Rule: The Shootout

Choose a simple, easily repeatable challenge, like picking up one toy, or washing one dish. Cycle through the players, repeating the task in quick succession until one player opts to not complete the task. That player gets a letter, and the shootout round is over. (Although remaining players may choose to continue playing, elimination-style, if desired.)

Crappy Housewife Tip of the Day

Step One: Lose a (very) dirty dishcloth somewhere in the house.

Step Two: Deep clean half the house while looking for the source of the awful smell.

Step Three (optional): Find the dishcloth somewhere obvious, like the middle of the dining room table, and wonder why on earth you didn't look there first.

Crappy Housewife Tip of the Day

Use what you've got.

"I was doing a quick wipedown of the bathroom and after I sprayed everything with the cleaning stuff I realized my papertowels were downstairs and I was waaaaaaaay too lazy to walk down there and get them so I looked in the cabinet and I saw a box of overnight maxi pads so I just opened a few of those, stuck them to my hands and used them to wipe off the cleaning solution. It was surprisingly effective, I suggest you give it a try (you know you're curious to, now!)" (submitted by Rhian)

Crappy Housewife Camping Tip of the Day

When you get home from ten days of camping, make laundry soup. Fill the bathtub with hot water and several scoops of Oxy Clean. Add all of the filthy laundry, and let it soak all day, mixing occasionally. When you're ready to wash it, transfer to the washer in small batches, using a Rubbermaid tub.

Crappy Housewife Tip of the Day

Dirty more dishes.

I used to think that the ideal number of dirty dishes was "as few as possible", but I have recently made the discovery that the ideal number is actually "enough to fill the dishwasher once a day". It seems counterintuitive, but it actually makes a lot of sense if you think about it. I used to only ever use the dishwasher if I was behind on dishes (which, admittedly, I usually was), because it seemed wasteful to run a partial load, and if the dishes sat in there for more than a day, I would go crazy looking for things I use every day (like my kefir strainer and my DMIUFCEM) and have to dig them out of the dishwasher and hand wash them after all. Dishes that sat for longer also needed more of a pre-scrub (or more of a post-scrub, if I didn't pre-scrub them) than dishes that were washed the same day.

So, my amazing discovery has been that: More dirty dishes = Running dishwasher more often = Actually washing fewer dishes. Hooray!

Crappy Housewife Tip of the Day

When you're taking baby wipes out of a standard wipes container to refill a travel wipes container, flip the container upside-down and take your wipes from the bottom. This way, you don't have to rethread the top wipe every time you take some out.

Crappy Housewife Tip of the Day

If you have enough dinner leftovers to make another whole meal, pack them up and freeze them. Then, flip ahead a few weeks in your day planner (or online calendar or menu planner), and write "leftover __________ for dinner (in freezer)". This kills two birds with one stone: you don't have to worry about the leftovers being forgotten, and you'll have one day a few weeks from now where you won't have to plan anything for dinner!

(If you're extra geeky, like me, you can make it an event on your Google Calendar, then set a 24-hour reminder so you'll remember to take it out of the freezer.)

Crappy Housewife Tip of the Day

When you're doing a big cleaning job, remove the lid from the trash can. It might only save a few seconds every trash trip, but over the course of a few hours of heavy cleaning, it really adds up.

(If you have a cheapo trash can that you have to open with your hand, like ours, it saves you even more time, because you can carry two-handed loads over to the trash without worrying about how you'll get it open once you get there.)

Words to Live By

I can't go grocery shopping, because I have no fridge space to put things away.
I can't clean out the fridge, because I have no counter space to move things to.
I can't clean the counters, because they're covered in dirty dishes.
I can't wash the dirty dishes, because the dishwasher is full of clean dishes.
And it's my husband's turn to empty the dishwasher.

No matter what the problem might be, you can always find a way to blame someone else.

Crappy Housewife Tip of the Day

Whenever possible, use the same dish for preparing and serving food. Unless your fancy aunt is coming over for dinner, I don't think anyone is going to care if you serve your rice in the pot it was cooked in, or if you just move the crock from the crockpot to the table when it's time to serve the food.

On a related note: Whenever possible, use the same dish for preparing and eating food. For example, I make my morning coffee with a one-cup coffee maker that brews the coffee directly into my mug. No pot to wash! And I make my smoothies in wide-mouth mason quart jars, which serve triple duty. The measurements on the side save me using a measuring cup, the wide mouth lets me use my immersion blender rather than dirtying my big, cumbersome countertop blender, and when it's all done, I can just drink straight out of the jar like a giant cup!

Crappy Housewife Tip of the Day

Let your kids sleep in their clothes. That way, when you're too lazy to get everyone dressed in the morning, no one ever has to know.

Crappy Housewife Tip of the Day

Get a chest freezer, and stick it right in the kitchen where your clutter-covered-kitchen-table-that-you-never-eat-at-because-you-can't-get-at-it is. I could probably split this tip up into several posts, but here are the reasons I love my in-kitchen chest freezer:

1. Frozen food keeps colder longer in a chest freezer, so it's not as big of a deal if I don't rotate through the freezer stuff as often as I should.
2. I have plenty of space to freeze leftovers rather than putting them in the fridge, where they often spoil before I remember to consume them.
3. The top of the freezer is a huge, flat surface that can be used as a countertop. However, it has two advantages over a regular countertop:
   1. You have to open the freezer sometimes, so it regularly gets cleared off completely.
   2. It is open at the side, so you can set the trash can right beside it and shove trash or vegetable peels right off the edge into the trash can.
4. When you have easy access to the chest freezer, rather than it being stowed away in the basement, you're more likely to use it.
5. Several square feet of additional ferrous surface for the kids to put magnets and artwork on.
6. When you order pizza for dinner, you don't have to worry about making room in the fridge for the leftovers - just stick the whole box right in the freezer. (Added bonus: When you pack frozen pizza for lunch, it stays cold until you eat it.)

Crappy Housewife Tip of the Day

Don't hide your Crappy Housewifery. Advertise it, and you'll be the most welcome houseguest around.

We just got back from a road trip, and we visited and/or stayed with several friends along the way. At every house, my hostess would say to me, "You know, I normally get so stressed out when company is coming, but I read your blog, I knew you wouldn't mind!" And then we get to relax and have an enjoyable visit, without anyone worrying about the fingerprints on the windows. Win/win!

Crappy Housewife Tip of the Day

If you're using pasta sauce from a jar, don't waste your time heating it up. Just put the cold or room-temperature sauce on your hot pasta and stir. Not only does this save cooking time and stop you from dirtying a whole extra sauce pot, but it also cools the pasta down instantly to the correct eating temperature for kids!

(Addendum: If you like a lot of sauce, or if you like your pasta to be really hot, you can modify this tip. Spoon one portion of sauce into the bottom of the bowl you plan on eating from, and heat it up in the microwave while you are serving the kids their luke-warm bowls. Then, when your sauce it hot, just put your hot pasta on top of it, and stir it up!)

Crappy Housewife Tip of the Day

Buy good dishwasher detergent. I used to think the detergent didn't make a difference. I also used to think that I had to presoak and prescrub all the dishes. As it turns out, my two misconceptions were connected. On a whim one day, I bought a detergent that said something on the label about getting out caked on food. I tried it out on a load of spaghetti dishes that had been sitting for a week. Out of a full load of extremely crusty dishes, I only had to rewash 2 or 3. Those are pretty good odds (considering my experiments with my regular detergent and crusty dishes usually resulted in a 50% rewash). I'd rather rewash a couple dishes than prewash all the dishes. It's simple math!