Running a household is a full time job in itself without factoring in work, family, friends & everything else that comes with it. Making sure the house is clean, the fridge is stocked, the laundry is done, homework is completed & thats just the start of things.
It can make people feel like they are constantly spinning plates & so I’ve teamed up with Tesco for their ‘Scan As You Shop’ campaign to give you some of my handy household hacks to try to make life easier. Lets face it, ‘Every Little Helps’ (see what I did there)!
Shopping –
My least favourite job is food shopping. Correction, my least favourite job is food shopping with two tiny terrors in tow who make the process about 20x more stressful than it should be & have no patience what so ever. So what could possibly make this job easier?
We recently tested out Tesco’s ‘Scan As You Shop‘ concept which has been rolled out across select stores in the UK to effectively save customers time at the checkout.
The system involves swiping your Clubcard at the front of the store, picking up a scanner & essentially walking round the store scanning barcodes before popping items in to your trolley (or straight in to your bags) so missing out the checkout part. This saves loading your trolley, unloading it on to a convayabelt, having it all scanned then having to repack it all back in to your trolley.
It also means that you can keep track of exactly how much you’re spending as you walk around as the scanner displays your total at all times meaning no nasty surprises as you realise you’ve gone over budget at the checkout.
You can pick up your bunch of bananas, scan it then pop it straight in to a carrier bag. Once you’ve finished you just go to the special checkouts at the front of the store & scan the barcode on the till which then prompts payment. Et voila – super easy & no more faffing at the checkout whilst your usually lovely little one has a mental breakdown over a packet of chocolate buttons.
Cooking –
When it comes to preparing food & cooking. I have two words for you….slow cooker
I swear by meal planning so sitting down before food shopping & deciding what our meals will be for the upcoming week. This saves the decision of ‘whats for dinner tonight’ & means that you’ll waste less food in the process. Also if you can, batch cook some of the basics like spaghetti bolognese, lasagne, cottage pie to make sure that if you are caught short then it’s simply a case of defrosting rather than reaching for the takeaway menu.
Laundry –
I feel like all I do is washing. Sometimes I would have emptied the washing basket & feel like I’m on top of it all only to walk past what seems like 5 minutes later to it pretty much overflowing again. We have set days (Monday & Friday) to complete laundry & try to stick to this as much as possible, if it gets too much midweek then we’d pop on another load. We also tend to buy clothes that don’t need ironing to skip this job although Mr The Home That Made Me’s work shirts are an exception to this & are done on a Sunday evening in bulk.
Cleaning –
One of my most commonly asked questions is how I keep my home so tidy with two children & a busy life. The secret behind it all is tidying as I go (if I walk past something & see a stray shoe or a misplaced cup then I’ll pick it up & put it in it’s correct place so the shoe cupboard in the hallway & the dishwasher). We also encourage the kids to help throughout the day by putting their dirty clothes in the laundry bin, tidy their toys away & so on.
I am also a huge decluttering addict & have spoken about it many times on this blog. If you don’t need it then why keep it & clutter up your home? Having more storage space is essential for a busy family so clear out those drawers & get organising in to keep/donate/sell piles. Set yourself a task of one room a week to sort & you’ll soon feel so much less burdened by possessions, plus it’s less stuff to tidy away at the end of the day.
What are your top tips for keeping your home life & those jobs we all have to do as easy as possible?
Love,
*This is a sponsored post