Wednesday, Sep 1, 2010Handy and Helpful Household Tips

When the rest of the world is making demands on us, it’s nice to relax in a home environment that doesn’t add to our stress. With some household tips about improving our home efficiency, we can enjoy coming home again.

Home Efficiency

I’d like to focus only on your home environment and see if with this focus, we can achieve home  efficiency tips, helpful household tips, and provide some kitchen tips.

I’d like you to take a notebook and stroll through your home, making a list as you walk from room to room of all the things that need to be done for either home repairs, regular maintenance, or beautification.  Sometimes a fresh look in a room just makes you feel better about your home.

• Organize your list by priorities.  If you live where the seasons change, which tasks can be accomplished in the summer?  Which in the winter?  If you have a summer and a winter list, then decide which two of those items are a must-be-done.  You can either do them yourself or hire help to get them done.  There are two handymen at my home as I write this helping me get my To-Do list done before winter. Your time is valuable and if you hire some help, you can spend more time with your children or friends or family.

• Once you have this list, choose the biggest job – the one  you consider immense – and then decide to work on it for only fifteen minutes without any interruptions.  Set a timer, and once the fifteen minutes are over, you will feel that it’s a lot less of a job than you’d originally thought. You can decide when to dedicate the next fifteen uninterrupted minutes on it and whittle it away to full completion this way.

• Make a decision to clean your windows once or twice each year.  Here is another area where hiring this help works out just great.  You’ll be surprised how clean windows makes you feel better inside the house.

• Use baskets to segregate clothing inside your closet.  You can teach this to your children as well.  Having a socks and underwear basket makes the task of putting clothing away a lot easier and more efficient.  “A place for everything and everything in its place” keeps your home organized and requires less work in the long run.

Kitchen Tips

If you have a baby, you can puree the leftovers from the family meal and freeze it for later use.  If the food is spicy, rinse it off.  Use a bit of chicken broth to get the right consistency.

When you prepare a meal, double the ingredients and then freeze the second portions for later use on a day when you’re just too tired to cook.

Layer food in your crock pot and refrigerate it the night before.  When you leave for work the following day, plug the crock pot in on low and you’ll have a meal when you return home.

You can chop vegetables like onions, peppers, vegetables and blanch them in hot water and then freeze them.  They’ll be handy and ready to use in your favorite recipes.

Talk to your friends at work and discuss these household tips with them.  See what they are doing to improve their home environment and add their home efficiency tips to your list.  You can still achieve success in this demanding world of ours but if you’re efficient at it, it doesn’t have to drain you.