I can’t remember why, but the other day I fell to thinking about hacks. They were all the rage back towards the start of the internet, but the vogue for sharing tips on how to turn an empty Coke can into a smartphone speaker, or how to “unzip” the skin from a piece of salmon seems to have waned.
It’s a shame! I love life hacks and I really feel like the mainstream discussion of how to improve your life with simple tricks stalled back in 2012.
I despise inefficiency, time-wasting and blundering in all its forms. I am a manic layer-out of my children’s next-day school clothes. Before I go to bed I fill the kettle so that I don’t have to waste time filling it in the morning. For many years I kept a “vomit box” in the boot of my car - a pair of rubber gloves, a pack of wipes, a change of clothes - for when my children chundered en route. In eleven years, my children have been sick in the car only twice. Yet, it was so important for me to be ready should it ever happen. Some call it neurosis, I call it Being Prepared.
(On this subject: always keep a healthy stock of bicarbonate of soda in your kitchen. When your children are small and have a tendency to vomit on the carpet, this neutralises the stench. Liberally sprinkle on the stain, leave overnight then brush off the excess and vacuum up the remains. It will not stop the staining - puke is pure stain juice, is it the acid? - but it will halt the stink.)
There is a key rack on the wall behind our front door because I can’t bear the mess of car, door, bike keys that accumulate on the hall table, which also hosts a box of sunglasses. There ought to be no reason why any adult living in this house should lose their sunglasses or keys because they have a home, right there in the hallway. And when we are all ready to go out and my husband makes us all wait while he finds his sunglasses and his keys, which he has not deposited in the correct place, but scattered them willy-nilly all over the house, it makes me want to turn my face to the sky and bellow in frustration.
So that’s the sort of person you are dealing with. I want to share with you, today, my top and most time-tested and lasting life-hacks.
The new Apple AirTags are A1 for keeping track of your car. When your car is stolen as often as ours is, they’re pretty much indispensable. But they are also very handy for finding your car in a car park or in one of the surrounding streets if you don’t have off-street parking. My friend Charlotte says that car thieves always use a signal blocker, but I think she is just trying to ruin my fun. And anyway, the AirTag is necessary because what car thieves do, (and this has been bourne out twice in my experience), is steal your car, then park it somewhere out-of-the-way and leave it there for a few days. They then return to it once it isn’t “hot” (please excuse my appropriation of shady street language). With an AirTag, you can easily track down the vehicle to its stashing-away place and I’m pretty sure if the thieves do use a signal blocker, Charlotte, they will not leave it in the car permanently.
An oldie but a goodie from long time friend-of-the-spike Laura Welsh, who recommends labelling passports on the outside. This is very helpful if you are travelling in a family group. Further to this, I had to renew Kitty’s passport recently - I was circumspect about doing it online but after trying and failing to do it on paper I relented and realised that, oh, yes, this is way, way easier. Like by a factor of 100. I’m sure you are all over it but just in case you thought renewing your passport online was not for you, take it from me: it is.
Set a recurring calendar note on your phone for your fortnightly bin collections. Never waste a moment wondering if Today is the Day ever again.
This is for the three readers I have left with very small children. When you are just pre or mid-potty-training, make yourself up a few “nappy grab bags” for accidents when you are out and about. This is similar to a Wotsit “grab bag” except not nearly as tasty. Take one zippy plastic bag and put in 1 nappy, 1 spare pair pants, 1 pair latex gloves, 1 nappy bag, and 10 wipes sealed within a further zippy plastic bag. Press all the air out and seal. They slip pleasingly into a modest-sized handbag or into the back pocket of a pair of men’s jeans. This is probably the best idea I’ve ever had and I was dismayed to realise that I was not the first one to have it. It’s so good, though, I can’t stop repeating it to anyone who will listen.
When you come to purchase any essential accessory - a kindle cover, a phone cover, AirPods cover, a wallet, an Oyster card holder, a diary, get it in the brightest possible colour. Neon, Day-Glo - flashing lights if you can. Etsy has a marvellous range of very brightly coloured covers for such things. Get any of these in brown or black and say goodbye to it in the bottom of your bag/camouflaged seamlessly against the hall table.
Decant washing up liquid from the massive bottle into a hand-soap dispenser. Save valuable seconds grappling with the giant bottle by just pumping the liquid out of the dispenser, and also save liquid by getting a single measured pump out of the bottle rather than over-squeezing the bottle in a domestic-grind rage and having to rinse a world-ending amount down the sink.
How about you? Do you have any fresh hacks to share with the group? Thank you in advance.
I hate to sound like an old lady, but the best life hack I ever figured out was to put a small kettle in my bedroom for the sole purpose of filling a hot water bottle at night. It sounds like a tiny thing but it saves me going upstairs at bedtime to get the hot water bottle and then hanging about downstairs while the kettle boils etc. Now I just fill the little kettle upstairs and it boils while I clean my teeth.
(As I type this I realise it doesn’t sound like a big deal but it has brought me joy over the years so I’m sticking with it as a life hack!)
Some fab suggestions from others here, will definitely be trying some of these out.
Hello! I just wanted to pop along and say how glad I am that you've started a Substack. I have followed you for years and was sad when you stopped posting on Instagram. I also think you have the cleverest readers, your comment section is always so interesting and full of great advice and recommendations.
My best life hack comes from the book Atomic Habits (Highly recommend). It's called habit stacking and recommends that you pair new behaviour that you wish to make into a daily habit, along with an old habit, that is already engrained in your brain. So I would never forget to brush my teeth at night, but I always forget to take my vitamins. I now have my vitamins in my bathroom and I have sandwiched the action of brushing my teeth with vitamin-taking! I also make tea every morning and every afternoon, so now instead of looking at my phone while the kettle boils, I challenge myself to tidy as much of the kitchen as I can while the kettle boils and while the teabag is brewing in the cup. It's amazing how much I get done in those 2 minutes.