Hacking Life

It must be a sad, sad thing in a highly fashionable, fast-paced and too-busy-for-your-mother world to sit at home on a Sunday evening reading Parent Hacks (see links) when I am not a parent, do not have children of my own and am not a caregiver to any small living thing.

But there is something very fascinating about reading and learning off the tips and tricks of other people in how they cope with life as we know it - the small, messy, eyeliner-running, administrative side of life that is gooey, ugly and frequently embarassing but which can be fixed with the smallest of genius ideas, much of which already compiled online.

Parent Hacks' introduction to its website reads: Daily parenting tips and ideas from the real experts -- actual parents. Here's everything that was left out of the instruction manual. Oh yeah. There is no instruction manual. Obviously and unfortunately, it's not just parenting that comes missing an instruction manual, Life generally does as well.

And living alone sometimes needs an instruction manual. Or you wish you had one.

Don't get me wrong. I love living by myself and keeping house by myself. There is something very fascinating with experimenting with living life on my own and coming up with hacks of my own to clean, cook and organize my house faster, neater, better. I love Six Sigma'ring my kitchen. There was a personal challenge there which I undertook lustily to keep a Martha Stewart house while living it up like a bachelorette. I am very proud of the fact that I do both without turning into an anal retentive, don't-leave-your-wet-socks-on-the-floor type of raving female lunatic.

Some time ago I posted a kitchen tip on using Ikea coloured clips in a colour coded way to organize which order freezer foods need to be used based on expiry date. Apparently, I've found out also that you can write on the flat, thick surface of the clip with a pencil (very useful for definite dates) and wash them off easily with dishwashing soap and water.

Chris from Parent Hacks further recommends to schedule a shared calendar (good for people who live together - not good for me who lives alone) online using Google calendar or something like that to set up reminders on when to finish freezer leftovers.

More Google tips is to use Gmail as a recipe organizer - when you search for recipes online: email them to yourself with and send them with yourusernamename+recipes@gmail.com. Then, you can add a filter in gmail to take anything that arrives to yourname+recipes and apply the recipe filter, and auto-archive it. This way, you don't even have to look at it til you want to.
Gmail lets you put pretty much anything after the + after your username, and it'll still deliver it. (I didn't know!)

Another bachelorette household tip out of the drawer (not that you needed to know...): is an adaptation of the mop-your-floor-with-diapers trick from Parent Hacks. Since I haven't any used diapers at home and have other good ways of cleaning my floor - I realised that I did however need to polish my leather boots and didn't have anything but kitchen towels (which flake) and tissue paper (which disintegrate) handy. An open mind and a new pantiliner later... I've discovered that the apparently patented weave of most commercial pantiliners work great as shoe polishers. Plus, one side is sticky and readily sticks to your hand, leaving your other hand free to hold your shoe while you clean it. Works on all leather items and disposable once you are finished with polishing wax. (Sorry guys, maybe that one's for the ladies but hey, maybe your leather boots aren't quite as tough to keep shiny.)

Small intriguing things I post to myself so I don't forget. These are but part of the few highlighted trawled items that came up in an hour's browse. Quick tips from hassled parents who have already gone ahead in the battle against the mundanity of life makes my life a heck of a lot easier to live it up and still stay tidy with enough spare change for that extra pint of beer.