I don’t do Pinterest. I guess I’m just not aspirational. Nor am I crafty, good at cooking, planning a wedding, redecorating anything or doing anything else that would require my use of the site. I have an account because they made you get one to look at stuff. It didn’t used to be that way. I have pinned two posts ever: a single roasted potato recipe and a thing about how to clean a glass stove top. Both were over a year ago.
But if you’re ever on the site at all, you’ll see hundreds of thousands of posts about “life hacks.” You know, stuff about how you can use binder clips to organize your pantry or salad tongs to clean blinds. These things claim to make your life easier, but they still seem like a lot of work to me. So I’m going to share with you some truly pin-worthy life-hack stuff here. (I even added lots of photos to make Pinterest like it more.) These are things that were borne out of my own laziness (and paranoia), so you can rest assured they are mildly effective and require very little energy.
Ironing only with a hair straightener
If it can’t be ironed with my hand-me-down Chi, it stays wrinkly in this house. Ain’t nobody got time for ironing with two working adults and a 3-year-old. I try to avoid buying anything that actually needs ironing (button-down shirts, linen, etc.), but my husband kind of needs button-down shirts to look like the professional engineer he is in the winter. The engineer’s summer uniform of choice is of course a polo shirt and khakis. Business casual is so boring for men. Anyway, the only parts of his shirts that ever get ironed are the parts that can effectively be reached with the hair straightener, like the collar, cuffs, button placket and edges. But it does an impressive job, especially considering my husband will often leave these shirts in the dryer for days and then put them in a laundry basket without ever bothering to hang them. They look like they were wadded up in a cow’s ass for a while, but a few swipes with the hair straightener on the edges, and I daresay they look 60 percent better. Plus, the hair straightener is ironing BOTH sides of the fabric at the same time! It’s therefore twice as efficient as a normal iron. And it reduces frizz. Winner, winner chicken dinner.
Foot mopping
Sometimes you need to clean up a small area on the floor (like when you discover your kid spilled applesauce two days ago and it has since crusted over) without getting the whole damn mop out. And you don’t want to bend over because you’re lazy. Bending over is hard. For times like these, I spray a nice all-purpose cleaner on the floor (I prefer ones without death chemicals; Method products don’t have those and are awesome), put a couple paper towels under my foot and just rub it around until it’s all clean. You don’t have to get on your hands and knees, adequate pressure is applied to clean up the mess, and the bottom of your shoe gets pretty clean, too. (I would have posted a picture of this, but unbelievably, I couldn't find any on the internet, and I was too lazy to take one.)
Meat-touching gloves
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| No butcher ever has been or ever will be this attractive, BTW. But good demo of gloves and meat. |
So I eat meat, but I have never been able to tolerate being in proximity to it when it’s raw. It just grosses me out. In high school when I helped out with cooking, I’d put sandwich bags on my hands. As an adult I found something so much better: vinyl physical exam gloves! Usually very near gauze and bandages at the store is the perfect tool for getting up to your wrists in ground beef without getting grossed out! No worries of salmonella burrowing under your fingernails, which in my mind is what happens the second you touch a raw chicken breast. I once made the mistake of getting the latex gloves with powder on them. That is not good in enchiladas, FYI.
Just let the cat eat his barf
Last week I was walking out the door for work when I heard one of the cats start puking on the kitchen floor. I turned back and saw him ralph up all the food he just ate too quickly. I did not have time to deal with that, so I decided to just leave it and clean it up when I got home. (It was on hardwood - I do not recommend this on carpet.) When I got home nine hours later, I couldn’t even tell where the barf had been. He’d eaten it all right back up. Gross? Maybe, but it saved me a ton of work, and he got the breakfast back he’d previously lost. It seems like we both won. I did foot-mop where I kind of remembered the pile of vomit being.
Trash night fridge clean-out
I’ve seen schedules about when to clean stuff so you have a nice rotation and nothing ever gets too dirty. I’m not that organized. But every Monday night, anything that’s old in the fridge gets tossed. (Some of it gets garbage-disposed, depending on its size and density.) Because the trash gets picked up the next morning. I’m not going to put moldy casserole in the trash on a Wednesday where it will stink for almost a week. It always goes out on a Monday night (unless it’s a holiday and trash pick-up gets delayed one day). Doing this weekly keeps nasty, old crap from piling up in the fridge. And raccoons generally stay away from our foody trash when it’s out at the curb overnight because it also contains cat turds. That’s my theory why it hasn’t gotten torn up, anyway. And maybe even the raccoons are like, “How old is that lettuce?! Nope.” I know, I know, I should compost. But I just don’t have the will to do that yet. Maybe when my kid is older or something. And worms gross me out. I think you have to have worms in compost.
Chopped, frozen onions
Props to my friend Melinda for introducing me to this one. I know some people cry when they cut onions, but I do more than that. I get instant burning in every sinus cavity, leak from almost all my facial orifices and ruin all the mascara. I think my raw onion reaction is more adverse than most - like borderline Epi-pen worthy. But 98 percent of recipes I like that have onions call for them to be chopped up. So for years I suffered. I put on goggles from my high school chemistry class that I’d saved. I put a clothes pin on my nose. I ran fans. I tried chopping them under water. It was all in vain. Until one day Melinda told me that the processed food gods make frozen onions that are already chopped up! I found them by the French fries. It’s really just onions. It’s not like a bunch of salt is added or anything. And they have changed my life. They should really work with Johnson and Johnson to share the “No More Tears” trademark on those suckers because that’s what has happened for me. I can make sloppy joes without looking like I just watched “Me Before You,” and I don’t spend any time chopping.
Etsy
Much to my mother’s disappointment, I am not crafty. Pretty much every decorative DIY thing on Pinterest looks like it would make be bored to do and be too much work. I would rather read a book than turn a dresser into something shabby chic any day. I don’t want to knit, paint anything with chevrons, reframe vintage mirrors, make a plaster cast of any of my child’s body parts, make God knows what out of an old window frame, etc. etc. Just give me well-written fiction (preferably historical), and I will be so much happier than I would be if I were covered in modge podge. However, I do like some of these crafty things. I just don’t want to take the time to make them. That is what Etsy was made for, my friends. You pay someone else to be crafty for you. Then you have neat, unique stuff and you didn’t have to work for it. The little felted sheep on the invitations for my son’s second birthday party? Etsy. The gorgeous, hand-crafted wooden step stool for the bathroom? Etsy. The unique turquoise necklace for my friend’s birthday? Etsy, Etsy, Etsy. I support independent artisans, and I never have to sew anything.
Please, dear readers, take these lazy life hacks and use them! Pin them! This isn’t even in super-annoying slide show format! Stop full-on ironing, bending over to clean stuff and chopping onions. Does the thought of putting chalkboard paint on anything or making a DIY baseboard-cleaning paste make you cringe? Then come join me in the anti-Pinterest world. Leave that cat barf there for a little while, sit back and enjoy a good book with me.
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