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Get Gum out of Hair and Fabric With Ice
Keep Your Bathrobe on in the Morning
If you’re a working mom—or just like looking pulled together as you go about your day—you’ve probably had to change an outfit at least once in the morning after an unexpected stain or spill ruined things. Thankfully, there's a simple solution for that: After you get dressed, simply pull your bathrobe on over your clothes. If a morning mess comes along, your outfit will be insulated from it, and it’s way easier to wash a bathrobe than take a blouse to the dry cleaner.
Make Your Own Play-Dough
No matter how hard you try to impress upon your kids the importance of keeping colors separate, store-bought Play-Doh eventually gets mashed together into a messy blob of gunk that kids aren’t particularly excited about. Instead of buying more, use this simple recipe from Instructables to make your own nontoxic play-dough at home. All it takes is flour, salt, water and food coloring, and you can even rope your kids in on the process by letting them pick their own colors.
Cut Onions Without Tears by Moving Your Tongue
There are dozens of home remedies and old wives’ tales about cutting onions, and some of them work. But the absolute most effective method for chopping onions without tears doesn’t involve any extra equipment—just your tongue. When you cut into an onion, you break cell walls that contain sulfenic acid and enzymes, which mix in the air to create propanethiol S-oxide, a sulfur compound that can irritate sensitive tissues like your nose and eyes. To get rid of this vapor, DIY Life recommends that you simply press your tongue hard against the roof of your mouth and breathe through it while you cut. This will pull all of the irritant into your mouth (which is much tougher), making it bypass sinuses and eyes so you can skip the tears.
Make Kids Like Cleaning With the Sweeping Square
When they’re young, it’s easy to convince kids that household chores can be fun. But there are certain things that little bodies just can’t handle—like sweeping into a dustpan. There’s a clever and easy way to get around that, though, which will make your floors cleaner in the process. Tape off a square on the floor about a foot on each side with masking tape, then hand your little one the broom and have him sweep everything into that square. When he's done, grab the dustpan and sweep the square into it. Not only will it get crumblies off the floor, but it’ll also work to teach him hand-eye coordination and observation skills.
Use a Wooden Spoon to Stop Pots From Boiling Over
Every mom has experienced this—you’ve got a pot of water on the stove for pasta but get pulled out of the kitchen to deal with some kind of kid emergency. When you get back, the pot’s boiled over, making a huge mess all over your stovetop. There’s a super simple way to keep this from happening, though, and it involves a little bit of physics. When water boils to create a foam, it makes the air-water interface area much larger. But it also makes it more fragile, so if the bubble is popped the whole thing collapses. Laying a wooden spoon across the top of the pot creates a simple interrupting barrier that will stave off messes for several minutes.
Kids Want to Help in the Kitchen? Use The Dishwasher Door
There are few things cuter than when your little one wants to help you out in the kitchen. Unfortunately, as most moms know, they seldom are more help than hindrance, especially when it comes to cleanliness. A reader at Parent Hacks has a brilliant solution for letting your child feel like she's part of the action in the kitchen while making cleanup easy. Open up your dishwasher door and let her use it as a counter surface to mix and stir—and spill—to her heart’s content. It’ll keep her out of the actual meal preparation and make the mess a breeze to clean up.
