The lovely Karin at Cafe Bebe has rightly honoured Martha Stewart as the Queen of all Things Domestic, by sharing the most valuable things she's learned from Martha, and tagging some bloggers, including myself, to impart our own words of wisdom - tips and secrets that we just can't live without. So here goes...
1. Stainless steel is a nightmare to keep smear-free, especially with kids about. When out styling kitchens for the magazine, I always have a bottle of baby oil with me to wipe away smears and fingerprints. It works, honestly!
2. Invest in a pot of blackboard paint. Paint a small area, paint a whole wall, paint a door, or just paint a patch on a glass storage jar to use label with chalk. We've had a blackboard wall somewhere in every place we've lived. In this house we've painted the whole door to the understairs cupboard. I started listing all the foods the babies have tried, complete with little pictures but as with so many of my 'great ideas', the novelty soon wore off!
3. Save time when changing the bedding, by keeping a full set together in a pillowcase. Use it to hold the sheet, duvet cover and other pillowcases for each bed, and it will save you from an angry husband who has spent the last ten minutes trying to squeeze a king sized duvet into a double duvet cover.
4. To keep your fridge smelling fresh, pop a little cup of bicarbonate of soda on one of the shelves. At the moment I'm going through bicarbonate of soda at a rate of knots trying to get the smell of baby sick off clothes, toys etc, because the odour makes me retch. I've so got to toughen up.
5. If you run out of shaving gel for your legs, hair conditioner is a great alternative. Ok, I admit it, I never actually bother to buy shaving gel. I always use hair conditioner. It's one less bottle clogging up the shower area.
6. I created a spreadsheet listing everything we could possibly need from the supermarket. A blank one is always stuck on the fridge, so we can just put a tick next to each item we need, as and when we run out or think of it. Otherwise we end up doing countless trips back to the supermarket to pick up everything we've forgotten.
I love this Words of Wisdom idea so much it might become a regular post here at Young & Younger. Now I need to tag some lovely bloggers for their fantastic tips. I'm going to tag Mummy Bear (@mrsscruff) at She was not at all domestic, as I reckon she must have some great beauty tips for us. Kat (@that_kat) at Housewife Confidential always has some valuable words of wisdom for me, so she's tagged. And Dotterel (@dotterel) at Bringing Up Charlie is a domestic dad extraordinaire so I'd love to hear some of his secrets.
Karin has added a Linky Tools widget to her post here so you can link back to your own Words of Wisdom post.
