I am not averse to a good hack. I have hunted out and used a few in my lifetime. I like the way some of them get me thinking outside the box, in that they make me look at alternative ways to achieve a particular goal, using things I wouldn’t normally have thought of for the job, a bit of lateral thinking, that “oh, for goodness sake….why didn’t I think of that” moment. However good these hacks are though, I don’t think they are particularly newsworthy. The tabloid press obviously disagrees since, in lieu of proper reporting, there has recently been a spate of stories about so called savvy 25-40 something tik tok mums who have “discovered” some amazing “life hacks” and committed them to video. Sorry to say this dears, but you are generations too late ‘cos this grandmother, like her mother and grandmother before her, has been sucking eggs for several decades and has learned what works and what doesn’t!
The first to make me giggle was the how to clean your shower hack, using vinegar and washing up liquid in one of those refillable washing up sponges. We have one of those little squeegee wiper things which, after a simple spritz of vinegar, keeps my shower sparkling. The main point to this one was that it made it easier for you to do it after each shower so you didn’t have the chore of a deep clean once a week. Oh, come on…….who doesn’t clean their shower after each use? She obviously didn’t! Mind you, when you read further, the poor woman did have several children all with their own showers to clean, plus separate family bathrooms, so deep cleaning them all must have been a days work for her cleaner.
This led to a plethora of “who knew you could use vinegar for this” hacks littering the media. However, we should remember that vinegar is not the be all and end all of cleaning hacks, there are quite a few things it can’t tackle. A few years back one of my daughters had a little book which was actually called “1001 Uses For Vinegar”, many of which I have used with varying effectiveness. Due to it’s descaling properties, in our house it gets used to clean kettles, coffee makers and steam irons. However, apart from making excellent volcanoes, using vinegar and bicarbonate of soda as a toilet cleaner is fine as a regular freshen-up clean and do help prevent limescale build-up but, over time, a thick build up of limescale; common in our area due to the hard water; also requires considerable elbow grease and there are better options out there.
Vinegar and bicarbonate of soda are also useful in the laundry. I have used bicarbonate of soda on it’s own, alongside my laundry detergent, to keep my washing bright and fresh and my net curtains white. It is just as effective and oh soooo much cheaper than the proprietary brands, which are full of chemical enhancers designed to make you think everything is brighter and whiter. In the past, rather than using washing powders/liquids I have used soda crystals and, with the optional addition of a few drops of my favourite essential oils, white vinegar does make a good fabric conditioner. In fact, more recently, my sister has convinced me to cut down on expensive hair conditioners by returning to an apple cider vinegar rinse after shampooing. It works just as well and no single use plastic bottles are filling the recycling bin.
Still on the subject of laundry, one of these savvy “influencer” types came up with the benefits of sunlight on your washing. Something I learnt on my grandmothers knee was that sunlight not only bleaches it also disinfects. Why on earth does this woman think we used to hang our terry nappies out whatever the time of year? I used to love my line full of white nappies flapping in the breeze. Oh, she probably doesn’t know what a terry nappy is in this age of use once and throw it into landfill. Sunlight combined with fresh air also has many health benefits so having my windows open whenever possible is another of my things. As a young mum I remember asking my excellent health visitor about the meningitis outbreak in our local schools. Her reply was that so long as my children got plenty of sunshine and fresh air they would be fine. It was also this health visitor who first mentioned the lack of ventilation in schools and hospitals as being detrimental to our health. When I became a nurse, years later, I often remembered her comments and wondered whether the rise in hospital acquired infections is partly due to the fact that hospital windows only open a few inches, if at all, leaving the interiors poorly ventilated, stuffy and reliant on recirculated air conditioning. When my grandparents were young most hospitals had windows which opened and outside areas where patients were encouraged to get into the fresh air. This was seen as particularly important in treating chest infections such as pneumonia, TB and, appropriately at this time, influenza. Another thing I do when the weather is fine enough to have all my windows open is to hang my duvet out of one of the south facing windows to allow the natural disinfecting properties of the sunlight to get to work. In fact, I was told this was the only way to clean my silk duvet effectively when I bought it from the Number 1 Silk Mill in Suzhou.
Talking of duvets, next up was the “amazing no fuss technique” to put your duvet cover on, which involves laying the duvet and it’s cover on the bed and rolling it up before flipping the ends in and shaking the whole thing out, it does work folks. I and at least one of my daughters has been using this technique for years now. As I remember, it wasn’t a savvy mum but a savvy dad who shared it on Youtube. I did have to chuckle as I watched the not so savvy mum crawling about at the top of her bed as she rolled up her duvet and cover. I find it so much easier to lay the cover with the opening to the top of the bed so I can stand at the bottom as I roll up the whole shebang, so much easier.
Lay cover flat on bed with open end to the top 
Lay quilt on top of cover 
Fold closed end over and start to roll 
Roll into a sausage 
At open edge, pull one side of cover round sausage 
Until sausage fully in cover 
Shake out
Then there are the ‘look at my £50 kitchen/bedroom/bathroom/garden makeover” brigade. They’ve discovered rag-rolling, sponging, dragging and stencilling. Does the tabloid media think that no-one has thought of these techniques before. Paul was teaching this stuff in college 20 years ago and I rag rolled and stencilled my bathroom not long after we moved in to this house, 25 years ago. It was pretty gruesome to be honest.
And, more recently, my granddaughter, who lives in rented accommodation, has just given her kitchen a cheap makeover using many of these techniques and it looks far better than it did. But she isn’t running around trying to make out she’s discovered something new on social media. The other big fad to hit the savvy mum set is sticky backed plastic. Or vinyl wrap as it’s now called. Is that because it sounds less tacky? Pun intended. Back in the 1960’s my mother used to cover everything that stood still in sticky backed plastic, from worktops and cupboard doors to photo albums and even my schoolbooks. It was the go to craft item, essential for all those Blue Peter projects along with Copydex glue and toilet rolls. Paul is currently using it to cover our campervan furniture.
I am sure there are still thousands of savvy TikTok, wannabe influencer, yummy mummies out there, all waiting to video their next rediscovered lifestyle hack, gleaned from their trawls through the internet. Whilst I applaud the fact that you are finally discovering better, cheaper and more eco-friendly ways to live and that you are sharing these with your contemporaries please remember that some of these so called hacks have been around for years and were being used before the onslaught of all those convenience products you couldn’t live without, until now. Maybe you should be saying “Wow! My savvy Granny showed me this and it works!”