Awhile back, we were over my sister's apartment for dinner. Mazzy wanted to use her watercolors (I happened to have a set in my bag) but I didn't want her to make a mess. After trying and failing to find some newspaper to put on the floor, I suggested using a puppy pee pad since my sister has a dog.
We quickly realized this was THE BEST IDEA EVER since puppy pee pads are super absorbant with a plastic backing so nothing soaks through. (FYI- It's an even better idea if you don't have a dog so no four-legged creatures try to pee on your child's masterpiece in mid-creation.)
I have never been more proud of myself as I was in that moment. I had created my very first "parent hack".
I wish I could name twenty more that I've developed since, but the truth is, that was the one and only time true inspiration struck. The rest I've been collecting from around the web on Pinterest in a board called "Parental Brilliance".
Buzzfeed did a great post on parent hacks about a month ago, so I would check that out too, but they missed a few.
Here are 21 of my favorites acts of parental brillance…
1. Put a cupcake wrapper under a popsicle.
Image Source: Juggling with Kids
2. Use empty toilet paper rolls to hold together rolls of wrapping paper.
Image Source: My Love Bug Baby
3. Put a suspension curtain rod between a crib and the wall to create a playspace or reading nook.
Image Source: Ohdeedoh
4. Transform Starbucks to-go cups into no-spill paint cups.
5. Put an Elmo scrunchi around the lens of a camera to get your kid to look in the right direction.
6. Cut a hole in the tip of a pacifier to help administer medication.
7. Tie a tissue box to an empty tissue box with rubberbands for a convenient used tissue garbage.
8. Cover a paint tray with tin foil for no clean-up.
9. Have your toddler hold a juice box from the side tabs to keep him from squeezing the box too hard and spilling all the juice.
10. Use a hanging tiered fruit basket to hold bath toys.
11. Use a lint roller to pick up glitter.
Image Source: Juggling with Kids
12. Instead of bringing an autograph book to Disney World, bring a photo mat for all the characters to sign.
Image Source: Disney Trip Expert
13. Cut a pool noodle to prevent a door from slamming.
14. Use a bread tab to find where the tape begins.
15. Paint old pieces of denim with yellow lines to create roads you can easily pack in a suitcase.
16. Use a hairdryer to remove stickers your toddler stuck on your floors or furniture.
17. Make sweeping into a fun game.
18. Hang a 'lost sock' board next to your washing machine.
19. Bring band aids on your next trip to use as travel baby proofing for outlets.
20. Use your sunglasses for an iPhone stand.
21. My only original hack: Use an absorbant puppy pee pad as a toddler painting workspace instead of newspaper. Who gets the newspaper anymore, anyway?
Anybody have any acts of parental brilliance they'd like to share?
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These are excellent hacks. I use(d) some of them already. Lost sock “Wanted” board is my favorite though, I will definitely do that at home.
Great to have all in one spot! I’ve seen a few of these and now all I need to do is bookmark this blog entry!! Thanks!! I’ll be putting the reading nook one to use asap!!
This isn’t really a hack, but I tell all new parents to buy a good pizza cutter with a colored handle (I have a KitchenAid one with a red handle). The colored handle makes it easy to find in a drawer full of other utensils and I use it for EVERYTHING I cut up for a toddler. Pizza, hot dogs, PB&J sandwiches, grapes, pancakes, etc. It’s so much more convenient (and easy!) than using a knife. We even take it to restaurants with us.
When the boys I nanny don’t want to wear a coat (in freezing weather) I put their coats on backwards! They can’t reach the zippers. 🙂
I am getting a curtain extension rod ASAP and creating a little hang out spot for my son. Although the curtains in his will be blue instead of pink and have dinosaurs and cars instead of fluffy pillows.
OMG!!! I LOVE your blog and follow you on facebook. I think you are just the funniest lady (and am always telling my husband about you). So imagine my surprise when my fabric roads were among your fabulous finds. I am in shock…and off to call hubby because I am so excited. Thank you so much!!!!!!!
Awesome, awesome, awesome! Gah — I wish I’d thought of some of these when my kids were still little enough to create havoc with glitter/slamming doors/stickers/juiceboxes.
Cheap Dollar Tree spray bottles instead of squirt guns! My best idea ever-reduces refills, they squirt farther and typically last longer since they don’t bust to pieces when dropped on the ground.
Cameracreatures.com has great lens stuffed animals to get children to look at the camera! I always have one stuck in my camera bag for outdoor shoots where there are lots of distractions.
Frozen peas to cool down dinner dishes like pasta or soup (the little sweet ones work the best). Just throw them in frozen and they cool down the dish so the kids can eat it that much quicker. The hot food thaws them almost immediately, just stir it up and hand it to the kiddos. Also you’re adding vegetables so mom of the year!
I am bananas in love with the jeans into travel road pieces. Off to find some pants I can hack at…
use pie pan to hold a beach ball so it doesn’t roll away…
Brilliant! I especially love the suspension curtain rod, Starbucks paint cups, sweeping, and juicebox hacks.
And also the lint-brush glitter picker-upper! So hard to clean that off the floor!
Um…WOW!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Genius. Love your use of potty pad, also love the TP rolls as wrapping paper wranglers, suspension rod for tented space, and starbucks cups as paint/brush holders!
I found that TP tolls didn’t work as well as gift paper rolls did. The TP rolls are flimsier… But great Idea.
We use the pee pad under our toddler’s sheets to catch accidents while potty training.
Stick a straw through the lid of yogurt. Toddlers can enjoy yogurt without all the mess!
Just remembered one I use (although credit goes to my friend for creating it): Put Cheerios in days-of-the-week pill boxes to keep toddlers occupied at restaurants/on planes. Opening and closing the little compartments is an activity, and it takes more time and effort to pick the Cheerios out of the little boxes than it does to eat them off a tray or out of a snack trap.
Brilliant.
To help my toddler look where I want him to when I’m brushing his teeth I either put a sticker on my forehead or I draw a shape or letter on my forehead with a bath crayon. He just needs to look at the sticker/drawing and I can see what I’m doing while I brush. We also talk about color and shape, and if I used a sticker he gets it when I’m done if he was good.
Mind blown… *POP*
The fruit basket in the shower is my “original hack” I have been using it forever!!!
Turn zippered jammies inside-out for the toddler who likes to get naked and have potty accidents. I call them “tricky zippers” if they get noticed.
Fruit loops in the toilet for targets to hit so your little boys hit the pot instead of the floor/seat/wall/etc.
Ahh the escape artist with the Jammie’s…. I cut the feet off and turn them backwards. He can’t get them off!
Truly, beyond genius. Love this.
Fishing tackle box to sort legos or beads. Because I hate the meltdown when we can’t find the exact right piece.
We also use one to put the game pieces away, since the boxes have a tendency to walk away and get trashed.
Good lord almighty woman, these are awesome. Thanks for finding them because even though our kids aren’t that far apart in age, you seem to have MUCH more energy than I do. Lucky lucky girl 🙂
Excellent hacks, pinning so many of them!
#3 isn’t a suspension rod. It’s not braced against the wall, the curtains wrap around into the space (so they are against the walls) and there’s a rod along the floor too. If I had to guess, I would say it’s a structure made of PVC. Lengths of pipe connected with corner connectors to make a cube. Easy to make and a lot less likely to fall apart than a rod braced against a movable object (the crib).
It’s not a curtain rod, it’s a cube-structure made from PVC pipe. Note the line of pipe along the floor at the front. Easy to make and much more stable than a tension rod against a movable object! I made a giant one for my kids with $20 and half an hour of work.
Love the hanging fruit basket to hold bath toys and the Starbucks to-go cups as no-spill paint holders is sheer brilliance (too bad I don’t drink frappucinos).
I’m proud to say I already do the paint tray-lined-with-tin-foil thing. When I paint my own walls, that is. Which is almost never anymore. (Ain’t nobody got time for painting.)
LINT BRUSH FOR GLITTER!!!!!
My live is forever changed…thank you!!!
Number 9, also useful for adults 😉
Frozen waffles for teething its cold so it sooths and has a odd texture my three nieces loved you have to check the waffle every so often to make sure it’s still frozen though and when it was done I would feed it as a treat to my dog. The broken little bits of crayons I hold on to and for valentines day I take them and put them in a heart shaped cupcake pan then in the oven at 350 and make the girls heart shaped crayons. Glow sticks shoved into clear beach ball for slupper parties so the girls can play on the trampoline and see it bounce everywhere. Frozen yogurt instead of ice cream if you get the whipped it has a smoother texture. Sponge fight instead of water ballon so you don’t have little piece of ballon to pick up and if you have any kids with allergies to rubber you won’t have any issues just get the get the big pack from walmart and cut into sizes that will fit in kids hands then set out three buckets so the can refill their sponge. Pool noodles over the net bar for trampoline so they are soft if a child hits them. Turn crib around to face the wall for children that crawl out.
may need caution with using the pill box for cereal…if there is access to anyone (grandparents???) that uses them for PILLS, it could lead to a serious disaster.
What a great idea!!! And my kiddo LOVES peas!
That is SO much easier than scooping it all into the food pouches!
Stealing this one too!!
That fruit basket to hold bath toys is BRILLIANT. How have I not thought of that?!?!?!?! My life has changed.
Same with the bandaid. We are going to be staying in a hotel next weekend and with a curious toddler, this is going to save me.
A friend of ours put a plastic sandwich baggie in between the bottle part of the sippie cup and the lid to prevent leaking. BEST IDEA EVER! Our little one’s bottles always leak even with the cap on.
for the traveling mom of an infant or young toddler, bring a high chair suction cup toy and attach to plane window.
This is an awesome list! Thanks for sharing. A pool noodle on the edge of the bed (tucked under the sheet to hold it snug) makes for easy, cheap, and portable mattress “rail.”
I would use caution with the band aid over the outlet…the photo shows a colorful child’s band aid, which seems like a beacon to draw attention to the outlet, plus the photo even seems to illustrate the child’s interest in it…I am picturing my daughter picking away at that band aid until she got it off. Why not just bring a few actual outlet covers? They are small and probably wouldn’t take up more space than a box of band aids.
Kitchen scissors are also EXCELLENT for cutting up all manner of toddler food.
Fantastic assembly of ideas. I put my 19-month-old son’s crib mattress on the floor and put the crib around it when he got big enough to climb out of the crib on its lowest setting. This lowered the mattress a further 8 inches or so and fixed my problem till he’s old enough to be trusted in a toddler bed.
I buy cosmetic bags at thrift stores for around 75 cents to store puzzle pieces in. Then I store the puzzle board on a bookshelf, and the bags containing pieces in a bin on the shelf below it.
I use ziplock bags to store puzzles in. I tape the bag to the back of the picture. If it is a large picture, I have folded it so it fits in the bag, but I like the tape idea better.
Trying to remember which puzzle piece belongs to which puzzle, when your favorite litte someone has dumped all of them on the floor? Here’s my solution. Come up with a labeling system, i.e., number, letter or symbol, and mark that on the back of the puzzle base AND on the back of each piece…it sure makes clean-up a lot easier.
That’s awesome
I love the foil and the painting. I’ve been doing our house and cleaning between the different colors can be time consuming. Great list!
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Great compilation! I’m constantly looking for ideas to organize! Especially love the hanging fruit basket– I think I could use something like that in multiple places…closet maybe?
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Night time reading is a pain when you have to put the books back after getting your child all relaxed. Instead simply attach a plastic basket with a couple of command hooks to the side of your child’s night stand for a night night book nook. since it only holds a few books it also makes your child choose instead of begging for more books to put off sleeping.
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You young mothers sure are smart. I will pass these ideas to my granddaughters.
Love your ideas! I am a grandma, so my kids, in their mid to late thirties would not appreciate these ideas. But I will use them when the grands come by. I only have a couple of ideas from the mom my kids call the cheapest woman in the world. I never throw anything out without seeing if I can make something else out of it first. I use the heavy tights worn by little girls and slice them like Cherrios, then I roll them and use them as free hair scrunchies. I am also very afraid of what is in many of the products used on young kids. I buy the best soaps I can, with the least amount of chemicals in them. I could never bring myself to throw out the chips that are always left in the soap dish. I would save them until I had boxes. Then I came up with my own liquid hand-soap recipe. I take a quart-size canning jar, fill it half-way with soap chips and cover them with hot water. I let this sit until it gets slimy. I know, it sounds gross. After it is good and slimy, add one shot of your favorite antibacterial gel, (get something used by hospitals, one bottle will last forever.) Dump the entire mess into a blender purchased from the thrift store just for this purpose and pulse on high until it takes on the consistency of pudding. Finally, if you like, buy a pump soap bottle to put it into. I am so cheap, I just purchase a bottle of liquid hand soap in a bottle I like and use it up, keeping the bottle to reuse for my homemade hand soap. And my last idea. I found another use for a lint roller on another site. During tick season, do this each time before you go into the house. Take a lint roller and roll down every member of your family with a lint roller and all your pets to retrieve ticks before they have a chance to attach to your body. This cheap trick will go a long way in keeping your family and pets healthy.
Happy Parenting. God Bless.
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