10 Amazing Lifehacks for Moms

When chewing gum inevitably gets somewhere it's not supposed to be (for example, your kid's hair), try not to panic. Instead, reach for an ice cube. Gum’s adhesive properties are dependent on it maintaining a flexible molecular structure, so clamping the gum between two ice cubes for a minute will freeze it and make that structure more rigid. At that point, it’s simple to just scrape it away with a butter knife.

There are few things more painful and time-consuming in a mom’s housekeeping routine than scrubbing the bathroom. Stains on tub and tile surfaces can take tons of elbow grease to get out, no matter what kind of cleanser you use. The Manly Housekeeper has a clever solution that will impress even the most jaded husband. Starting with a standard round scrub brush, you drive a hole into the middle and screw in a lag bolt. That bolt will fit into the nut driver for your drill, and you now have an affordable, powerful scrubber that will save you a ton of effort.

Photo via The Manly Housekeeper

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.

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.

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.

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.

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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.

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.

Fine motor skills are one of the most difficult things in a child’s developmental progress. When their brains grasp concepts faster than their hands can express them, it can lead to some serious frustration. If you’re worried about your kid’s pencil grips or other skills requiring dexterity, one of the best ways to improve those is by heading out to the playground and letting the kids play like primates. Gill Connell at Moving Smart says that integrating large muscle activities with the hands (like hanging from bars) helps kids learn to coordinate those muscles and use them more adeptly in other situations. And it’s a lot more fun.

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