8 Small Household Items That Will Change Your Life for the Better

Posted on 15 Mar 2018 by Anna Scott
We’re not talking big, expensive appliances here. Just the little things in life that can make a big difference. A few small changes around the home and you could find yourself whizzing through that dinner prep, helping the environment, or cutting down on your cleaning time. Basically, just making household chores that bit easier, and who wouldn’t want that?

 

A Handheld Blender

Not everyone has room for a fancy blender in their kitchen, and even if you do, there’s a very good argument to be made for a handheld blender being much more useful. It requires less washing up for starters. They store away easily in the draw, you can use them to create transform soups, smoothies and sauces, and most of them double up as a handheld whisk too. An instant culinary wonder and you can get them from as little as little as £20 from retailers like Debenhams.

 

Berry smoothie


 

Shower Spray

It’s no fun, trying to get watermarks off your Perspex shower screen without scratching it, and if you live an area with hardwater, this makes the task much more difficult. But using a shower spray every time you finish can save you hours of cleaning time. It literally just takes a few seconds to spray around the shower cubicle or bath, and this will prevent the build-up of watermarks and limescale. Life-changing, indeed.

 

Condensation


 

Microfibre Cloths

The more we become aware of how much household waste we produce, the more we notice every single thing we chuck in the bin. Sick of using disposable sponges and cloths for all your cleaning? Switch to some decent quality microfibre cloths. Just chuck them in the wash when you put on a load instead of throwing away yet another J-cloth. Ok, so they won’t make a massive difference to your household waste levels, but every little bit counts, right? And they’re not too bad at the actual cleaning either.

 

Cleaning the sink


 

A Set of Decent Knives

Nothing, we repeat, NOTHING will make a greater difference to how much you enjoy prepping your meals. Cutting vegetables is often viewed as a massive chore, but only if you’re using rubbish knives to chop them with. Not only do poor-quality knives make the actual chopping more cumbersome, but they can also be more dangerous than sharper, high-quality knives. This is because there is a greater chance of the knife slipping while you are chopping away, whereas sharp knives glide through those carrots with ease. We admit, this is the one item on the list that is a bit pricier but believe us when we say it’s worth the investment.

Premium brands include Global and Le Creuset, but you can buy good value knife sets from reputable manufacturers like Victorinox, and John Lewis do a very good quality own brand range of kitchen knives.

 

sharp knives


 

A Big Wooden Chopping Board

If you’re going to upgrade your knives, then it follows that you should be upgrading your chopping board too. Some chopping board materials aren’t very good for decent knife blades (glass especially) as they can blunt or damage them. Wood is by far the best way to go, and a heavier board makes the whole thing even safer as it won’t move about while you’re chopping. If space is an issue, you can also buy wooden chopping boards that fit on your sink-top.

 

wooden chopping board


 

A Slow Cooker

Making a fancy-pants stew does not have to be time-consuming in the slightest if you have one of these in your kitchen. Just chop everything up in the morning (with those sharp new knives you just bought), stick in the slow cooker and leave on a low heat. A sumptuous meal with minimal effort, which is the very best sort of sumptuous meal.

Check out the BBC Good Food site for lots of slow cooker recipe ideas including vegetarian options like mushroom risotto and slow-cooked Turkish breakfast eggs, plus a great recipe for that slow cooker classic, beef stew.

 

beef stew


 

A Salad Spinner

There’s nothing worse than soggy salad. Apart from maybe gritty salad. Luckily a simple salad spinner can eliminate both these problems. Again, another one of life’s annoying issues solved in seconds and you’ll only have to part with a few of your pounds.

 

salad leaves


 

A Vacuum Wine Saver

Sometimes you don’t want to drink the whole bottle of wine in one go. And sometimes, you might not even want to finish it the following day either. Unlikely, but it does happen. And for those times, you need a vacuum wine saver to preserve it for as long as possible, because wine that is past a few days old doesn’t usually taste too good. It does this thanks to its pump action that removes air out fo the bottle before sealing it, reducing the amount of oxygen the wine comes into contact with.

The most popular brand is Vacu Vin and you can purchase one from Sainsbury’s for under £10, money that you will make back in no time from all the leftover wine you would have otherwise chucked down the sink.

 

wine bottles and corks


 

Most of the items on this list you can find online for under £10, and that’s a small price to pay for something that can literally save you time, make you a better cook or magically lengthen the life of your favourite bottle of wine.

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