Real-Life Solutions to Everyday Living

As I was waking up this morning, I mentally scanned my life for some of the odder solutions I’ve experienced or employed that you as a parent can use free of charge:

If you want your upholstered furniture to survive, just have each piece hermetically sealed with crunchy-hard clear plastic. The cold, forbidding material will keep the couch clean of spills, barfing and greasy hand for decades. It is also a great place to drive toy cars on. My grandma kept the world’s ugliest green – I’m told it was originally blue – couch protected this way.

Are you living in a crowded home with no money for additional storage? Just put everything in boxes and then stack them from floor to ceiling to make an attractive pillar. Paint the boxes if brown U-Haul brown isn’t your favorite color. We haven’t painted the boxes yet, but we have a handsome pillar in our bedroom.

If you run out of room to stack boxes, a balcony is a great place to store strollers and waterproof kids toys. Take into account heavy wind that might toss items into the sky and down on unsuspecting motorists. Because we don’t remember exactly what we put on our balcony, we’re not sure if anything is missing.

Does your spouse eat your chocolate? Well, there are some great hiding places, even in a small apartment, but I can only offer solutions by e-mail because my wife reads this blog. She’s going to kill me for this one.

Do your kids go stir crazy during the winter months? Try clearing out your basement and holding the world Olympics of running back and forth. Or use it as an obstacle course. Or just throw the kids down there and lock the door for a few hours. Odds are they’ll live. My brother and I used to go into the basement – after mom couldn’t handle us anymore – and race back and forth like this during cold rainy days. Once, we did the race on those oh-so-ancient toys: roller skates.

Here’s another solution for bored kids: Let them play broom hockey in a long hallway. Each kid tries to whack a ball – preferably a soft one – with brooms past each other. The game quickly burns off a lot of steam and the bruises heal right quick. Grandma was never too happy with us playing this game, but we never broke anything. My college roommates and I did hurt a few unsuspecting students who opened the door to their rooms at unfortunate times.

I have more solutions, so I may save them for a future post. If you have your own quirky life solutions, add them to the comments and I’ll send you 0.000000001 percent of our Amazon profits someday.

Comments

[L.A. Daddy]

Excellent list! I, too, was guilty of roller skating in our unfinished basement as a wee one. Unfortunately, I also thought it was a good idea to swim in the basement after a heavy rainstorm would flood it... How I didn't die, I'll never know.

And for all I know, the door was probably locked behind me anyway. But I didn't care.

[Fraser]

Apparently my mum used to clean her (large) laundry linoeum floor by pouring half a bucket of extra-soapy water on it, and letting my two older brothers slide around on it. She stopped doing it by the time I was old enough, not sure why...

[brettdl]

Awesome. Someone I know used to use laundry detergent to wash the car. Every time it rained, the car would suds up. We'd then try sliding off the hood of the car.

[state]

awesome list!