13 Lifehacks That Will Save You Time Spent on Chores

Where there's joy, there's an ever-growing list of supplies to buy and messes to clean up.

Does that sound familiar to you? If so, you need some new lifehacks that will save you time spent on chores. Luckily for you, I've got quite a few lifehacks up my sleeve.

My goal is to help you spend as little money and time on your hands and knees as possible. After one trip to the grocery store, and after taking a few preventative measures around the house, household chores will be a second thought.

I am the president of the Procrastination Society and I'm in the 95th percentile of laziness, so you can trust me when it comes to saving time on household chores.

Save time ironing by putting ice cubes in your dryer.

If you wear a lot of linen and cotton, you probably spend an excessive amount of time ironing wrinkles out of your clothes.

If you have an electric clothes dryer though, there's no need to spend all that time ironing. Simply put ice cubes in the dryer with your load of laundry, and they'll flatten out the wrinkles for you.

Sure, ironing can be a relaxing, meditative routine; but it can also be the most stressful of all household chores when you need to leave for a job interview in five minutes, and the dryer only unlocked its door five seconds ago.

Just throw a handful of ice cubes into the dryer with your wet clothes and put the dryer on the hottest setting. The ice will melt after a couple of seconds, and the ice cube steam will prevent wrinkles from forming on your clothes.

If there's one thing you take away from this article, it will be that vinegar is the main component of several different lifehacks.

Vinegar gets rid of mold, stains, limescale, and odors, and it's definitely the long lost friend you need if you're desperately searching for lifehacks that will save you time spent on chores.

You can use vinegar for your washing machine.

It's easy to forget to clean the appliances that are supposed to, well, do all the cleaning. Right now, I'm specifically referring to washing machines.

I recently moved into a new apartment, and the washing machine had mold all over the seals and soap compartments. The washer smelled like a fish market, and, pretty soon, my clothes smelled the same way.

I spent a ridiculous amount of time trying to scrub the machine's nooks and crannies with a toothbrush until I got a terrible cramp in my neck and had to stop. Then, a friend told me to pour white vinegar into the soap compartment and run an empty cycle.

It worked! I have a front-loading washing machine, and I put 3/4 cups of white vinegar in the soap compartment, another cup in the main compartment, and put the washer on the hottest, longest setting.

If you have a top-load washing machine, you can put about four cups of white vinegar right in the main compartment.

Remove hard water stains from glass with vinegar.

Vinegar is an all-purpose stain remover, and it's especially useful if you live in an area with hard water.

When I was a bartender, my colleagues and I had to battle cloudy glasses every day. Then, a patron informed us that we could add some vinegar to our glass rinse. We followed his advice, and the amount of time we saved, as a result, was palpable, in that we started raking in more tips than ever before.

When I went home, I tried using the vinegar trick to clean my tea and coffee mugs (they were so stained, it was embarrassing)—and it worked!

P.S. This trick works for windows, too!

And Limescale!

I live in an area with hard water, so I experience limescale buildup on every surface that comes into regular contact with water. Limescale is harmless but unsightly, and removing it is one of those household chores that must be done if you want your house to look and feel sanitary.

Limescale makes toilet bowls and shower heads look filthy. I've also had the unpleasant experience of swallowing chunks of limescale after forgetting to clean out the kettle. Gross!

Tired of making grocery shopping trips buy expensive limescale removers, and worried about pouring toxic chemicals into my kettle, I gave vinegar a try—and it worked!

Soak your shower head in vinegar overnight, and you'll be able to enjoy a squeaky clean shower in the morning. You can scrub your faucets with vinegar to get the same effect.

If your toilet bowl is turning yellow, dump some vinegar into it and wait a few hours. Brush out the bowl, and the limescale will flake off, bringing back the immaculate whiteness.

Clean your bathtub with grapefruit.

Grapefruit is an incredible fruit with lots of health benefits. Everyone should incorporate grapefruit into their meal plan, but did you know that grapefruit is also a great companion for cleaning your bathtub and ceramic sinks?

Like vinegar, grapefruit is a powerful limescale and scum cleaner. Unlike vinegar, grapefruit smells like heaven.

Slice a grapefruit in half and sprinkle the top with salt. Wet your bathtub (or sink), and use the grapefruit to scrub out the stains. It won't take long at all. When you're finished, wash the pulp down the drain and enjoy your spotless, fragrant bathroom. This is definitely a time-saving housework lifehack you need to know.

Slow cookers are the ultimate time-savers.

First of all, they save you time spent on preparing meals. All you have to do is chop up your ingredients and throw them in the slow cooker. Let them sit there all day, or overnight, and voila! Your dinners and packed lunches are ready to be served.

Slow cookers are also a great way to save time washing up after preparing a meal because they remove the need for several different pots, pans, and oven trays.

If you don't have a dishwasher, slow cooker liners will save you even more time on household chores.

They're not included within the most environmentally- or budget-friendly tips and tricks, but they do make clean-up after meals a lot easier.

Alternatively, clean greasy pots and pans with baking soda and hot water.

Do you ever feel like the effort that goes into making yourself a big, fat, greasy breakfast isn't worth the effort of washing the clumps of burnt bacon fat off pots and pans you used to fry it?

I did, too, until, like you, I searched for lifehacks that will save you time spent on chores and discovered a time-saving solution to the greasy pan dilemma.

Toss half a cup to one full cup of baking soda into your gunked-up pan; boil some water, watch it bubble and fizz, and then let the pan soak in the baking soda tincture for at least 20 minutes. When the baking soda solution has worked its magic, you can go ahead and pour it all down the sink.

Usually, you shouldn't pour grease down your kitchen sink unless you are willing to risk clogging it, but baking soda is an alkali, so it dissolves the grease.

You will thank yourself for years to come. Using baking soda will save you time otherwise spent unclogging your sink!

Line the base of your oven with tin foil.

Cleaning the oven isn't just time-consuming, it's a literal pain in the neck, and one of the least-popular household chores of all time.

Stop causing yourself unnecessary pain. Line the floor of your oven with tin foil to protect it from dripping grease and burnt food deposits.

Once the foil is in place, you can keep it there for however long you usually wait between oven cleanings.

When it's time to swap it out, you can run the foil through the dishwasher to clean it before reusing or recycling it.

Clean your microwave with lemon and water.

Cleaning the microwave is one of the most finicky household chores. Fortunately, you don't need to break your back trying to scrub those stubborn, sticky stains from the ceiling of your microwave, as long as you have a lemon and a bit of water.

Grab a microwave-safe container and pour about half a cup of water into it.

Slice a lemon in half, squeeze it into the water, and then drop both halves of the lemon into the container.

Put your lemon mixture in the microwave and set the time for three minutes, but don't open the door when the timer goes off.

Instead, leave the lemon mixture to stand in the microwave for five minutes. This extra time lets the water and lemon evaporate, which will soften up those tough stains so they're easy to get off.

In the meantime, you can spend more time doing other household chores, homework, or other meaningful and productive things.

When the five minutes are up, take a cloth and wipe out the inside of your microwave. You'll definitely be impressed with the results, but if you aren't, there are a ton of super simple ways to clean your microwave.

Don't spend more time or money using paper towels to wipe your windows and mirrors.

Microfiber cloths are far more effective at cleaning glass than paper towels, and they're also less wasteful.

When you use paper towels to clean your glass, you have to spend extra time wiping away the smudges they leave behind.

That's not something you have to worry about when you use a microfiber cloth. Instead, you just do one wipe over, and you're done! You'll never have to add paper towels to your grocery shopping list again.

Your dishwasher can wash more than dishes.

If you have kids, you are no stranger to dirty plastic toys. Heck, you probably spend more time cleaning them than your kid spends playing with them!

Just the other day, my little Louis insisted on bringing a toy truck with him to the playground. The ground was still very wet and muddy from the torrential downpour from the night before, but I couldn't say no to his stroppy pout.

As expected, his toys were caked in mud by the time we got home. Luckily, another parent noticed my distress and advised me to wash Louis' toys in the dishwasher.

To say I am thankful for this advice would be an understatement. This tip has saved me a ridiculous amount of time on household chores.

Now, I use my dishwasher to clean my hammers, screwdrivers, Zip-Loc bags, and even small trashcans.

Clean your sponges in the washing machine.

Did you know that you don't need to throw your sponges away when they get dirty? When a sponge is saturated in brown gunk, you can just throw it in the washing machine with your dish rags, and it'll come out good as new!

This lifehack will prolong the lifespan of your sponges. That said, the generic sponges we buy at the grocery store are not immortal, and you will probably have to throw them away within a year.

If you have the money and want to save even more time, why not invest in a set of sponges that were manufactured to be reused?

I bought a pack of these reusable sponges six years ago; they've been through the washing machine hundreds of times. They're still in tip-top shape, so its safe to say I've managed to save quite a bit of time with these lifehacks that will save you time spent on chores, too. Now that I don't have to spend the time grocery shopping for household products or cleaning in general, I can kick my feet up, enjoy time with my family, and read up on ingenious lifehacks for lazy people to continue living my new lifestyle.