Hi, guys. Welcome back to my channel and to another mom hacks video. Today, I wanted to
share with you some new hacks. These seem to be your favorite videos of mine. So I hope you really
enjoy this one. If you do, give it a big like. If you're new to this channel, I would love you to
subscribe for more content like this. I post hacks so often on this channel. So if you're into that
kind of thing, definitely follow along. Please, if you have any other mom tips or mom hacks,
put them in the comments down below because I know everyone would love to read those.
But with all that said, I'm just going to get straight into it today. My first hack might
sound like a bit silly or one that you know, but I literally just found this out and it blew my
mind. We're currently redoing our kitchen and I was thinking about the food that I could make
when we don't have an oven. I noticed that you can cook potato waffles in the toaster.
It literally takes just five minutes. You put the potato waffle down just twice until it's like a
nice golden brown and then it's cooked so then you can serve it with beans or sausages or ever
your kids like to have with it. You don't have to preheat an oven. It takes like 15 minutes when
you do cook it in the oven. So it's way faster. I don't know why I never realized that before.
A really cool hack that I wish I'd known sooner is that you can use your Apple AirPods and your
iPhone to make a baby monitor. Obviously, you won't want to use this all the time, but I think
this would be perfect if you were on holiday or over at a friend's house for the evening, and you
put your baby down in another room, but you wanted to be able to listen and know that they are okay.
So the way to do this is to go to the settings app and then choose the control center, then hit
the plus sign, and then you can choose hearing. So that will now appear on your control center.
Then when you actually want to listen in, you can go to the hearing icon,
press that, and you actually put the phone in the room where your baby is and then you can
either put the little AirPod into your own ear or turn up the volume really loud and have that sat
near you so that you'll be able to hear if any sound comes through this. I suppose you could also
use this to eavesdrop on people as well, but I just thought this would be a great temporary baby
monitor and I had no idea that you could do this. This next hack has saved me so much time in the
morning when I'm of the kids ready for school and I need to find all of their winter gear,
like their hats, scarves and gloves. I have baskets for each of those things,
but I was still finding that I was having to search through the baskets to find the hat that
they wanted to wear. So what I've done is hang a clear shoe organizer on the back of the door,
where we keep our coats, and that way, every item is on its own. It's also see through so you can
see exactly what you need and where everything is. It makes it so much quicker to just say, "Okay,
that's the hat that you want. That's the gloves that you want," in the morning. So I have loved
doing this. I know so many people use these shoe organizers for other organization, like for baby
clothes or for shoes itself. But I have found that storing winter gear in it has been really useful.
The next hack that I wanted to share with you guys is an incredible tutoring service from GoStudent.
GoStudent have sponsored this section of the video, but I've been blown away
by their tutoring packages and the service that Fraser and I have experienced from
using them. So the best thing about GoStudent for me is that it's all done online from the comfort
of your own home. It's completely flexible and so easy to use. Before I used GoStudent,
we were actually having to drive him somewhere for tutoring, where he would have one to six tutoring,
whereas GoStudent is one to one. It's a very individual service. I actually had to
complete a whole questionnaire about Fraser before he started having his sessions. So they asked
about his personality, his learning habits, his hobbies as well. Then the teacher uses all of that
to make the perfect session for him in the ways that he learns best. The tutoring that Fraser has
experienced with GoStudent has been really fun. They use quizzes, music, games and videos to help
with his learning. Because he does find it fun, it's not difficult to get him to do the sessions.
GoStudent believe in sustainable learning. So it's not like a quick fix. GoStudent have said that my
viewers can have 10% off their tutoring packages. So I'll put a special link in the description down
below if you do want to go ahead and check it out. If your child is struggling in any areas or
actually excelling in any areas that you really want to push, they will find the perfect tutor
for you. That's something I love about them. It's not limited by geography. They will find the best
teacher from wherever they are and link them up to your child because it's all done online.
So for instance, Fraser is actually having Spanish tutoring now and his teacher actually lives in
Spain. So he thinks it's really cool that his Spanish lessons are with someone who's there. I
just think with the past two years that we've had with all the online learning and homeschooling,
there might be some areas that our kids need a little bit of help and support catching up
on. In my opinion, out of all the tutoring that we've tried in the past few years,
this is private affordable tutoring and we've had a great experience with it.
Fraser was actually working towards his 11 plus, but I'm very happy to say that he passed that
and he did really well. So I think next up, we'll be looking at maybe Caleb starting something in
year four. But whatever their ability is, they will be able to support you. So once again,
I'll put that link in the description down below. The next hack is one that I discovered when I
was ordering Christmas presents. I had all these packages being delivered to the house
and a few of them had styrofoam in them to keep things safe, or what I thought was styrofoam.
I remember saying to my friend, "I think it's awful that they're packaging them in this. It's so
bad for the environment." She said, "No, those are called eco pops." So they look like styrofoam,
but they're 100% biodegradable and you can just put them into your sink, pour warm
water over them and they melt down to nothing. Or you can also plant them in soil. As I said,
they're 100% biodegradable. So they're much better for the environment. But I was getting
them from companies that used to use shredded paper, like Lush and Jo Malone and now they use
these eco pops. So if you didn't know that, because that was news to me,
now you know you can just melt them down yourself. My next hack is to use your Alexa or Google
assistant to entertain the kids on rainy days. There are so many games that you can play on
them. For instance, if you say to Alexa, "Play the animal workout game," it will have your
kids slithering around like snakes or jumping around like a kangaroo. Or if you say to your
Google Assistant, " Play TicTacToe, tell me a joke, play the guess the animal sounds game
or the freeze dance game." There are lots of different ones. You could probably just say to it,
"Can we play a game?" and it will help you play one. But if you have a look online,
maybe I'll link an article down below and you can see all the ones you can play. It's
really fun and interactive for The kids. A simple everyday mom hack that really
works is if you find that you get too many wipes out of the packet when you take one,
what you can do is put a hairband around the pack of wipes and that will hold down the rest
of the wipes just enough for you to just get one wipe out. This is great if you're changing
your baby and you're doing it all with one hand. You'll just get the one that you need.
I also have another homework hack for you guys. Actually, if you want to see a whole video on
homework hacks on their own, let me know and I will put that together for you guys. But if
you have younger children who actually like to do their homework at the dining table with you,
rather than maybe in their rooms, then this is perfect. What you can do is create a simple
homework caddy. You can do this with one of those spinny pen things. I actually got one of these on
Amazon, but you can also use like a cleaning caddy or just a box or whatever you have. Just fill it
with all the things that you'll need for homework. Often I find the kids need glue, scissors,
sticking, markers, pencils, erasers, and stuff like that. So I've put it all
into this caddy. Then when it's homework time, I get this out, put it on the dining table and
we can work through whatever they need to do. I just know that all the supplies that we need to
do the homework is right there. They also get pretty excited about it as well. We can kind of
all do homework together at the table. As I just mentioned, a cleaning caddy,
I wanted to show you a really cool hack on how you can use a cleaning caddy as a car protector,
especially if your kids play sports or football and get really, really muddy. Every Sunday,
my eldest has a football match and he has been so muddy lately. So you can actually put one of these
into your car, maybe into the boots. When they're done playing football, if you don't want them to
take everything off, you can actually put this at their feet. They can stick their feet into the
cleaning caddy and it will protect your car. Then when you get home,
all the mud is going to be in that. I also wanted to share with you a life hack on the
easiest way to remove a sticky label. I've seen so many people share different ways online, like
rub a peanut butter on it, or nail polish remover, but actually the easiest way to remove an annoying
sticky label is to blow dry it for a few seconds. This will heat it up just long enough for you to
be able to peel it back easily. I used a lot over the Christmas period. We had some packages arrive
from Amazon that were just the actual product box. So to get those like really sticky address labels
off, I would just blow dry it and take it off that way. I also did this recently on a
new bowl that we got for Kiki. It was like one of those really annoying labels that didn't come off
when I tried to wash it off. So all I did was blow dry it, and tadah, it came off.
My next tip is more of a mindset trick than a hack, but it's something that I've been
doing this year that's really been working. So I wanted to share it with you guys. So for 2022,
my main goal was to start looking after my health more and self-care. So I was looking at ways like
how was I going to fit all this self-care in, how was I going to get exercising every day?
Just simple things like hydrating, having healthy, balanced meals and taking my vitamins and stuff.
Then I started thinking, "This is crazy. I should just treat myself the way that I treat the kids."
I always make sure that they're hydrating, that they take their vitamins, that they have
healthy, balanced meals and snacks and get exercise. I sign them up for
gymnastics and football. I make sure they have a bath every night and just all those little basic
things. Then I thought, "Why don't I just treat myself every day the way that I treat the kids?"
Since I've been thinking like that, I've just been waking up and making sure that I take my vitamins,
because I would make sure that they wouldn't miss them. Do you know what I mean? I hope this makes
sense. It's something so simple. But often as a mom, our basic needs, things like having a
shower somehow becomes a luxury, but it shouldn't. This next hack is one that I thought would be good
to share now that the world is opening up that bit more and we can go to restaurants as a family
again. So this is my restaurant bag. This is so simple to make up. You can use like an old makeup
case or maybe an old, clear plastic folder and just put a few things in it for your kids to do,
maybe some marker or crayons, some coloring pens, some coloring pages and any little toys that
they like. I really like that this isn't screen based. So if your kids are getting a little bit
frustrated at the table, you can pull this out and there's loads for them to do.
We also recently went to a restaurant, and because of the pandemic and everything,
they said that they wouldn't give us coloring pens and coloring pages for the kids because
they didn't want everyone touching the same stuff. So that's another reason as well to
maybe just be prepared and take a few things like this out with you, or just have it in your handbag
or by the door ready for things like this. I also wanted to talk about coverless duvets.
I feel like this is something that's catching on here in the UK, but it's more of a normal thing
over in North America. But you guys loved that hack that I recently shared about using binder
clips in the corners of your duvet to hold it in place. So I feel like this is on the similar lines
of that. So you can now get these coverless duvets online on various different websites. We recently
got just a plain white one for Caleb's bed, but you can get more fun kids prints like fairies for
girls and [inaudible 00:12:47] for boys and stuff. The great thing about it is it is literally
the duvet and the cover all the in one. So nothing ever slides around,
but when you do need to wash it, you just chuck the whole thing into your washing
machine and into your tumble dryer as well. Something else that I wanted to show you guys
is how we've repurposed the coffee cup holder that used to hang off of our buggy or pram.
So now that we don't use a buggy anymore because our boys are all older, we've actually put this on
the top bunk bed. So if you have bunk beds, this is a great little hack for whoever is up there.
Now, whoever's sleeping up there has a place to put some water or a drink. I actually saw on
Amazon that you can get complete bags that sort of hang off the bunk bed at the top and they can put
a book in it, a drink and anything else that they need up there. So I've ordered that and I just
think it's really cute for whoever is up there. This next hack is a great one for boys that are
potty training. As a mom of three boys, I've used this one a lot. My youngest is now standing up so
we needed to practice aim. I have found that the easiest way to do this is to just put some
Cheerios into the toilet bowl. They float. They're easy to flush and it's great to just say to your
child, "Okay, aim at the Cheerios." I know some people use those toilet bowl cleaners for kids to
aim at as well, but Cheerios, they're right in the toilet. So I think that they're perfect for that.
My next hack is actually a product that has been really useful. In our car,
we have two cup holders, but we have five people. So I went on to Amazon and bought one of these
multi cup holders. All the bits pull out from the sides. One cup holder can now hold four different
cups for everyone. It's been great because often we've got water, we've got coffee,
we've got stuff for the kids. So now we can actually fit all the cups in the car for everyone.
Right, guys, that is it for this video, but I hope you really enjoyed it. Let me
know in the comments below which hack was your favorite. Don't forget to check out my
description for more GoStudent. Thanks again. I'll see you in my next one. Bye guys.