I’m working toward this for bath linens. For bed linens, I couldn’t. It would feel too hospital-y.
Besides which, after you put a bed’s worth of linens in the wash, how do you have room for anything else?
I have one that you hang from the toilet tank. One end goes in under the tank cover and then the other part is far enough away from the tank that the roll doesn’t touch the tank (so it doesn’t get wet from condensation in summer). Simple, easy, inexpensive and it has lasted a year now. And my son is ROUGH on everything. And no wear and tear on the walls or worrying about where to place it.
I disagree. I live alone, so there’s no problem with enforcement, and when putting dirty utensils in, there’s usually only one of each, so there’s no time wasted sorting on the input side.
When they’re clean, I just grab all the knives and drop them in their drawer. Likewise forks and spoons. Two seconds and it’s done.
I’ve been doing this for years, and I rarely, if ever, have a problem with nesting causing dirty utensils.
I’ve never tried this, but I read in the book Survivor by Chuck Palahniuk (yeh, the Fight Club guy), that to pick up all the tiny glass slivers that result from accidentally breaking a light bulb, or some other such fragile item, to use a slice of bread to dab at the area. Sounds like it would work, I’ve just haven’t shattered a bulb since.
If I’m using a traditional bookmark (and I try to), I actually rotate it horizontally, and use the top side of the bookmark to underline the paragraph where I left off. It’s not enough for me to just mark the page… I like knowing exactly where I left off (then I usually backtrack a little to recapture my bearings). And if I don’t have a bookmark, I’ll just use a scrap of paper, a kleenex, or whatever happens to be lying around. Shoot… sometimes I just remember the page number.
Also, I never asked around, but does everybody use the blow dryer to clear the bathroom mirror of hot-shower-fog, instead of smearing it, rather ineffectively, with a towel?
–>I love the inside-out bag idea for scooping up stuff and enveloping the contents. Never occurred to me!
Diner style syrup dispensers work even better.
They also work well for either right-handers or left-handers, but not both. I am left handed and have sent many a roll of TP on a merry trip across the floor because I have tried to tear the paper in the wrong direction on one of these holders.
I found these bookmarks at a bookstore, which enable you to mark the line you left off on. I thought they were neat, but as I finish at the end of a page, I just use them as normal bookmarks.
Note to self: do not then use bread for a sandwich. 
I use one of those sticky tape lint rollers for such an ocassion.
I keep my natural peanut butter upside down in the fridge/pantry. The oils stay mixed and makes it easy to spread, even from the first time.
Another good one: Keep binder clips in the kitchen for closing bags etc. Much quicker than those silly twisty things, and they don’t hide on the counter. Also substantially cheaper than the big plastic ones in the housewares aisle.
If you have a guy inthe house, you probably have the “twist and tuck” fight re closing the bread bag. These can end your pain they are little claw clips, just about the size to clip around my pinky finger. You twist the bag, clip one on, and get on with your day. Especially good for frozen vegetable bags, when you don’t want to use the metal binders.
My daughter either learned the silverware basket trick from someone, or figured it out herself, and then she taught it to me. I have arthritis and a bad back, and it’s much easier and less painful. I keep the basket in the sink while I load it.
We have a pair of kitchen shears that are marketed as such. These babies come apart, as noted…and they have a screwdriver blade at the end of one handle loop, a bottle opener on the other, the area between the handle loops is hollowed out with teeth on the inside (to help open jars), and one of the blades has a vegetable peeler on it. It doesn’t have a corkscrew, but otherwise it’s like a Swiss Army knife for the kitchen. And it goes into the dishwasher! I have a couple of utility scissors scattered around the house, and I have informed my husband that anyone using my good sewing scissors to cut anything but cloth is inviting a Fate Worse Than Death.
Speaking of the dishwasher, I almost never buy or use any utensils that can’t go in the dishwasher. Occasionally I’ll get a gift that requires hand washing, and I smile and thank the person, and use the thing for display purposes only. Anyone who dares to use it will have to wash it himself. Similarly, I don’t buy clothes that need to be handwashed or drycleaned, as a general rule. I might buy a coat that requires dry cleaning, or a special suit for a wedding or something, but for everyday wear, I will only buy stuff that can go in the washer and dryer.
My husband loves dark sheets and towels, and I have made him take back several sets of them. I want to throw the household linens into one load, if they’ll fit, and put bleach in them. I’ll accept very light prints, but they WILL get bleached. That’s just a fact of life. And I won’t accept poly/cotton sheets, I have found them to be too prone to pilling. Sheets that have pilled are very uncomfortable, and I won’t sleep on them. My husband has brought home several sets of poly/cotton sheets, because he was out shopping and thought that they were a great bargain, and again, I made him take them back. They aren’t a bargain if I throw them away after they pill up. The ONLY way to get my husband to learn these things is to make HIM take back the merchandise and go through the hassle of returning them. I’ve tried telling him this stuff, and it doesn’t sink in.
My grandparents always kept two Lazy Susans in the spice cabinet, so I grew up with this knowledge. One of them is on the second shelf, and I’d never be able to reach even the middle of this shelf, much less the back, so this is great for me. My grandparents also kept a Lazy Susan on the kitchen table, as my grandfather liked to have a variety of condiments available to him at all times. He had a couple of different pepper sauces, for instance, and a large pepper grinder (before pepper grinders were really popular), and my grandmother used a lite salt (sodium and potassium chloride mix) as well as regular salt.
Some of you might be interested in keeping a salt pig on your counters. I’ve never had a problem with shaking out salt from my larger shaker, so I don’t.
When mowing, I keep a beer on each end of my lawn so that every time I turn around, hey, there’s a beer! 
Seriously, I keep my Saran Wrap in the freezer; it’s much more manageble that way.
Or the springy type of clothes pins. That’s what we use. They’re cheap, they’re much longer-lasting than plastic ones, and they’re narrow enough to clip onto our wire elfa-like shelves between the cross bars between uses.
Another one- when I open bags of frozen veggies I cut the bag open across in one long strip and then use that strip to tie the bag closed!
That’ll look great next to my spice weasel!
I do this at the grocery store when buying lettuce. Grab the head of lettuce with your hand in the bag, then turn the bag inside out-no lost leaves, no fighting with wet lettuce.
This may only be me, but who knows:
I tend not to want a lot of lights on in the morning – because, y’know, I’m going to be out in the sunlit world soon enough, right? – so I used to have trouble mixing up brown socks and black socks. Then I started using those circular sock dealies to keep them paired in the laundry. The ones I bought come in four colors: blue, red, yellow, and white. Yellow and white go on brown socks, blue and red go on black. Even in the dimmest light, I can tell the very light-colored yellow and white dealies from the darker blue and red dealies.
I’ll tell you what could be simpler and easier to use. Ditching the holder altogether and just setting the roll of loose tp right on the counter. That’s how I’ve been doing it for over a year, mainly started because I was sick of being the only person who’d ever actually change the roll. Now I can’t imagine going back.
I have a couple of plastic jars that have mouths just the right size to slip the mouth of a Ziplock bag over and leave the rest of the bag dangling inside. It’s a great way to support it while spooning messy (but yummy) things inside.