Tag Archives: Life Hacks

These 4 Reddit Hacks For Getting Toddlers To Comply Are *Chef’s Kiss*

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Toddlers and preschool-age children are forces of nature. Those tiny tyrants are full of love, life and wonder – but they’re also unyielding when they decide they don’t want to do something.

Thankfully though, there’s a hack (or four) for that.

A Reddit thread of parenting hacks has flagged some absolute gems which I will be using for the foreseeable future.

One parent shared their incredibly simple solution for getting their toddler to eat the snacks they want her to.

“If she asks for a snack and I offer her healthy options she will often refuse, ask for something like chocolate, and then get hangry when I don’t give her what she wants,” wrote user tomtink1.

“If I leave something like a banana at the edge of the kitchen counter earlier in the day she will steal it and eat it and everyone is happy.”

Another parent said they can get their toddler to (mostly) listen and do as they say by asking: ‘what if you did it silly?’

It’s an especially great way to diffuse potential battles when trying to leave the house.

“Yesterday trying to leave daycare with 1 degree temps outside, she was working up to a screaming ‘no!’ over putting on winter gear. I was this close to ‘do it or I’ll do it to you’ when instead I asked ‘what if you put it on silly?’,” said user anotherface95.

“Now mind, she’s 3…. So to her, the silliest she can get is she makes silly noises and wiggles a little. Snow gear – on! Tantrum – averted! Frostbite – thwarted! Power struggles – rescheduled!”

In the comments section, a parent said they use a similar tactic called ‘march, march!’ with their son.

“If he’s getting grumpy or distracted going anywhere I start chanting ‘march, march!’ and I will march to wherever we’re going,” said user pandito88.

“He always follows me with giggles and he tries to march his little leggies. Instantly snaps him out of grumpiness and redirects him where I want him to go.”

And if these don’t work for you, just call whatever you want them to do ‘a project’ – a particularly useful strategy for getting them to help tidy up at the end of the day. (I tried it last night and can confirm, it does work.)

“Mine is to call everything a ‘project’ so my three year old will help or at least tag along happily,” said user Typical-Dog244.

“Folding laundry? Project. Weeding? Project. Making me a coffee? Project. The girl can’t resist.”

Brilliant.

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I’ve Found The Secret To Fluffy Jacket Potatoes In Under 7 Minutes

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Jacket potatoes are so close to being the perfect midweek winter meal. They’re filling; they’re tasty; they go with basically anything. They’re also cheap, and spuds take much longer to go off than lots of other veggies.

But there’s one problem; it feels like you can basically while away an entire evening waiting for them to cook in an oven.

I can hear the purists now – and yes, I do agree that a lot of the time, the extra wait time is worth it. It’s a great way to ensure perfect, fluffy spuds with delicate, crispy skins, and other cooking methods (like air frying) take a similar amount of time.

But hear me out ― thanks to TikTok, I’ve been converted to a 10-minute microwave jacket potato-cooking method (yes, really).

What’s the method?

TikToker @harley.salem shared a microwave-based recipe for fluffy, crispy jacket spuds – and it’s racked up almost two hundred thousand likes.

The method is pretty simple: you wash the potato, shallowly stab it with a fork a LOT, deeply stab it with a fork a few times, and then wrap the spud in wet kitchen roll.

Place the damp parcel in the microwave for six minutes, and then carefully remove the VERY HOT cooked spud from your microwave. We recommend doing this with a tool like tongs, as it’s literally steaming at this point.

Then, also using a tool like tongs, peel the kitchen roll away from the potato ― et voila, you’ve got a perfectly fluffy spud.

If your spud isn’t fully cooked by the time it’s come out of the microwave, that’s simple to fix – simply re-wrap it in more damp kitchen roll and let it microwave for a couple more minutes (the bigger the spud, the longer you’ll need).

Why does it work?

Wrapping potatoes in wet kitchen roll is “crucial” for a moist and fluffy interior, according to Tasting Table.

Potatoes are pretty watery, however microwaving them can cause all of this water to evaporate really quickly, drying out your beloved baked spud.

The thinking is that wrapping the potato in wet kitchen roll acts as an “evaporation buffer” helping the spud to retain enough moisture to stay fluffy and delicious.

“Best hack ever … sooo easy,” one commenter shared on TikTok. And having tried it myself, I completely agree – the texture is so far from the soggy, grainy mess microwaves sometimes create.

I will say that it’s not the crispiest skin I’ve ever eaten on a potato and the damp kitchen roll gets very, very hot, so you need to be careful (we weren’t joking about those tongs).

But for speed, efficiency and overall flavour, this gets a solid 9/10 from me.

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