Damn, that is good advice.

It gets quite difficult to raise a baby that any little time saving tips become God sent. Here are some of mine that helped me-and that will help me once I start taking it.


1) Spread nappy baskets around the house so that you do not need to walk up and down the stairs to get to your change table. This will especially be convenient if you have grandparents or friends babysitting. I have yet to do this in my house. I have a slight fear of using this tip because I will than never go up and down the stairs and just stay by the couch forever. But seriously, do this. It'll help.

Oh and include bibs and baby face towels in these baskets as well. Once your baby is teething or starting solids, you will need these at all times,

What would be really good is to make some of these baskets and keep at your relatives homes as well. Just not your friends because that's just an invasion. Even though my friend recently got keys to her new apartment and I'm already considering a special corner for Hasouni's toys and diapers ;) (A)

Click here to learn how to make this cute bag

2) Keep a toy or two in the baby car seat. It gets really frustrating when you are sweating your -ss off strapping your bub to his seat, putting everything in the car and getting ready to go off and then you realize you forgot his stupid toy and start considering to just keep going. Then you start feeling like crap for leaving him sitting  there without anything. So save your guilty conscious and keep a toy in the car. It doesn't even have to be the nicest toy, just anything. Its likely that they won't even give two sh-ts about the toy but your conscious will be saved.

3) Buy a few really nice toys and place them in different parts of the room. So if you need to clean your bedroom, you can just pop your bub down and he'll play with the toy in that room. And since its one of better toys, like an activity mat, wooden bead mazes, or jumperoos, you'll know he will be more than willing to play in it. And these toys take a huge amount of space anyway so it will be good to have them in different parts of the room. 

4) Speaking of jumperoos (the toy that the kid sits in and plays with the activities surrounding him); make sure you have this beside the door before you go grocery shopping. That way, as soon as you get home, you can open the door and quickly put bub in it and run back to the shopping bags that you have likely dropped at your front door. Hasan always gives me a dirty look when I do this. He knows I'm not really trying to entertain him. 

5) Purchase a hook like the brica handy hook which you can find at Toy's R Us. This thing can hold very heavy groceries and just hangs on the side of the stroller. Keep the bags on the hook and just carry that into the house. Once you get into your home, you can drop the hook down and not get all your hands tangled by bags that twisted around your fingers.

6) Leave a nappy and a small wipes package in one of the zippers in your stroller so that if you for some reason forgot your bag, you are saved. For example, if at the spur of the moment, you decided to take a stroll around the neighbourhood. You don't want to realize that you forgot to bring diapers with you and instead of having a relaxing walk, you just keep thinking to yourself, what if you needed to change his diaper, and you just stress yourself out and the night just gets ruined. It never happened to me but its just a matter of time.

7) Purchase the same coloured socks and mittens. Yes, there are a lot of cute designs but babies tend to pull their socks off and leave them God knows where and instead of taking forever trying to find the matching pair, just save yourself heaps of time and buy white or black socks.

And that's how its done.

Hope these tips helped. Please share any of yours as well! We all need a helping hand once in a while.

Love,

Om Hasan.