European Home Ec.

I have two tricks that I've picked up in the last couple of years that are super awesome and I wish I'd learned them earlier!

1.     Duvet + Duvet cover rather than flat sheet + blankets. Holy smokes!!!

Time to wash my sheets? Wash the pillowcases, fitted sheet, and duvet cover. The comforter stays clean because it's wrapped in the duvet cover, safe from dirt. Before, when I had a flat sheet and blankets, I washed the sheets every week or two but the blankets? Maybe twice a year. And since sometimes I'd kick the flat sheet to the foot of the bed and wake up wrapped in my blankets... Yeah, now that I think about it that's kinda gross. The duvet cover is like a giant pillowcase, so you can't kick it off without losing the whole duvet. There's a trick to putting it back on quickly and easily: wash the duvet cover inside out. Then you stick your arms inside the bottom opening of the duvet cover and grab the top corners with your hands. Then just shake the duvet cover down over the duvet :)

Time to make the bed in the morning? Nothing simpler! Throw the pillow to the top of the bed from where ever it's migrated to. Grab the duvet. Shake it a couple of times and then throw it onto the bed. Elapsed time: 30 seconds :)

2.     Measure by weight rather than volume when cooking. 

This is amazing. Get a digital kitchen scale. They cost about $30, and are *totally worth it*. Put your mixing bowl on the scale, and turn it on. The scale will ignore the bowl and read 0. Add your ingredients by weight (you can google how much a cup of something should weigh, or just measure it one last time and weigh it), and zero the scale between ingredients. You don't have to use measuring cups, so there are fewer dishes. You don't have to worry about whether your flour is properly sifted or your brown sugar is properly packed. Recipes are much more consistant, and did I mention the part about fewer dishes???