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Tidy Hacks: Handy Hints to Make Life Easier
Available in a handy flexibind edition, a time-saving stress-busting manual featuring 100 simple, ingenious ways to clear the clutter in your house and your life from the author of Life Hacks and Dad Hacks . We like our stuff, but sometimes things can get messy. We want a neat, inviting home, but time isn’t always on our side—and the effort can be overwhelming. Now, the master of hacks, Dan Marshall provides tricks, shortcuts, and ideas to help de-clutter and solve everyday annoyances. "Life hacking refers to any trick, shortcut, skill, or novelty method that increases productivity and efficiency," he explains. "In other words, anything that solves an everyday problem in an inspired, ingenious matter." In Tidy Hacks he shares inventive ways to reuse, recycle, and reclaim your tidy home. Don’t throw away those breakfast grapefruit halves—add a little salt and use them to clean your oven. Is space tight in the bathroom? Use hanging tiered fruit and vegetable baskets from the shower rod to stow shower toys and shampoo. Are your shoes looking a little dull and scuffed? Rub the pithy side of a banana skin over the scuffed leather. Instead of tossing that elastic band into a drawer, wrap it from shoulder to shoulder around a hanger to keep your clothes from slipping to the closet floor. Written with a special focus on simplifying, organizing and storing, Tidy Hacks includes dozens and dozens of inspired ideas for every area of your home (and more), An appealing, portable flexibind paperback with rounded corners—in a handy trim size— Tidy Hacks contains simple advice for tackling life’s everyday annoyances. Each tip is fully illustrated and easy to follow, using materials and techniques that are either already on hand or easily attainable. With this invaluable little guide, tidying up is a snap!
192 pages, Paperback
Published January 3, 2017
35 people are currently reading
49 people want to read
About the author
Dan Marshall
39 books122 followersDAN MARSHALL grew up in a nice home with nice parents in Salt Lake City, Utah, before attending UC Berkeley. After college, Dan worked at a strategic communications public relations firm in Los Angeles. At 25, he left work and returned to Salt Lake to take care of his sick parents. While caring for them, he started writing detailed accounts about many of their weird, sad, funny adventures. Home is Burning is his first book.
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Displaying 1 - 14 of 14 reviews
May 4, 2017
I've seen a lot of these at various places over the internet, but there's something to be said for having them gathered together in a single volume for easy reference. There are some attempts at humor that make it a little weird in places, such as the male author joking about how much makeup he owns and needs to organize, but overall I think it had some handy ideas for storage and organization.
May 27, 2017
This book reminds me of the books I used to like when I was a kid, filled with "hints and tricks" for using everyday objects in unusual ways. I look forward to trying some of his "hacks" in the future.
June 16, 2017
This book contains the types of household tips that I used when my children were small. It was an era where we had to make do with things already around the house. The book wasn't useful to me, but a good one for young families.
February 16, 2025
I think when I was younger and more into making things from toilet-paper rolls and similar materials I would have enjoyed this book a lot more. But maybe not?
The book lacks internal logic and that would have bothered me at almost any age. For example, in an early part of the book we get the tip to 'use desk organizing bins to organize your fridge' - not really my thing but OK. But later in the book we are advised to 'organize your desk using empty tissue boxes' - because we put the bins that were doing that organizing into the fridge? Or, in another example, we are led to believe that the tips in this book make use of everyday items around the house, but then one of the tips is to search out an old cassette tape in vintages stores in order to use its case for a cellphone stand (no word on what to do with the cassette itself) - as if we couldn't just go to a local dollar store and get a phone stand thingy really easily and inexpensively (even I know that and I don't have a cellphone).
I also doubted the overall philosophy of the book. For example, we are taught how to roll-up and dispense plastic shopping bags, but there is no mention on using cloth bags, nor how to organize these reusable bags to take to the store. The book was published in 2017 so it's not as if no one had heard of cloth grocery bags, and they were, in fact, becoming quite popular by that time. And, while I know Marshall is trying to be all clever and tongue-in-cheek, and maybe even funny(?), it bothered me that he kept calling so many items 'junk'. E.g. we are advised to use the above-mentioned tissue boxes not to organize our stationary supplies, but to organize the 'junk' on our desks. I kept asking myself, and indirectly Marshall, 'but if it's junk why are we keeping it and organizing in the second place when we should be disposing of it in the first place?'.
All of that said, there are a couple tips in the book that I am planning to try. I am writing this review based on the knowledge of the many tips in the book that I have tried or seen someone else try (few of the tips were new to me). But, there are a couple tips that were new to me or I was reminded about from some time in my past. If they work I will let me rating stand. If they don't work, I might adjust my stars downward. But, I don't expect I'll do any experiments any time soon, so I will let the three stars stand for the foreseeable future.
The book lacks internal logic and that would have bothered me at almost any age. For example, in an early part of the book we get the tip to 'use desk organizing bins to organize your fridge' - not really my thing but OK. But later in the book we are advised to 'organize your desk using empty tissue boxes' - because we put the bins that were doing that organizing into the fridge? Or, in another example, we are led to believe that the tips in this book make use of everyday items around the house, but then one of the tips is to search out an old cassette tape in vintages stores in order to use its case for a cellphone stand (no word on what to do with the cassette itself) - as if we couldn't just go to a local dollar store and get a phone stand thingy really easily and inexpensively (even I know that and I don't have a cellphone).
I also doubted the overall philosophy of the book. For example, we are taught how to roll-up and dispense plastic shopping bags, but there is no mention on using cloth bags, nor how to organize these reusable bags to take to the store. The book was published in 2017 so it's not as if no one had heard of cloth grocery bags, and they were, in fact, becoming quite popular by that time. And, while I know Marshall is trying to be all clever and tongue-in-cheek, and maybe even funny(?), it bothered me that he kept calling so many items 'junk'. E.g. we are advised to use the above-mentioned tissue boxes not to organize our stationary supplies, but to organize the 'junk' on our desks. I kept asking myself, and indirectly Marshall, 'but if it's junk why are we keeping it and organizing in the second place when we should be disposing of it in the first place?'.
All of that said, there are a couple tips in the book that I am planning to try. I am writing this review based on the knowledge of the many tips in the book that I have tried or seen someone else try (few of the tips were new to me). But, there are a couple tips that were new to me or I was reminded about from some time in my past. If they work I will let me rating stand. If they don't work, I might adjust my stars downward. But, I don't expect I'll do any experiments any time soon, so I will let the three stars stand for the foreseeable future.
October 19, 2020
Did see anything I haven't already seen on the internet. Was especially displeased to see a couple hacks that were original ideas in a blog posts by a blogger I follow, but the author doesn't give any credit to that kind of specific hack. Nor does he indicate anywhere that this book is just a collection he gathered from the internet.
September 12, 2019
Tidy Hacks can come in handy to make your life easier. Simple to follow but I found it subjects to interpretation if there is no proper illustrations. Definitely learn new tips or techniques and inspire you to create your own solutions.
May 11, 2017
easy and fun to read. i found a couple of excellent hacks. Check it out.
July 9, 2017
some hacks I know and use, and some ones I had forgotten along with some new ones I want to incorporate, all of which require little to accomplish.
January 20, 2018
Had some good cheap alternatives to get your home organized. Got me thinking of how I could do things differently.
May 9, 2021
Ok. I heard of most of these things.
June 19, 2021
Does this kind of book even count?
Browsed in about 12 minutes.
Browsed in about 12 minutes.
July 7, 2024
Lots of help this is a great book for all those little things we need to do.
Loved all the ideas! I will be telling all my family and friends about this book! Everyone ca. Use this kind of help!
Loved all the ideas! I will be telling all my family and friends about this book! Everyone ca. Use this kind of help!
May 17, 2017
There were some good ideas in this book that I hadn't heard of before. I'll be putting it on the shelf for reference instead of in the donate pile!
May 31, 2023
Quick read at the library. Enough useful hints for me to make a list. Humorous to boot!
Displaying 1 - 14 of 14 reviews