When it comes to tasks around the house, laundry is my least favorite. In fact, I hate it. I would rather have a root canal. But it must be done — week in, week out.

Here’s a little trivia: Did you know the term Blue Monday comes from the normal day set aside to do laundry? That’s because it was such a depressing task.

Let me tell you, the hamper is your enemy! It just groups all the clothes together in one dirty heap.

Instead, head to a discount store and buy three cheap laundry baskets — one white, one a light color, and one a dark color. Ours are set up in the closet. As we disrobe, the dirty shirts, underwear and other clothes are tossed in the appropriate basket — darks, colors or whites. When a basket is full, it’s just picked up and brought to the washer. No more sorting through a mound of clothes to do a load of wash!

This underscores one of my main tenets — tasks are better when they are broken down into manageable increments. One day you may need to do whites, another to do darks, but leaving it all for one horrific day is nuts. You toss a load in (no sorting) and get on with your life!

Even those who use a laundromat can use this tactic. It will easily shave an hour because you don’t have to presort. For those with children — especially young ones — it will save you work, and they learn their colors. Sure, you may have to correct the sorting now and then, but it will make your life easier.

I hope you try this trick. Perhaps Blue Monday will become Not Bad Monday.

Tired of those dull scissors? Here’s an easy and simple household hint.

Take a 12 inch by 12 inch piece of aluminum foil, fold it in fourths, now cut through the foil with your scissors as if you were cutting trim.

Voila! Scissors are sharp. This tip is so simple, it doesn’t even require a photo.

I promise, this is the best meatloaf tip you will ever read.

Tonight, we are making the comfort food (as I am sure George Bush is doing during these tough times — oops, did I say that?).

If you want to save cleanup and calories, place a couple slices of day-old bread under your formed meatloaf, and it will soak up the grease. I used old hot dog buns tonight for the task, but most any bread will work. Just transfer the loaf (sans grease) to a serving plate, and slice (after waiting for 5 minutes for all the remaining juices to settle).

And if you wish to make cleanup even easier, before placing the meatloaf in the baking dish, line it with foil or parchment paper.

Try the bread trick — it works! Laura, did you hear?

Now I know a lot of people will turn up their noses at buying meat on clearance. All the better for smart-shoppers like us!

When ground beef, steaks and chicken are nearing their “sell by” date, grocery stores will mark them down to (often times) incredible prices. Rest assured, meat is highly regulated, so if it says, “use or freeze by” (fill in the date) you are perfectly fine — and will net incredible savings.

Just today, I bought hamburger patties made with New York steak for $1.99! This for 1.35 pounds. New York steak bone-in costs $3.99 a pound on sale or about $6.99 a pound at regular price. This was a steal! The “use by” date was for tomorrow, so we’re having gourmet hamburgers tonight.

With the two other packages I bought, I cooked up one like ground beef to use with Hamburger Helper and just froze the cooked meat (perfectly safe). The other, I plan on making tasty meatloaf tomorrow.

This underscores another point — think beyond the package. It may be shaped like hamburgers, but break it up, and you have ground beef or the main ingredient for meatloaf.

We are going to be eating better for two nights (plus one for the frozen, cooked beef) because other people passed this savings on by due to their ego.

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Sure, it’s not a tip you will use every day, but it comes in handy when you make a cake. (And let’s face it, with coupons, a cake and canned frosting is cheaper than ice cream for a treat!)

After baking the cake, before inverting on the plate, cut parchment paper, foil or waxed paper in about 4 slices about 3 inches deep. Place on the cake plate. Invert the cake onto the paper bed and frost.

Then, when done frosting, slip each slice of paper or foil out. Voila! All the mess is gone, and you’re left with a clean cake plate.

I made a carrot cake tonight with a boxed mix and canned frosting I bought with coupons. Easy peasy. And it will be such a treat for days! (The cost? Less than $3 for all ingredients.)

A simple way to net cleaner silverware from your dishwasher is to rotate. When you’re placing flatware into your dishwasher basket, just flip-flop the utensils. Some handles up, some handles down.

The reason? Silverware has a tendancy to nest — meaning, the utensils group together, like they do your flatware drawer.

Rotate the handles, and you’ll have cleaner silverware.

Nothing nets a messier kitchen faster than a cluttered kitchen. When I list a home for sale, one of the first tasks I assign them is to remove everything from the front of the fridge.

Why? Because it’s the biggest visual item in this room, next to the counters. Clear its front of all items, and your kitchen will automatically look cleaner. It’s not a bulletin board, it’s a fridge. (Me dodging bullets, but it’s the truth!)

You don’t need to keep every magnet you’ve received. Check the coupons, how many are expired? The kids don’t expect you to save every picture. I’ll say it again — It’s a fridge, not a bulletin board. The photos, magnets, pictures don’t add character to the room, they add clutter.

Now, confession time, I still have a few items on the side of the fridge (a doctor’s appointment Post-It, a kitchen conversion chart magnet, a notation on my weight, held up by a magnet), but the front is clear. Boom! Automatically a less-cluttered kitchen!

Just accomplish this simple task this week, and you will see how much of a different it makes in the appearance of your kitchen. I promise. It’s hard, I know, but you will enjoy a cleaner kitchen in one fell swoop.

Looking for the quickest way to raise your cooking to a new, gourmet level? Add kosher salt to your pantry!

I came upon this delightful addition to my meals through the shows on Food Network. Most every chef there — including my favorite, Ina Garten — uses it in every dish.

I won’t go into details about why it’s called Kosher salt, but you can read more here. The salt is much more course than what you’re used to, but the flavor is so bright. Trust me, you’ll never use standard table salt again. I no longer serve dinner with a salt shaker, just Kosher salt in a small, former sugar bowl.

The cost, when compared to standard table salt, is about $1-$2 more a pound, so about $3 a box. But that lasts me nearly a year, so I say that is pretty affordable to add a gourmet touch to any meal.

Try it!

Now, when are you going to start using the coupon mom system? Isn’t a savings of $3,300 a year enough (and that’s for a family of two)? I know I’ve been hammering this point in the past month, but it has been a God-send in helping us to deal with these difficult economic times — and it’s fun, to boot. Each week I get asked at the store how I did this week.

I just found this great newspaper article detailing how someone else uses the site, and it’s a good example of the system in action. Check it out.

I thought a good point in the article was when she said you needed to start saving the coupon circulars for about 12 weeks to really start seeing the savings, but I know that about one-third of the coupons I use are from the online links on the couponmom site, so you can see the savings right away, too.

And here are the deals from this past week I snagged (and once again, did our weekly food shop for less than $40 — $37, in fact, and that included two gallons of milk and a whole chicken!):

Want to make your money stretch further? This is an easy way! Read more details in this post and another. And see how much you can save here.

It hit 105 today — and summer begins tomorrow! So I thought it was appropriate to post some “how the heck do I cool off in this weather” tips.

When I lived in a stacked condo (apartment style) with a wall air conditioner, I learned the best coping tactic was to hang out in the living room, as close as possible to the A/C. I augmented this with a fan to boost the cooling factor. A fan blowing on you lowers the perceived temperature because it evaporates any (no way to say this nice) sweat faster.

This same method works just as well now that we live in a two-story home. No “dual-zone air” here, so the first floor always cools down the fastest. I can turn up the temp on the A/C if we plant ourselves down in the living room, with fans adding to the cooling factor.

But you have to eat. I know they say don’t turn on the oven — thanks for that news flash — but a quick fry on the stovetop is not bad. But make it quick. Tonight, we’re having breakfast for dinner — eggs served on a bed of black beans on a tortilla, with cool salsa and even cooler sour cream. Yum. Burner will be on for 6 minutes max. But, if that doesn’t work, a cool tuna salad on toast will satisfy just as well.

This post had a lot of great ideas on how to deal with heat without air conditioning. Hope you get a good tip or two. But please let us know how you deal with the heat — you can help so many sweltering folks!