35 Best Parenting Hacks You Will Find On Pinterest

Oh, Pinterest! What in the world did we do before you existed? You can find literally anything and everything on everyone’s favorite bookmarking website. You can “Pin” just about anything you can find, from how to re-create a photo session, to the recipe for a spectacular blackberry cheesecake. Oh, and slime too, definitely can’t forget about the myriad of slime recipes that you can find on Pinterest alone. It really is an internet playground, where we can find the coolest of the cool ideas, recipes, crafts, articles, blogs and so much more!

Who knew that it could also double as an effective parenting tool, as well? That’s right. There are tons (and we do mean tons) of really cool ideas that parents from all around the world for parents by parents. There are some really interesting ways to discipline your child that don’t involve raising your voice even one octave! We can’t forget about the really neat ways to get your kids to pick up after themselves and clean their rooms. From babies to teenagers, there are all kinds of “parenting hacks” that you can find on the world’s largest bulletin board of ideas. Come along and see what our favorites are!

Tissue Tamer

Allergies, colds, they all suck. Especially when it is our children that are ill. There is nothing worse than a kid with a runny nose. They can go through boxes of tissues in a day. So, that’s why when you have an empty box of tissues, you can tape it right next to a new box of tissues. Boom, now your child has a trash receptacle for their used tissues. This is especially helpful at nighttime. You can leave it right next to your child’s bed so that they don’t have to climb out of bed to trash a tissue every single time they used one.

No-Dropsicle Popsicle

Oh, the joys of summer! Sun, sand and sweet frozen treats! Popsicles are practically an essential summer staple! But they can make a huge sticky mess when they start to melt and drip down onto your little one’s hands. Then, we all know what fun it is to go behind our kids and clean up the sticky handprints they leave behind! This super-easy hack just uses a cupcake liner. Just stick the popsicle stick right through the bottom of the cupcake liner, and there you have it! A catch-all for the popsicle juice means no more sticky hands or messes!

Shoes, Solved!

Even though we have to repeat the same phrase 3-4 times, getting our little ones to don their shoes can be a little daunting if they are especially little. On the one hand, we could just put them on for them, but we do want to foster independence in them. They likely may not entirely grasp ‘right’ and ‘left’ yet. This really clever idea makes putting their shoes on a much easier task for them. Give them a choice of stickers to choose from (that are big enough) and cut it in half. Place each side in the left and right shoe. Show them the end result is putting the sticker together to make it whole again. This way, their shoes will always be on the right foot when they put them on!

Color-Coded Clock

This is a great hack that can help your children learn about time. It is especially great for the littles. You can grab an inexpensive clock at any Wal-Mart or other big-box stores. On the clock, color various “times,” whether that be play, snack, bed or dinner time, whatever your family’s routine is, onto the clock. You can do this using different colored markers. Underneath the clock, make a chart that is color-coded to match the times on the clock. This makes it easier for kids to know what time it is to do things that your family does on a regular basis.

Fantastic Folds

This is even surprising to some of us who have children and never knew about this! The reason for those folds by the shoulder on your little’s onesie? It is for when they have a bit of a “blowout” in their diaper. These are meant to fold downward and off of your baby! That way you do not have to lift the onesie up over the baby’s head, which could make a further mess! How ingenious is this? Also, how come onesies don’t come with instructions that tell us these things?! This makes changing a poopy diaper so much easier!

Medicine Chart

Life can get super busy, as parents, we are no stranger to that! When our kids are a little under the weather, it can get doubly crazy in our homes. How many days do they have left on their antibiotic? This super-smart parenting hack helps you to keep track of what day you are on, and how many remaining days that your child has left of their medication! Just grab a fine-tip permanent marker when you get the prescription and draw a little chart onto the medicine label. Cross out each day as the medication is given. Boom. Now you know how much longer they’ll be on their medicine.

Cushy Cold Pack

As our kids learn to walk and toddle along, they are going to fall down, and get up again. When they trip, you may encounter boo-boos. It happens, its all part of the process! But instead of the good-old bag of frozen peas trick for an ice-pack, try marshmallows, instead! They are super soft and don’t freeze up to be super-hard. Plus, they are easier to hold for little hands, and you won’t get any leaky condensation from the bag, either! These bags will make boo-boos better in an instant. Then, they’ll be off on their way again, all better!

Want The WiFi?

This is great for kids who are a little bit older. Whether they are using a computer, phone, tablet or video game console, and they want the password for the WiFi, this is a great idea. They have to earn it. Its kind of like giving them an allowance for doing chores, except the currency is the password to the WiFi. They will get their chores done in no time flat. You can change the chores up each day, just like changing the WiFi password every day. Are the kids not cleaning their rooms? Change up the password! They’ll get them clean!

No-Slip Glue-Grips

Depending on where you go, there can be slick floors. Possibly even freshly waxed floors. For little feet, this can mean a slippery surface. By taking a hot glue gun, you can write their names on the bottom of the soles. This is actually a doubly useful hack because not only will the glue stop them from tripping, but in the unlikely scenario that they lose their shoe in say, preschool, for example, it will be known who the shoe belongs to. If you don’t want to put their name on the shoe, you could always make up your own design, it will all dry the same way and create a non-slip surface on the bottom of the shoe.

Travel Treats

Who knew that these containers could be so useful after you’re done with them? If you and your little ones are going to be in the car for a little while, you know they are going to be hungry at some point. Instead of just throwing some snacks into a plastic shopping bag, re-purpose an old wipes container! Wash it out, and you can pack quite a few snacks in there, perhaps even a sandwich if you stick an ice-pack in with it! This is great for travel, and the snacks won’t be sliding all around the backseat of the car!

Splish-Splash

When your kiddo has moved on from the baby bathtub and can sit upright on their own, its time for the big boy/girl tub. But as kids go, they are still pretty small. They love playing with bath toys, but those toys can have a habit of floating all around the tub. If you don’t have an extra laundry basket lying around, snag one from your local store! This is a safe and fun way to contain all of those toys and prevent any slippage caused by reaching for a toy. Kids can have fun in the bath and you can have peace of mind that everything is totally contained in the basket.

Condiments Contained!

If you are having a family gathering or a barbecue at your home, use this easy trick to hold all the condiments for the food! It prevents little hands from squeezing out the whole bottle of ketchup onto their hotdogs. Muffin tins make great holders for the condiments that you plan to serve at your gathering. Just stick a spoon in it and you are done! That, or you could put other self-serve items in them like olives, pickle chips, chip dip, etc. In all reality, you don’t even have to have a family gathering for this hack! Next time it’s hamburger night, use this nifty trick to serve the kiddos!

The Practical Potty

Any parent will tell you that potty training can be one of the most harrowing things for your young child to learn. While there are plenty of different methods out there, one thing remains the same, the potty. We all typically start our children out with a potty of some sort. When the kids start to get the hang of it, and are able to use the potty, but aren’t quite ready for the big-kid toilet yet, this little trick will come in pretty handy. As we all know, things can get a little messy with potty training. The solution? Stick a diaper into the potty seat to easily clean up messes. You also could use puppy training pads that are cut to fit into the potty. This makes cleaning up messes one-hundred times easier!

The Sheet That Saves

This is perfect for those days when we need to head outside and work in the garden! Whether it be weeding, or planting, or even if you just want to spend some good old fashioned time outside. Who knew that play yards could come in so handy? When it is nice outside, not only do we tend to come out, but so do the buggies. If you want to get some yard work done, you can put your little into their play yard and the top with a crib sheet. It fits perfectly! Now any critters will have no chance of getting anywhere near your little love.

Yummy Yogurt Treats

When it gets to be pretty warm out, the kids are going to want a frozen treat. However, so many ice cream treats and ice pop products have such exorbitant amounts of sugar and fat in them, and if we are trying to get our little ones to eat healthily, these frozen yogurt cups are a great summertime treat. All you need is some low-fat yogurt that your child likes, and a popsicle stick/wooden stick. Put the stick in the middle and stick in the freezer until frozen! They should pop right out when they are ready, and now your kids have a yummy and cold treat!

A Trick For Time-Outs

Not only is this a great idea for “time-outs,” but it is a great way to bond with your child while creating the bottle itself, as a craft! You can explain to them what they are, and when they are acting up, you will shake up the bottle, and they will have to take this “time-out bottle” to a chair, or wherever time-outs are held in your home. They are then to sit there until all of the glitter settles into the bottom of the bottle, and then at that point, their time out is up! If they decide to mess with the bottle while it is settling, this will add time to their time out. This is a great teaching tool for girls and boys alike.

Magnificent Mailboxes

This is an amazing idea as your kids get older! When they start school, this is a great way to give kids a sense of responsibility by “checking their mailbox” every day to see what is inside! Mailboxes like these are relatively inexpensive on Amazon, or you can even try to scout local yard sales for them! All they need is a fresh coat of paint in your child’s favorite color, and then you can personalize them however you like! The hooks serve as a great place for coats and bags, and inside the mailbox, you can put any mail they get, or sweet notes to leave for them. Alternatively, in the summer, you can stick little activities for them to do in their mailboxes!

Shower Solution!

This is a great “hack” that you can try if you are traveling with your little one! If your room only has a shower cabin, but the baby still needs to be bathed, purchasing an inflatable kiddie pool can be the solution! Take some measurements of the shower stall, and then you can easily find a little pool that will fit in there and work as a makeshift bathtub! The great thing is that you can even put bath toys in with the pool, and the kids will have a total blast! This can also be great if you live in an apartment that only has a shower stall.

Reduce, Reuse, Recycle!

This is a great idea for a multitude of reasons. When you purchase a new bedding set, do you know those heavy-duty plastic bags that comforters come in? Don’t throw them out anymore! Keep them! If your family is going to the beach, for example, you can store everyone’s towels in the bag, especially afterward, when they are wet. This will make sure that your vehicle stays dry and nothing will get wet on the way home. Alternatively, if you are going on a picnic, you can store the blankets and non-perishable snacks in the bag to tote along with you!

Swift Sweeper Socks

When you have kids, there is almost always going to be lost socks. But even if there aren’t any lone socks lying around the house, you can easily and quickly pick these fuzzy socks up at your local dollar store for a few dollars or less. Instead of buying costly refills for your mops, you can slip one of these bad boys right over it. It fits perfectly! You can dust the ceiling and pick up messes with it. The best part, though? These are totally reusable! Just toss them into the washing machine, and they are ready for another go!

On-The-Go Activities

Oh, road trips. They are incredibly fun for about the first fifteen minutes. Then we’re hearing “are we there yet?” 114 times. Think of some activities on paper that your kids particularly enjoy. For example, do they enjoy mazes? How about coloring, or a matching game? A rousing game of tic-tac-toe that they can play with a sibling? Grab a binder from your local dollar store, and begin filling up a binder with different activities that your child enjoys doing. Fill an on-the-go pencil pouch with some crayons, and you have yourself a little road-trip bag that will keep your child entertained. For most of the way, at least.

Play-Doh Round

This is absolutely genius. If you own a Keurig brewing system, chances are that you will likely have a storage unit of sorts for all of those K-Cups. Be on the lookout at thrift shops and yard sales, and even online to grab another one! As it turns out, these K-Cup holders are also the perfect size to fit containers of Play-Doh in! This is a much better way of organizing the kiddo’s Play-Doh than stuffing them into a bag or a box. And, by storing them this way, the kids will be able to see their selection of colors a lot easier, and clean-up will be a breeze.

Critter-Free Drinks

If you want to keep the critters out of everyone’s beverages, grab a cupcake liner, poke a hole in it for the straw, and put it on top of the cup! Now you will not have to worry about any flies, bees or any other bugs getting into your child’s drinks. This is great not only for outdoor barbecues but also for days at the beach! If you do choose to use this trick at a barbecue, you can even label the cupcake liners with guest’s names to make sure that they are grabbing the correct drink. There will be no more mixed up drinks and everything will be bug-free!

Pool Noodle Perfection

As it turns out, pool noodles aren’t just for pools anymore! They can have a multitude of uses! One of them happens to be this great hack for little ones! What happens when it is time for them to move to a big-kid bed, but they tend to roll around in their sleep? You certainly don’t want them to fall out of bed and hit the floor, hurting themselves. Instead of purchasing an expensive bed railing, this easy hack uses a simple foam pool noodle and a fitted sheet. Now the kiddos will simply roll against the pool noodle, which will block them from falling out of bed entirely!

Creative Card Holder

Uno can be a super fun game for little ones to learn! They can learn about matching not only colors but numbers as well! But with their little hands, it can be hard to hold a bunch of cards, and there can be some spillage of cards from now and then. It’ll take them a little while before they can hold cards in their hands, and for that we are grateful. But this inexpensive and easy hack can save your game nights! Grab an egg carton, cut off the top, flip it over and cut some horizontal slits in the tops of the cartons. Slip the cards in, and voila! Now your little ones will be able to see what their hand is without, well, having to hold it in their hands!

Wheelie Great Idea

When we go out for walks with our little ones, we never really know if we are going to run into a puddle or an unexpected patch of dirt. You just never know. That is why this hack is such a great idea! Grab a pair of shower caps before you leave the house. When it is time to come back home, after say, maybe the park, you have to tote the stroller back into the house. But tracking all that dirt in the house sounds like a less than stellar idea. This is where the shower caps come in. Pop them right over the wheels, and then you have the dirty wheels all covered up, and they will not be tracking anything into your home!

Toilet Tissue Tamed

Now that you have your little one all potty-trained, all of us parents have had to tackle the issue of too much T.P. Our kids will grab wads and wads of it by the handful. This sometimes results in things like clogged toilets and going through toilet tissue like it’s going out of style. So, to save your sanity and your budget, this hack is here to help! Decide what amount of toilet tissue is the right amount for your child to use. Then make a marker that you will then place on your wall underneath the toilet paper roll. This way, the kids now have a visual of exactly what amount they should be using each and every time.

Grabbing Groceries

There is nothing like a parent who has just gone grocery shopping and is dang determined to grab all of those groceries in one shot. With this super-smart hack, you actually can, without killing your arms and hands! Instead of looping all those bags through your wrists, keep an extra laundry basket in the back of your vehicle. Perhaps even keep two, depending on how much you usually purchase when grocery shopping. Place all of these groceries into the laundry baskets. This makes a really great solution to that age-old problem of grabbing all the groceries in one shot. Now you can! Just grab the basket and carry it into the house! Once everything is unloaded, don’t forget to put it back into the trunk of your car so it is there for the next time!

Box Of Fun

There is quite possibly nothing more enticing to a toddler than a pack of markers. While markers are fun for little ones, they can be scary for moms, and walls. If you have any large cardboard boxes lying around, instead of throwing them out, let your little ones color all over them! Grab some washable markers, and let them have at it! It will be just like they are coloring and building their very own “fort,” that they are able to make their own through their own art. This activity can provide quite a bit of fun, and even give mom or dad a little break while the kids are busy coloring away.

Monster Repellant

If you have littles that are in the phase of being afraid of monsters and are constantly asking to sleep with you, then this is a wonderful idea for you. Instead of checking all of the closets and underneath the bed to see if there are monsters, pull out the “monster spray!” Grab an empty spray bottle, which can easily be picked up at the local dollar store, and decorate it any way you want. Just make sure that it says “monster spray” or “monster repellant” on it. You can fill it up with just simple, plain old water. When bedtime rolls around, give their room a once-around with the spray, making sure to pay special attention to closets and beds. Your child will be reassured, and you will have a restful night’s sleep.

Silly Sandy Fun

Gone are the days of the old plastic sandboxes! Bugs could easily get in, other animals could easily find their way in, and of course, if the lid had a hole in it, that would result in rainy and soggy sand. Nobody wants to play in wet sand, unless it is at the beach on a beautiful summer day, of course! A wonderful solution to this is for the kids to basically kind of have their very own “sand fort.” Snag a tent from your local store, they may even be on clearance by the end of camping season. Fill it up with play-sand, and some fun toys for playing in the sand with. Now your little one will have all the fun in the world in their little personal sandpit! The great thing is that when they are done, you can zip it right up, keep critters out, and keep the sand nice and dry.

Dishwasher Magic

Chances are that if you have a child, they are going to have some kind of plastic toy. Whether it be a whole bunch of zoo animals, dinosaurs, cars, or anything else, did you know that you can toss those in your dishwasher? Yes! The dishwasher in your kitchen! These toys could likely use a cleaning every now and again, just to keep them sanitary. Also when children get sick after they are over it, you can throw their toys in the dishwasher to sanitize them, so they do not re-infect themselves. This is also a great idea if you were gifted some hand-me-down toys that you want to clean thoroughly before giving to your child. Who knew that a dishwasher could be so versatile?

Glitter-B-Gone

Oh, glitter. The bane of every parent’s existence. Arts and crafts can be super fun, and glitter can add pizzazz to almost any project! But the glitter stops being so fun for mom and dad when it tends to get all over the floor, and hey – how did it get in my hair? Luckily, this smart and sensible hack will have glittery messes cleaned up in no time flat. Just pick up an extra one at the store and keep it where you keep your arts and crafts supplies. When a glitter mess happens, you will be ready to clean it up in an instant with the lint-roller. The stickiness of it will pick up every last speck of glitter from any surface!

Camouflaged Candy

Okay, so we are not so sure that this will count as a parenting “hack,” but it does count for something! When you just need a little bit of “me time,” and some chocolate, but want to make sure that no one else finds where it is, a failsafe way is to save a frozen vegetable bag. After cooking and eating the vegetables, of course! We’ve got to set an example for our little ones! But after the bag is empty, stick your favorite kinds of chocolate in it. Nobody will think to look in the veggie bag, especially the kids. So next time that you are in the kitchen by yourself and need a little pick-me-up, just head to the freezer and the frozen peas bag. Because those frozen peas are absolutely heavenly.

Dirty Trick

Oh, the beach! It is one of our favorite places to go in the summertime! The waves, the water, the sunsets! But what happens when you want to wade in the water with your little one? This great idea makes it easy to disguise your belongings and will make certain that no one will touch them! Bring a clean diaper with you. When it comes time to go in the water, just make the diaper look a little “dirty,” with some sand. Wrap your belongings up in it, making sure to close all flaps. No one is about to go near a diaper that they think is dirty and used. Now, you do not have to worry about your stuff being stolen!