Most families are not used to this quantity of quality time. Everyone in your home may be going a little nutty after 3 weeks of lockdown. We are blessed here in Phoenix to have gorgeous weather and a big yard, with half a dozen semi-stocked grocery stores (excepting toilet paper, of course) I could throw a rock and hit (this is untrue—I can’t throw a rock more than 30 feet), and we are used to cooking at home. We’ve also homeschooled for 10 years, so being at home all day every day with my kids is par for the course.

However, it is likely that the lockdown is hitting you much harder if you have

cold weather,
no place for your kids to safely play outside,
cleared shelves at the grocery store.
If you’re like most American families, your kids are normally in school 8 hours a day, 5 days a week, plus have multiple activities that keep them away from the house most afternoons and weekends too,
and that busyness usually leads to a reliance on fast food.

Here are 2 sanity savers for moms—and they’re in stock on Amazon right now.

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Sanity Saver #1: A tired kid is a good kid.

Simply from not having to sit at a desk at school all day, your kids are already getting a little more exercise than usual thanks to being stuck at home. But more exercise is better. No kid can resist a mini-trampoline. (AKA rebounder.) My mom has had one since the 80s and there has never been a kid in her house who saw the mini-trampoline and did not instantly jump on it. She upgraded to the super awesome one a few years ago but no, you do not need the super awesome one to save your sanity. You just need a cheap mini-trampoline.

You don’t need one with a bar to hold onto or any other silly safety features, and you probably don’t want one bigger than 36″ unless you want your kids to try to jump on it together, which is a bad idea.

All the mini-trampolines under $100 on Amazon are the same quality level that should cost about $50 at a store like Big 5. Don’t fall for the Amazon profiteers’ price gouging. If the mini-trampoline costs more than $50, you’re over-paying.

This is the mini-trampoline we have and it is under $50.

No, it is not really foldable, because when we folded it the vinyl cover got a rip on each side. That was 5 years ago and our mini-trampoline still works perfectly—and we jump on it for at least 10 hours a week. It’s just kind of ugly. If you need to store it, it’s better to unscrew the legs and slide it under the bed. But right now, you want to leave it in the living room, right in front of the TV. Your kids will fight over it. They will bounce for hours. They might drag it to their rooms so they can do flips from the mini-trampoline onto their beds. This is OK—the more energy they use up on the trampoline, the less energy they have to sass you.

So a mini-trampoline solves the problem of squirrely kids who can’t play outside and just want to sit around watching Disney Plus all day. They might still watch TV all day, but they’ll be worn out and therefore calmer.

Sanity Saver #2: Lighten your laundry load.

We’ve used industrial paper towels and dispensers in all bathrooms and the kitchen for several years. Regular towels are germ factories. Roll paper towels (like Bounty) are expensive, and kids tend to pull off way more than they need—and let them trail into the dirty sink.

You don’t have time to wash two loads of towels every day—that’s one load of bathroom hand towels and one load of kitchen hand towels every stinking day. If your towels are cute, you probably don’t bleach them, and bleach is really the only way to sanitize laundry. Towels waste time, water, detergent, bleach, and energy daily if you’re using them in a sanitary manner. Unfriendly eco-friendly people conveniently forget about all that waste when demonizing paper towels. Also, they probably don’t have grimy kids to keep healthy.

There are two basic types of industrial paper towels:

If you use a countertop bin, you want to buy “c-fold” paper towels.
If you use a dispenser that pops out the end of a new paper towel when you pull one out, you want to buy “z-fold” or “multi-fold” paper towels.

Some Costcos sell both types of industrial paper towels but Costco is not a fun trip right now.

Your price point for industrial paper towels is less than 2 cents per paper towel.

Compared to normal roll paper towels: If a Bounty Select-a-Size double roll has 110 mini paper towels per roll, and your kids grab 3 mini towels at a time, you get 37 uses per roll, or 220 uses per 6 “double rolls” pack. At $10 per 6 double rolls, that is 4.5 cents per use.

Countertop Paper Towel Holder:

You probably have something at home you can use to hold c-fold paper towels (the ones you grab off the counter one at a time). I use a metal bread basket in our master bathroom. My mom uses an oblong silver tray in her guest bathroom. You can use any bin, basket, or box that the paper towels fit in.
These are the paper towels you need for a countertop paper towel holder: Tork c-fold paper towels case of 2400 (grab one at a time) for 1.6 cents each.

Wall-Mounted Paper Towel Dispenser:

For z-fold or multi-fold paper towels (the ones that are intertwined so a new one pops out when you pull one out), you need a dispenser. These are the ones I have:
Industrial paper towel dispenser mounted on the side of the kitchen cabinet next to the sink.

Wooden paper towel dispenser mounted on the guest bathroom wall (it can also sit on the counter if you use c-fold paper towels).

We’ve used many brands of industrial paper towels. They all work fine, but Kleenex multi-fold paper towels are the only multi-fold paper towels that really dry hands using only one paper towel. All other brands of multi-fold paper towels really require 2 paper towels per use. If you don’t buy Kleenex multi-fold paper towels, double the price per paper towel to know the real price.
Kleenex multi-fold paper towels (use in a dispenser, need one per use) case of 2400 for 1.2 cents each.
Pacific Blue multi-fold paper towels (use in a dispenser, need two per use) case of 4000 for .6 cents each (that’s six tenths of one cent). Your kids will probably use two each time to dry their hands, so true price is closer to 1.3 cents per use.

And that solves the laundry and germ problem.

Read all posts in this series: Advice from a frugal mom during coronavirus

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Advice from a frugal mom during coronavirus #5: Two sanity savers in stock on Amazon