Parent Hacks, the online parent cheat sheet is now a go-to book

Parent Hacks is a genius website that parents probably don’t use enough. I say that from experience because I don’t use it, despite the fact that most of their tips are super helpful. Using ‘hack’ as a suffix is common now and has watered down how effective some of the hacks can actually be. Because of that, some folks may think of a ‘hack’ as half measured or low brow approach to fixing something.

Imagine if Kurt Russell’s character in Overboard stored the baby’s breast milk in six-pack cartons. The idea certainly is logical, saves mom time, money and convenience, but might lack a certain thing that makes it palatable for some parents. Now imagine if Martha Stewart gave you the same advice. It’s the same advice, just as helpful, but now feels better because it’s not being given to you by a dad that has his kids wearing a potato sack and is conning a nice lady with lots of money that has amnesia.

Parent Hacks’ style is right in the middle of those two messengers. The book is packed with a myriad of common sense tips that will assist parents with kids 6 and younger. It starts out with pregnancy hacks for moms and dads. This includes a great list of things that new babies do not need, supplies that will pamper the new mom in the hospital and things to take to the hospital.

Sure, by that description you’ve read or seen books like that. What makes Parent Hacks unique and more effective is its brevity. Most of the hacks have an illustration on one page and enough sentences to fully explain it on the opposite page. The grid background, different colored pages, varied size of the text, as well as the fact that it’s multi-colored and highlighted is reminiscent of notes that you used to take in school.

The combination of all these things is that you remember the hacks. Cut a pool noodle for sharp table edges, lint roll the bottom of the diaper bag, use tape to outline a play area and poker chips to barter for screen time are just a couple of the tips that you only need to look at once. After that the hack is all but remembered and you can go on to others that you’ll use in your baby life.

The size of the book compliments the content also. Parent Hacks is slightly bigger than your hand so it’s easy to carry around, will fit in any bag and won’t get lost in the shuffle of your other books. Plus it’s fun to look at and not preachy. It’s not that parenting books are preachy per se, it’s just that most of them have too many words, which take time to read, which parents don’t have too much of.