Make it simple.

I'm teaming up with my bestie, take the cannoli, for a new blog feature called Maid Simple. At the start of each new week we'll be posting a fun household tip, trick, or product that makes our lives easier. Our advice will have been thoroughly tested (usually) by us or someone we know, and it's our sincere hope that we'll be able to help all you domestic divas have more fun while performing those drudging wifely duties. I'm talking chores here, ladies. As in DISHES and DUSTING, get your minds out of the gutter!

There now. Today's tip from Apron Strings has to do with boiling over, literally. I'm one of those ambitious multi-taskers who thinks she can put something on the stove and go work on her blog (ahem) and still have the presence of mind to remember the thing on the stove before it a) turns into a hard lump of charred breakfast or b) spills over, coating the entire burner with starchy noodle juice. I was fed up with my lack of focus so when I saw these little babies I picked them up tout suite to give them a try.

Amazingly enough they work like a charm by rattling like crazy at the bottom of a pan as soon as the liquid starts to boil so that I can hear it in any room of the house. But also, and even more important, they keep the liquid (most important when boiling milk for oatmeal or hot chocolate) from rising up like a volcano of sticky nastiness and spilling over the pan, entombing my porcelain burners in a rock hard shroud of caramelization that would take me half an hour to chip away. No-boil discs are a must have for anyone who has the bad habit of leaving the kitchen when there's something on the stove.

Check out take the cannoli to see what her household helper pick of the week is.