Exclusive:
From a healthy breakfast that seems like a treat to an easy way to store sweets, social media star Casey’s new book is filled with easy tricks for stressed mums
Mumfluencer Casey Major-Bunce wants her new book to be a ‘sanity saver’ for fellow parents. The 34-year-old ‘Queen of Hacks’ began posting mum tips and tricks on social media a few years ago, hoping to forge new connections with other parents. Instead of making a few mum friends, she now has more than 700,000 followers on Instagram, who can’t get enough of her simple yet genius suggestions to make everyday parenting easier.
And there’s good news for Casey’s fans – they can now buy her print debut, The Big Book of Major Mum Hacks. “I think my most surprising hack was a Haribo hack that loads of people reshared,” she told us in an exclusive chat.
“It was just opening a bag of Haribos in a specific way and tying it back up. I think it gained 100,000 followers in 24 hours. They were saying it was ‘genius’, ‘I never knew this’, it was crazy.”
Casey’s neat trick, which was viewed more than 100 million times after it went viral on Instagram, advised her followers not to open the sweet packet like a bag of crisps. Instead, they should told pull the Haribo bag down by the tab in the middle hole, allowing you to easily reseal it. “I need to get a life… I know,” she joked.
Another trick adored by the mumfluencer’s followers was her ‘pancake muffins’ one, which suggested batch-cooking pancakes in a cupcake tray. “You can make them on the Sunday and they last til Friday,” she said. “They cost a few pence per pancake and you can pop all different toppings on them. They’re perfect for breakfast because you can warm up and what I love most as well if they don’t crumble so you can eat them on the go.”
A third hack, which makes breakfast ice lollies using any yoghurt and cereal, receiving one touching response in particular. “A mum said on Instagram her child had additional needs, was autistic but hadn’t eaten breakfast in forever,” Casey recalled. “She started doing these and now he has breakfast every morning. For me, being autistic and ADHD and having a completely neuro-diverse family I get the struggles so being sent that comment was amazing. I know that kid went to school having had that breakfast and more importantly, that mum had gone to school feeling better about herself.”
Casey, who is mum to Ayron, 14, Kaiser, 9 and twins Matilda and Arabecca, 5, estimates parents who use the tips and tricks in her book could save £3,000 a year, not to mention their sanity. “If I can take away 10 per cent of a parent’s stress levels that morning then it’s worth it,” she said. “Mums do so much – we are the dentists, we are the carers, we are the fashion designers and the party planners and I do feel in today’s society we’re expected to do all of the above and bring in 50 per cent of the income.”
The mumfluencer from Portsmouth, who has ADHD and autism, has made sure her book is inclusive, with plenty of images for visual learning and QR codes for trickier hacks referring readers to simple video demos. “If you have a child who is non-verbal and prefer to watch videos you can explain to them this what we’re doing today and show them the video,” she said.
The Big Book of Major Mum Hacks by Casey Major-Bunce (Sphere, £18.99) is out now
