Summer’s here, which means one thing: paddling pools.

If your kids are keen to jump in as soon as they get home from school or on the weekends, you can avoid re-filling it up all the time with this useful hack.

A family Facebook group – ‘Family days: Tried and tested’ – shared the tip of putting a fitted sheet over the top of the pool to keep it free from leaves and bugs, but this also means you won’t have to keep refilling the water every day.

Considering it was revealed last week that nearly four billion litres of water were going to be wasted on the weekend due to people filling up paddling pools, this hack couldn’t have come at a better time. 

The Facebook post has been shared more than 10,000 times and had thousands of comments from parents. “This is just a great idea,” one mum wrote. “Avoiding me filling up the padding time all the time is going to be great.”

Another woman wrote: “Ah yes! The amount of time I spend picking out leaves and god knows what else from our pool is such a pain, I’ll be doing this later on.”

Some people pointed out that many paddling pools aren’t the same size as the photo above, with the majority in the UK being a circular shape. Depending on how big the pool is, a fitted sheet is still likely to work and could be tucked underneath. 

If you have tarpaulin, one mum suggested using this and tucking the excess material underneath the pool.