If you’re looking to make your life easier, this blog post is for you. Since my husband and I got married, we have been trying to get into a routine and create habits to help us maintain our home and give us more time to do the things we love when we get home from work.
I’m sure you can relate to this scenario: You get home from a busy day, have a ton of things you want to accomplish but only have a few hours until you go to bed just to do it all over again. If you’re like me, you want to create a home that’s clean and cozy, make good food, have time to rest, see friends, explore hobbies, etc. You get the picture.
I have been on a mission the past few years to create simple habits that can make my life easier so I can have more free time and enjoy our home more, without feeling like I’m running around with my head cut off.
Of course, all of these habits are still a work in progress for me. I don’t do them all perfectly or 100% of the time, but I definitely notice when I’m intentional about them, my life is wayyy easier.
Here are habits you can implement today to make your life easier:
Grocery Pickup
GROCERY PICKUP. I cannot emphasize enough how much time, energy, and money grocery pickup has saved me.
Because my husband and I both commute, we found that going to the grocery store was taking too much of our spare time, especially on weeknights. We would spend anywhere from 30 minutes to an hour at the grocery store per week. It ended up becoming a whole event we would have to schedule out time for, and as commuters, ain’t nobody got time for that.
My husband and I are also both guilty of picking up extra things we don’t need while shopping because they either A) Look good or B) It’s on sale. We would almost always leave the store with more than what was on our list.
Not trying to be dramatic but grocery pickup literally changed my life!! It’s completely free, you can schedule your pickup time, they bag and load your groceries into your car for you, and you only buy what you need.
We schedule our pickup for Sunday or Monday so we can start every week with everything we need for meals. Which brings me to…
Meal Planning (but make it easy)
I get it, meal planning is seriously intimidating. I used to think of meal planning as making intricate, completely healthy recipes and it seemed way too difficult and stressful to even think about.
But meal planning does NOT have to be as difficult as we make it out to be. You can plan to have frozen pizza one night, or maybe you have Taco Tuesday every week, or maybe you rotate between the same five recipes.
Here’s what you do not have to do:
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You do NOT have to find new recipes every week
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You do NOT have to use only whole/healthy foods
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You do NOT have to cook every night
Something I do is I keep a note on my phone with everything I like to make for dinner. This includes anything from Pinterest recipes to frozen meals. That way, when I’m meal planning for the week, I can refer back to my note and pick 3-4 meals to make during the week.
In fact, I make the same vegetable beef soup every other week because it’s easy, delicious, and gives us a ton of leftovers. And I plan to continue making that same soup until we can’t stand it anymore (which I don’t see happening anytime soon, it’s sooo good).
But complete transparency, some weeks I don’t schedule our grocery pickup or meal plan, but I have found that whenever I do meal plan and get our pickup scheduled, our week goes much smoother.
Set out your outfit the night before
This was something my husband started doing before I did (mostly because he gets up before me and is colorblind, so sometimes he needs help, haha). But this has saved me so much more time in the morning before work.
This is what used to happen: I would wake up and be laying in bed thinking “what am I going to wear?” Then, I would finally get up and go stare at my clothes in the closet for 10 minutes and maybe have a couple outfit changes. Then, not only am I scrambling to get to work on time but I’m also not happy with what I’m wearing.
Now, I figure out what I’m going to wear the night before instead so when I wake up, I know exactly what I want to put on and don’t spend 10-15 minutes trying to figure it out. Plus, my mind is more awake and can actually pick stuff out quicker.
Create routines
I believe that creating routines are a huge part of making your life easier and more simple. I have found that it saves me from a ton of decision making.
Two routines I think everyone should have are a morning routine and a night routine.
Like meal planning, your morning and night routines don’t have to be complex or difficult. For example, here’s my night routine:
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Skincare
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Brush teeth & floss
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Change into pajamas
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Get in bed
It doesn’t get much simpler than that. Having that routine has taught my brain that it’s time to wind down and has seriously helped my skin so much, haha.
You can also create routines for your kids and at work. Right when I get to work, I check my emails and voicemails. After I do that, I start my other tasks.
I don’t have kids, but I hear that having routines with kids is SUPER helpful. You could create night routines and morning chore routines for them too, helping them know exactly what to expect and then eventually, they could probably become more and more independent at doing their routines. But I won’t go too much into that because I don’t have experience.
10 minute tidy-up
I’m sure you’ve heard this before, but having a set time every day for tidying up your house makes life so much easier. I try to do this at the end of every day so I can wake up in the morning with a fresh start.
Basically, this includes putting items back where they belong at the end of the night. This could be putting the throw blankets back in the basket, loading the dishwasher, putting the clothes on your bed or on the floor either in the hamper or back in the closet.
Set a timer for 10 minutes and see how much you can do!
Make to-do lists
There’s nothing that helps me organize my thoughts and increase productivity for me like to-do lists do!
Oftentimes, I feel like I have so many tasks I want to complete in my mind that I end up not doing any of them. Does that happen to anyone else or is that just me?
Enter: To-do lists. Write out 3-5 tasks you want to get done that day and only focus on those tasks. This will help you to keep your thoughts straight and keep you focused on what’s essential.
One thing to be careful of is not putting so many things on your to-do list that it becomes overwhelming. I try to limit my to-do at most to 7-8 items. If I have more time-consuming tasks, I try to keep the list shorter. You want your list to be achievable so you feel like you are accomplishing what you need to do every day! It can be discouraging to feel like you can never get everything done.
Find a home for everything in your house
You have also probably heard this one, but this is a great tip for keeping your house orderly and less overwhelming. This is also one I am still very much working on, but I think I have my kitchen basically decluttered and it is SO nice.
Basically what this means is to have a designated spot for every single item in your house. Where do you keep hats and gloves? Where does your vacuum go? Plant fertilizer?
When everything has a home, you know exactly where to put everything when you’re done with it. Saving you time and decision making. It’s also easier to tidy up your house at the end of the day or in the morning, whenever you do your 10 minute tidy.
That’s everything! Seven habits that will make your life easier. As I have said multiple times, this is all still a work in progress for me and I also don’t get down on myself when I don’t do all of these habits perfectly.
These are simply ideas, obviously you can try them and modify them to fit your own life. My goal with all of these ideas is to inspire you (and myself) to live a simpler life so I can live a fuller life. These save me time and energy; time and energy I can then put forth into my marriage, friendships, and hobbies.
What are habits you have incorporated into your life or want to incorporate? Comment below!
