How Do You Simplify Life at Home? 26 Tips & Tricks

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Family life is inherently hard to manage. We are the CEO, COO & CFO of our lives, our households, and our families. It’s definitely a lot to handle!

So, how do you simplify life at home? By reducing the number of times we need to think, analyze, and make routine decisions. I’m talking about short cuts. This can mean:

Putting things on autopilot,
doing things at an easier time of day, or
simply letting go of the things, thoughts and actions that cause us anxiety and overthinking.

Having less stuff that demands our attention, frees up more time, energy and brain power.

An easy & popular example of this is Mark Zuckerberg’s wardrobe. He wears similarly styled clothing every day, specifically so he won’t have to waste precious time/brain power deciding what to wear.

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Table of Contents

How Do You Simplify Life at Home?

The items on this list will show you how to:

Reduce & declutter,
Streamline tasks,

Create shortcuts, and
Free up more time to do what you love.

When we take control of our time and tell it what to do, like our money, less gets wasted. More time gets spent on the things (and people) we need and love.

I broke these tips into categories: Food, Time, Peace of Mind, Stuff and Finances. Keep an eye out for tips that will help reduce your mental and physical clutter, and bring joy in.

Let’s dive in!

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Simplify Life: Food

1. Create a menu for the week.

Waiting until it’s time to cook to look in the fridge can be stressful, and can lead to a lot of takeout orders that could have been avoided. Instead, create a simple menu for the week, with ingredients you usually have on hand.

Easy lunch and dinner recipes go like this:

Veg + Protein + Carb = Meal

Make a list of all the veggies, proteins & carbs your family enjoys. Then, you can mix & match for 7 nights of easy meals. Stir-fry meals fit nicely into this equation!

TIP: Instead of reinventing the wheel every week for breakfast, your family can decide what they want for breakfast on each day, and put a little chart up on the kitchen cabinet, like this:

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So each Monday is cereal day, each Tuesday is eggs day, etc.

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2. Shop for groceries once per week.

Now that you have your menu, it is much easier to do one large shop than breaking it out several days during the week. We shouldn’t even be in the grocery store more than once per week right now, so it’s a great time to start buying what you need for longer periods.

Make sure to buy enough food for dinner so that you will have leftovers for lunch the next day sometimes. This also saves a lot of time, money and decision-making brain power.

3. Prep your snacks & dinner ingredients for the week.

Now you know exactly what you are cooking for the week, and have all of the ingredients together on Groceries day.

Pick one day to do any prep work for your weekly menu:

chop garlic,
slice peppers,

marinate meat,
make a big pot of rice,
stir up sauces,

slice vegetables for snacking, etc.

Once you prep your ingredients for your meal, dinner can take five minutes to make each night, instead of 30.

Here’s a post that goes into detail about prepping ingredients. It includes 3 days of meals if you need some ideas.

4. Make extra dinner each night to eat for lunch the next day.

You just cut out having to make 7 lunches this week!

5. Pre-cook breakfast if possible.

Check out your breakfast menu. Pancakes and waffles are freezer-friendly, and oatmeal can be turned into overnight oats instead.

Here’s an incredibly thorough Breakfast Meal Prep post from Jamie at nogettingoffthistrain.com. It’s got a grocery list, people. Talk about time-saving.

Simplify Life: Time

“Where did the day go….” “I can’t believe it’s __ o’clock.” I feel like that’s a regular thought in my head, whether I’m super organized or not.

By taking a little time to get intentional with creating tasks, and using some neat hacks to keep focused, we can get done what needs to be done, leaving time for fun & relaxation.

6. Use a Timer Hack to Keep on Task.

Simple hack: Once you start your first task of the day, set a timer on your phone for 40 minutes. No matter what task you are doing (writing, checking emails, meal prep, a workout), that timer is on.

While you are on task, if you mindlessly try to distract yourself by opening your phone, the timer is in your face saying, “Look how long it’s taking you to [this or that], better step it up.”

Instead of impulsively clicking an app, you now have to see the timer, pause, and intentionally decide your next move. Time-draining social media scroll, or productivity?

TIP: Every time the timer runs out & goes off, hit the “restart” button. The timer can be on rotation all day if you like.

It not only shows you how long you actually spend on things, but every time it runs out, you automatically get a 3-second pause. You can reassess what you’re doing, or get some water.

7. Prioritize your goals to stop wasting time.

I have a super-helpful post about how to keep your to-do list focused & plan your week for maximum productivity, using the Eisenhower Matrix. Check it out!

8. Set up filters for your emails.

It’s fine to have a certain time of day to read your emails. But if all of your emails for all different things are in one long running list, you will attend to the most recent emails first, instead of the most important ones.

You’ll end up maybe handling one priority, along with printing 3 coupons, shopping for a gift & reading a joke your mom sent.

The first thing you need to do is make sure you are only subscribed to receive emails that are helpful to you. Stores you regularly buy from, newsletters that make you happy to read and websites that further your career are all great choices.

Next, the email filter is your friend!! If you have separate work & personal email addresses, you’re already on the right track. If not, tag your shopping emails, newsletters & family emails to each go in separate folders.

Now your Inbox will mostly be for work stuff. It’ll take you far less time to skim through your inbox for emergencies now that most of the non-work distractions are gone.

9. Keep your general home/family related info & documents in one place.

No need to go looking for things like this. These can include:

Emergency info & doctor/specialist contact info

Grocery lists for meals on rotation
A contact/addresses list
Birthdate list by month

Gift & vacation ideas
Cleaning schedule

Getting these things out of your head and into one place releases a ton of headspace.

*Keep an eye out for my Home Management Binder printables. I’m working hard on them, coming soon!

10. MLC: Minimum Level of Cleanliness.

We all have a cleanliness threshold. What are the things that have to be done for you to consider your house “presentable”? Take only those things, and schedule them into your planner.

Even better, give one thing to each of the other people in your house for them to do.

If you have time to clean anything more than that, go for it. But the house being “a mess” won’t be nagging the crap out of you all day, ever again.

I suggest:

Kitchen counters once a day,
“5-minute tidy” once a day
Bathrooms once per week,

Kitchen floors once per week,
Vacuum bedrooms once per week.

11. Set up a stellar morning routine.

Structuring your early morning hours can increase your motivation throughout the rest of your day. Here are some great tips and steps for how to schedule the right tasks into your morning and help the rest of the day run smoothly.

Simplify Life: Peace of Mind, Self Care & Relationships

12. Read less news feeds, unless they serve you in some way.

Whenever you open a new tab on your computer, chances are your internet browser tries to get you to check out whatever it thinks you should be reading, hearing or watching.

Don’t allow your computer screen to tell you what you should be paying attention to in the world.

There’s probably a “hide feed” option on your browser, and I highly suggest you use it. If you have to stay on top of current opinion pieces, gossip and events, pick a time of day that won’t interfere with your work or family time.

13. Say what you mean, more often.

I have a confession: I don’t really like it when people go, “Say ‘no’ more often.” It’s too rigid & doesn’t really apply to my life (unless I’m talking about chocolate or cocktails).

If you can, you can. If you can’t, you can’t. There shouldn’t be a quota. The trick is to be honest with yourself, and then honest with whomever is asking for your invaluable time.

You’ll find that you will be doing more of the things you want to do, which is spending your time wisely!

I like to keep in mind this quote I heard Pink say to her kids, “We mean what we say, and we don’t say mean things.”

14. Get rid of negative thoughts.

Brooke Castillo of the Life Coach School has a really interesting podcast. Her very first episode talks about how our thoughts create our feelings, which direct our actions.

Simply put, even just dwelling on something like running late, or on something someone said or did, is going to create negative feelings, and those feelings make us act and react with the world in negative ways. It’s a huge waste of your time and energy.

Letting it go will free your mind to think of things that went right today, instead of what went wrong.

Here’s a great article with steps to acknowledge and let go of negative thoughts when they creep up on you.

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15. Read more/listen to more audiobooks.

Reading is absolutely 100% using your time wisely and productively. Every book, fiction or nonfiction, teaches us something new about the world, or about ourselves.

If you don’t have a Kindle or Audible subscription, you’re missing out! I highly suggest downloading the audiobook versions and listening while you are walking, or downloading a book onto your Kindle (the app is probably already on your phone!) and sitting out in the sun.

If you need some inspiration, here are the books on Bill Gates’ summer reading list:

16. Stop hanging around people who don’t lift you up.

Being around toxic people, or people who are always talking down about themselves (or you or anyone else), takes a toll on you mentally. It’s time to let go of the people and places that don’t bring out the best in you. Those people and places have needs that do not align with where you want your life to be.

17. Treat people how you want to be treated.

Lead with kindness and you’ll never waste time regretting something you shouldn’t have done or said.

“Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a battle you know nothing about.” ― Wendy Mass

As a side note, if there is anyone you want to apologize to or start giving more time to, you would be simplifying your peace of mind by allowing that to happen, too.

Simplify Life: Stuff

18. Schedule time to declutter each room.

Here’s my post on how to declutter a room in 30 minutes. Tackle one or two rooms a month, and you’ll always be on top of your clutter, instead of having a huge decluttering project on your hands once a year.

If things don’t have a place, there’s a chance they may not be as important to you. They may not be serving you as much as you think.

I know Marie Kondo is everywhere right now, but I bought her first book when it came out a few years ago. It truly changed my perspective on when to keep things, and when to let them go.

19. Buy only 1-2 types/colors of sock.

This is a declutter hack I got from Additudemag.com – You’ll never not find a pair!!

20. Stop buying things you don’t need.

“He who buys what he does not need, steals from himself.” – Sweedish Proverb

You’re not just wasting your money, but wasting your space, and your time having to clean it.

Try this hack the next time you “need” something: Either take a picture of it in-store, or put it in your shopping cart online. If you keep thinking about it, chances are you actually do need it. If not, drop it.

21. Make sure every paper has a place.

Paper clutter is the worst! There are papers you have to keep forever, and papers you don’t need at all. This article on how to organize paperwork at home has step-by-step instructions for organizing each type of paperwork.

Now you’ll have a place for everything, and easily know what papers can be trashed.

Simplify Life: Finances

22. Find free things to do.

They’re all over the place, finding them can be as easy as Google-ing “free things to do [your city].”

Here’s a great article from LifeHack for 31 fresh, free-things-to-do ideas.

23. Get on track with a solid monthly budget.

People think that budgets are negative, they’re hard, they mean you are failing at controlling your money. But actually, the total opposite is true! You are telling your money where to go and what to do.

With a budget, YOU are in charge of your finances. You spend less time anxious and worrying, or fighting about money. Here’s my post, with budget binder printables.

24. Use an app to track spending.

I’m not usually a big fan of automating anything that has to do with money. It’s purely a personal preference of mine – to me, writing things out is a part of taking financial responsibility.

But I know it can get overwhelming to do that. There are 2 totally free apps for you to check out, they auto-categorize your spending for you:

The Mint App
Personal Capital

25. Don’t take on any more debt.

If you are in a deep hole and desperate to change immediately, check out Dave Ramsey on YouTube. He has a book called The Total Money Makeover. It’s a very straightforward 7-step program to claw out of debt.

Once you’re out of debt, having that budget in place is going to keep you out.

26. Automate your payments.

This is a controversial one for me. I don’t prefer to do this because it’s easy to “set and forget.” You don’t actually perform the task and watch the money leave your account. There’s less of a feeling of responsibility for the amount you’re spending.

I instead normally recommend you stop using your calendar to pay bills, and use your payday instead, cutting the number of times you have to sit to pay bills.

But, if you are completely debt-free, consistently spending less than you make, financially responsible and all that, feel free to automate your payments.

Also, if there is no penalty to do this, you may consider paying certain expenses yearly or bi-yearly, instead of monthly. For example, life or car insurance.

Moving Forward

Get in the habit of asking, is this action helping me simplify my life? Is this getting me closer to what I want my ideal life to look like? Or is it moving me away from that?

Healthy choices, and kind words & thoughts, will almost always align with your ideal life.

What is one area of your life you wish you could simplify? Drop a comment below! I love to hear from you!

XO,

-Mina

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Here are some more posts that might be helpful:

How to Plan Your Week for Maximum Productivity

How I Meal Prep Lunch, Snacks & Dinner Working From Home + 3 Days of Recipes!

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How Do You Simplify Life at Home? 26 Tips & Tricks

How Do You Simplify Life at Home?