How many of us set New Year’s resolutions aiming to spend more time doing the things we love, spend more time with the ones we love, and spend more time doing things that really matter. It all looks great as a goal on paper, but when it comes to actually trying to find ways to reach the goal, we find we just come up short on finding enough hours in the day. Work demands, finance constraints, seemingly never-ending chores, and the constant demands of a busy, on-the-run, multi-tasked, overextended lifestyle and culture are robbing us of the time to really live our lives to the fullest.
Perhaps it’s better to get more specific in our goal setting and find specific measures to help manage and free up some time to start living our best lives. Here’s several time-saving life hacks that we can adopt in our daily life at home as well as some resources for additional time-saver ideas. Shaving even minutes off daily tasks can add up in the end to give extra day time to read, play a game, exercise, sleep, enjoy coffee with a friend or volunteer.
What are you waiting for…..Isn’t it time to live your best life NOW?
Cleaning
Of course, as a cleaning services company, we will start here. Weekends weren’t meant to be spent cleaning. But the reality is for our home, our family and our health, this is something that’s got to be done on a regular basis. Outsourcing regular interval cleaning on a weekly basis is one of the best ways to gain some valuable hours back for your family while caring best for your home environment.
For further time saving on the day-to-day cleaning maintenance, try creating a time slot for just 15 minutes each day and burst through the chores like kitchen dishes and sink, floors, trash removal, making beds, bathroom wipe up, etc. This daily routine will keep things from getting and feeling out of hand. Don’t be afraid to get the kids involved and assign specific tasks for the 15 minute family power clean.
Tidying and Organizing
Setting up some systems for organization so that everything has its place helps keep this part of daily maintenance a breeze. Toy bins, key hook, mail basket, shoe rack, and pantry shelves are all things to help everyone know where things belong to keep counters and spaces from getting cluttered and overwhelming. This also helps save time from having to look through messes to find lost items like missing keys or important documents.
Laundry
Create the discipline to turn clothes right side out and to sort by color when placing in the laundry basket each time, this saves from delaying the start of each load. Depending on the size of your family, running at least one load daily will help keep heaps of laundry piling up throughout the week. Smaller loads are quicker to run, use less resources, and are easier to get folded quickly and put away.
Meals
Smart menu planning and advanced meal prep will help daily meals become a breeze. Use of specialty appliances (microwave, slow cooker, pressure cooker, etc) can cut cooking time. Having a meal plan in place cuts the time we spend standing looking in our freezer each afternoon trying to decide what it is we are going to make for dinner. Advance thawing, cutting, chopping, and sorting helps dinner prep, lunch packing and quick breakfasts go faster.
Shopping and Errands
Using a grocery delivery or pick up service allows you to save time by doing other tasks or running other errands while someone else picks your food items. Keeping a list throughout the week of needed items and necessary errands saves time by allowing you to efficiently make a plan or place an order.
Technology Time
Smart phones, smart tv’s, tablets and laptops can be tools we use to manage our time, but they can also be time suckers if we don’t have discipline in place around the use of these devices. Find out what your time robbing activities might be like social media, games, internet research rabbit trails, etc and create time limits and use your timer/alarm features to help you become more disciplined.
For all of these necessary areas of our daily life that take time away from us being able to move more into doing things we love with people we love, the discipline, routine, awareness and conventionality to do things just a little differently can help us meet time-saving goals. The number of resources available allows us to know we are not alone in this struggle.
The time to start living your best life is NOW.
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Then check out these additional time-saving life hack ideas for saving time at home, at work, while entertaining, and in your daily life routines.
Top 10 Ways to Save Time at Home
