Life: 5 ways to organise your life
Looking for 5 ways to organise your life? Look no further! I’ve always been very organised and I love feeling on top of everything – as hard as that is when you have a toddler. I am a big fan of a spreadsheet and lists, all of the lists. I also can’t resist a planner (or a notebook to be honest) and have just ordered a shiny new one, even though I will likely use it for a day and then return to using my phone which is what I always fall back to.
Today I’m sharing five ways that I keep my life organised in the hope that they will help make your life a little easier too.
1) Meal planning
My Mum would always meal plan and it’s been something I’ve done for years and years. It seems like a tedious task but you will always thank yourself for doing it. Every Monday I sit down and get out my weekly planner – you can get specific meal planner notepads or whiteboards but I just use a weekly planner like this one* (Homesense do lots of them too). I’ll have a quick look in the fridge and freezer to see what we have and will then plan Florence’s lunches and dinners for the week, and our meals too. I’ll add notes each day of what I may need to prep or get out to defrost and then from that list I’ll create my shopping list. It means less food waste and although you have to spend a little time initially on it, you save so much time during the week as that mental task of wondering what to have for dinner is taken away. I’m definitely not a stickler for it, and sometimes plans will change but just having it there is so helpful.
2) The Organised Mum Method
I want to do a whole post on this as it’s been a game changer for me in terms of cleaning and has meant that we have been able to cut down on how often we have our cleaner, and obviously throughout lockdown it’s meant that we’ve kept on top of everything. It’s essentially a cleaning schedule where you spend half an hour on Monday to Friday doing an assigned room, or rooms (no weekend cleaning!). You also have a few daily tasks like putting a wash on etc. On Monday-Thursday you clean the same rooms every week and on Friday you do more of a deeper clean on a specific room. It’s amazing how much you can get done in half an hour and it feels so much less intimidating than doing one big weekly clean. You can read more about it on the TOMM website here and the book (which I recommend) is available on Amazon*.
3) Productivity apps
As I’ve said above, I can’t resist a planner however my phone is where I really organise my life. Again, I’d like to write a whole post about the apps that I’d recommend but my top recommendations would be Todoist and Evernote – both which also have desktop platforms which seamlessly sync. Todoist is great for your to do list; you can organise tasks into different projects which I like doing, and I get an email reminder every morning so I can see what I need to do that day. I also love Evernote which is described as a note taking app. You can use this for a to do list too, but I use it more as a virtual notebook with different notebooks for subjects like recipes, present ideas and useful links. It’s easy to search too so is quick and easy to use.
4) Birthday card book and app
I used to be terrible with birthdays and would remember a few days before, rush out and buy a card and it would arrive a few days late. I’ve now got two things that have really helped to organise my ‘birthday admin’ – the first is a birthday card organiser like this*. It has a page and a pocket for every month which you can write down birthday dates, and then fill with the cards for that month. I will do a bulk buy of cards, usually from Whistlefish and when it comes to that month I know I am covered. I also use a birthdays app (there are loads of apps like this) where I input birthdays and then am reminded a week and two days before. You can also put in the birth year and it tells you how old they are – really helpful for kiddie birthdays.
5) Three task to do list
This approach is really helpful if you find it hard to get organised, or perhaps write a to do list that ends up being 20 tasks long and becomes overwhelming. It’s far more achievable to write down three tasks to do that day as you’re more likely to do them, and it focuses your mind on what is the most important to get done. It also feels great to check them off of your list and then maybe move onto other jobs, if you’re feeling super productive.
