Want 5 practical tips that will make your life simpler? You’re in the right place, gurl!
Are you feeling overloaded and overwhelmed with everyday responsibilities? Me too! BUT… with a bit of planning and intention, you can make life SO much simpler.
I have a slight obsession with making my life as simple as possible. I have goals and ambitions, so I don’t want to be wasting my valuable energy on menial tasks. I want to be more efficient, focusing my energy and time on being productive and living my version of my best life.
Living a simple life looks different for everyone. For me, it means getting rid of life’s menial tasks, so I can spend time with family, friends or doing more of the things I love. I achieve this by getting rid of clutter, mental and in my environment, eliminating unimportant tasks, automating recurring tasks. So, all I am left with are the tasks that give me joy.
The process of simplifying your life is easy:
- Identify what is most important to you
- Eliminate everything else
Where do I start, you might ask. Simple! Pick one of the below tasks, nail it and then pick another. It is that simple! Simple living, ya’ll!
5 practical and actionable tips for creating a simple life and cutting the complexities out:
- Declutter Your Environment
- Declutter Your Wardrobe
- Develop Routines for You and Your Home
- Sort out Your Finances
- Meal Plan and Food Shop Once a Week
Declutter Your Environment
According to Psychology Today, cluttered spaces in your environment create chaos in your mind, which overwhelms your already-taxed brain with too much sensory information. The excess stimuli, clutter and disorganisation in your environment, is unnecessary overwhelm – the worst kind of overwhelm!
When your mind is overwhelmed, it negatively affects your stress levels and overall well-being. You become easily irritable, creating feelings of stress and anxiety, and can bring shame or embarrassment about the state and presentation of your home.
Decluttering your environment results in less to clean and less to tidy, saving your energy for more important things! Like spending time on the things, you love that brings you joy and making memories with friends and family. No more wasting energy and time worrying about the state of your home and trying to keep up with the housework.
Declutter Your Wardrobe
Do you have an overwhelming amount of clothing in your wardrobe, yet still cannot find anything to wear, EVER?
Set aside a weekend and declutter your wardrobe. Remove clothes that you no longer wear, that do not fit or are damaged. Simplify your wardrobe, and you will be left with clothing you love to wear, that makes you feel confident, that promote positive body image.
A bonus side effect of decluttering your wardrobe, you’ll have fewer clothes to sift through to find an outfit because you’ll only have clothing you LOVE.
Develop Routines for You and Your Home
Does your family home function the way you want or need it to? Are you always late for school drop off or appointments because you are trying to get the kids and yourself ready?
While at the same time you need the shopping list, have breakfast and do a quick tidy up because the kid’s soccer team are coming over to celebrate the end of the season? (Shout out to all my mums reading this, you are superwomen!)
Do you dream of a happier and saner home? For everything to run smoothly, or close to it? (Life happens, we get it) Well, this dream is possible! You need to create routines and FIRMLY put them in place. Routines establish reasonable expectations for everyone to follow.
These routines could include ut are not limited to:
- Morning routine
- Night routine
- Cleaning routine
- Washing and laundry routine
- Meal plan and food shop routine
The list can go on! Every family has different needs and functions in their own unique way.
Write a list of all your daily/weekly/monthly tasks, including the kid’s training sessions and mum time – whatever that may look like for you – and ask yourself “how can I automate this tasks or can I eliminate it altogether?”.
You can now say goodbye to those feelings of worry when having surprise guests because your home will always be your version of tidy and in order.
Sort out Your Finances
We all know how important our finances are to our overall well-being, so, why do we ignore or overlook it?
Well, no more! Here are super quick and easy ways you can action and implement RIGHT NOW to simplify and streamline your finances:
- Create a budget on your fixed and essential expenses – electricity, food, fuel, Netflix, every subscription you have. If you spend money on it regularly add it to your budget. Yes, this could take a year to figure out, but it is so worth it! I drink Before You Speak coffee EVERY DAY, so it is on my budget.
- Set up a Daily Expenses account and transfer 60% of your pay or the amount from your budget into this account for your daily expenses – add up your expenses for the year and divide it by 52 (paid weekly) or 26 (paid fortnightly) or 12 (paid monthly). Ideally, you want a chunk of money already in this account, so you are not always behind. I highly suggest having at least 10% of your yearly budget.
SIDE NOTE:
This part could take a year to collect this data, remember that a budget is purely a guide on what your spending and where you’re spending your money. Once you learn your spending habits, you learn what is most important to you. Then you can stop spending money on getting coffee every day on the way to work and spend it on going to coffee with a friend.
- Set up your utilities to direct debit from your Daily Expense account – you won’t have to worry about overdue bills anymore or when they are coming out! You will always have enough in this account to cover them. PLEASE set up a reminder of when the bill is due so you can check the balance of your Daily Expenses account if necessary.
- I would suggest adding extra into your Daily Expenses account. You want it to build in anticipation of expenses inflating – inflation, life and all that
- Have an account for your ‘splurges’ or ‘fun spending’ – this includes eating out, buying clothes and any other items that are non-essentials. The Splurge account will hold you accountable for what non-essentials you spend your money on.
- Save! Save! Save! If you can only save $20 a pay, then save that $20! I know it can be tough to think for the future, but if you save that $20 now, it WILL ADD UP.
- Work on eliminating all debt – Choose the smallest amount to eliminate then work your way up or choose the debt with the highest interest rate. Choose the most beneficial debt to eliminate first. Once one debt has been eliminated, then domino it to the next until you are debt-free and can SAVE your money instead of spending it on debt.
Meal Plan and Food Shop Once a Week
I don’t know about you, but I struggle when it comes to eating a balanced diet. Mainly because I never know what to cook, I never have food in my house. It drains my energy levels and takes a big chunk of my time when cooking every meal individually.
I find it to be such an inconvenience. I prefer a simpler approach to eating and cooking, I have goals and ambitions I want to achieve. I do not want to be wasting all that valuable energy and time on cooking.
When I started meal planning and prepping, all those issues disappeared. I have set recipes I use as I do not mind having the same meal more than once a week, I have saved time and money by planning what meals I want throughout the week.
I food shop once a week that takes less than an hour from start to finish, my meal planning process takes 20 minutes.
You can make life simpler by choosing basic recipes, saving a tonne of energy, time and money by planning ahead of the meals you are going to have that week then buy it all in one shop.
You can even cook most of your meals in one day! Create meals that only take 30 minutes to cook, such as a source of protein, a complex carb and a plate full of veggies that can be baked in the oven.
When you meal plan and food shop once a week, you’ll save a tonne of energy, time, money, and improve your health along the way. You’ll even avoid wasting food and reduce your plastic consumption. Buy in bulk. ya’ll!
Quick tip:
Batch cook your protein, complex carbs, roasted veggies, and salad. Create a meal plan for the month, so you only have to meal plan ONCE A MONTH! If you genuinely want to do something bad enough, YOU WILL DO IT.
Which tip will you put into action?
The 5 practical tips have the power to make your life simpler if put into action. It is possible to simplify our life on many levels, but most of us insist on making it more complicated than it needs to be. Which leads to mental clutter, health issues, stress levels rise, and a whole bunch more!
Take it one step at a time and choose one change to simplify your life today. These are all changes that you can put into action, so what are you waiting for?
What tasks or life responsibility has unnecessarily complicated your life? Which of these 5 practical tips are you going to try to make your life simpler?
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