I’m a big fan of clutter-free homes and workspaces, not only for their nicer aesthetics but because 1) it helps you to focus on what you’re doing instead of being distracted by visual clutter; 2) it’s more serene and relaxing; and 3) it saves time. How does it save time? It makes things easier to find, easier to clean, easier to navigate, and reduces wasted time reshuffling, sorting, looking through, and clearing away piles of clutter. Read more.
2. Teach kids to clean up after themselves.
If you’re a parent, you know that keeping an uncluttered household isn’t easy when you have little rugrats running around making a mess every minute of the live-long day. Start your kids, from an early age, with the habit of cleaning up after themselves when they’re done playing. So let’s say they take out a bucket of building blocks and make a huge mess — that’s OK, but when they’re done, help them to pick everything up, put them in the bucket, and put the bucket back in its “home”. My younger kids like to sing a “Clean up, clean up, everybody everywhere” song as they clean. Make it a game! With six kids, this has saved us countless hours of cleaning up after our kids.
3. Prepare the night before.
Whether you’re single or have a household full of kids, mornings might be a rush for you. Instead, create an evening routine where you get everything ready the night before, so you can start your day off right. This might not technically save time, but it gives you more time in the morning to focus on getting important things done rather than rushing through your routine.
4. Don’t watch too much TV.
Instead, limit your TV viewing time — maybe an hour a day? — and use the time you otherwise would have been watching TV on more important things — spending time with your loved ones, exercising, writing that novel you’ve been dreaming about.
5. Plan your weekly menu.
If you plan out what you’re going to have for dinner (and even lunch) each day of the week, you can save a lot of time. First, you can go grocery shopping and get everything you need all at once — in fact, if you repeat the weekly menu the next week, you can do two weeks of shopping in one trip. Second, you can prepare food ahead of time (see next item), and pack your lunch easily for work. Third, you don’t have to worry about what’s for dinner each evening — it’s right there on the menu you posted on the fridge.
6. Do all your errands at once.
This is the same as the “batching” tip from the work section above (as is the previous tip, and the next tip). Write your errands on an errands list throughout the week, and do them all on one day. Plan your route so you do the least amount of driving possible, and get it all done quickly. Compared to running multiple errand trips, this method saves a lot of time.
7. Clean in one big rush.
While I like to keep things clean by cleaning as I go, there’s also the sweeping and mopping and cleaning the bathrooms and things like that … and it’s a big time-saver to do it all in one big rush. My whole family will take different parts of the house, and we’ll do the cleaning all at once as fast as we can. We’re done in 30-45 minutes, and we can relax the rest of the day.
8. Keep a great big calendar.
My family stays organized with a big calendar on our fridge. Everything goes on our calendar: parties, meetings, school events, soccer games, music lessons, birthdays, volunteering dates, and so on. This ensures that we don’t overschedule, that we’re all in sync with each other, and that we don’t miss appointments or events. And one big calendar saves time because we don’t have to keep checking with each other or looking at various schedules.
9. Consider hiring someone.
Sometimes it makes more sense to hire someone to do something, especially if your time is worth more money than you’re paying that person. For example, if I have a large yard that would take me five hours to maintain, it makes more sense for me to pay someone as I can earn more during those 5 hours by working. Other things you might pay someone for: other home maintenance projects, washing your car, doing errands or laundry, doing your taxes … just about anything where doing it yourself isn’t cost-effective.
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