9 Home Tips to Simplify Your Life
How often do you go to grab a tube of mascara or box of kitchen trash bags only to realize it’s empty? Do you know where to keep all those recipes you’ve downloaded from the internet? How do you determine what to air dry versus what to machine dry? How many times have you forgotten to take an item with you on your way out of the house?
There are so many decisions to make day-to-day in our homes; so many things to do and remember. Let’s take some of the stress away by simplifying a few areas in your home.
Read on for 9 of my top home tips to simplify your life!
1. Subscribe and Save!
There are so many things in our homes and our lives that run out or get old and need replacing. I’ve found it much easier to set certain items to be delivered automatically rather than trying to remember what needs to be replaced when.
I set things on a schedule and it reminds me that it’s time to change whatever the item is—whether I’ve used it up or it’s reached its usage limit.
Here are some examples of useful things to get delivered that also remind you to replace/install a thing you might forget to replace, with some links to the ones I have setup as subscriptions for myself. And Amazon Subscribe & Save actually gets you 15% off these items when you subscribe, so, used strategically, that can save you money too!
Washing Machine Cleaner (I use this monthly)
Curry (for this Recipe)
Dishwasher Machine Cleaner (also monthly)
2. Keep a Recipe Binder
How do you keep recipes organized if you're not a cookbook person? I'm not someone who keeps cookbooks around—I tend to find recipes online because someone recommended them on social media or via text message.
What works for us to keep them organized is to:
Print out the recipes and put them into our simple recipe binder (it's just a cheap 1.5-inch binder; nothing fancy).
We keep untested recipes in the left pocket of a binder until we have tried them. When we're open to trying something new, we put it on the meal plan for that week.
Once we have tried a recipe, we either recycle the recipe paper (if it was not great for our family) or put it into a sheet protector inside the binder's rings if we liked it. Sometimes, I'll jot a note on the paper ("This makes a lot—halve it next time!" or "It took forever to cool down before we could eat it, but it was delicious") if I want to remember anything about the recipe.
The binder comes out of the cabinet on the weekend to pick out dinners for the week. We can flip through tried-and-true recipes and/or try a few new ones.
3. Simplify your cleaning products
Years ago, one of the daily chores for my then-6-year-old was to put in a load of laundry each day based on our laundry schedule. This was only made possible because we'd recently stopped using those big jugs of laundry detergent (which, when handed to a 6-year-old, would have been...a mess. You can imagine).
But the benefits are beyond just a little kid handling it—we've now stopped buying a handful of different products that avoid us paying for big containers or mostly-water household items, and we are not going back!
Some examples:
Laundry: laundry soap strips and tablets work great. Right now, we use these tablets from Blueland.
Hand Soap: I slowly replaced our plastic hand soap bottles with these glass bottles and the tablets that come with them. Now, when the soap is empty, just add warm water and one of the tablets, and magic - new hand soap! They have seasonal scents, which I love, too.
Windshield Washer Fluid: Instead of buying gallons of this stuff, you can just use a tablet and water to make your own. I've been using this for years now—it works beautifully and is so much cheaper, too! I'm still using the first pack of tablets I bought for $6 when my kids were babies, haha!
Surface Spray: This works the same way as the hand soap—when it's empty, fill it with water and one of the tablets, which then dissolves to make a new bottle of spray cleaner.
Dishwasher Tablets: These don't have plastic covers like other dishwasher pods, which I appreciate.
4. Create a system for your “Purgatory Clothes”
What do you call clothes that aren't totally clean but also not totally ready for the laundry? One of my friends calls these "clirty" clothes, and another calls these "purgatory" clothes. And what do you do with them?
The system we set up for these clothes in our new home involves hooks in our closet and can be seen in my "Home Systems" highlight on Instagram. I'm liking it better than our old system, which was on a random chair near the closet and then the top of a dresser.
After I shared this a while back, a Friday Five reader shared that her system uses these stackable baskets - one of them is dedicated to not-quite-clean-clothes. So smart!
5. Organize your laundry by drying method
Yes, we’ve all been told to organize our laundry by color. But what if you organized them by drying method instead? Depending on the items being laundered, you may have machine-dry items and air-dry items, and you rarely, if ever, want to mix up your air-dry items and throw them into the machine.
That’s why I organize dirty laundry by drying method instead of by lights and colors!
While there are “wrong” ways to dry your laundry (mostly whatever is opposite of the care instructions on the tag), there are benefits and concerns with both air drying and machine drying.
Air Drying
Great for synthetic fabrics, delicate items, and anything you don’t want to risk shrinking in the dryer (like your favorite pair of jeans)
Avoids static cling
Won’t lock in stains
Eco-friendly
Requires more space and structures to hang laundered items with enough space and airflow to dry properly
Drying outside is fully dependent upon cooperative weather
Machine Drying
Efficient and Reliable (not weather-dependent)
Speedier drying time
It can help reduce wrinkles
Lots of options for styles and settings
Wears clothes faster due to friction and heat
Requires maintenance (make sure to have your dryer vents checked and cleaned)
Whichever method(s) you choose for drying laundry, make sure to read the tags first to inform your decision. Also, make sure your laundry is fully dry before being put away to avoid mold and mildew growth.
6. Set up a “Donate Box“ (or closet or shelf)
Wouldn’t it be helpful to have one place to throw every item you come across each month that needs to be donated until you’re ready to make the trip to the donation center? “Donate Box” to the rescue!
A donate box is just what it sounds like—a box where you collect the items that need to be donated until the box is full enough to drop off the items.
Your donate box can be a physical box, a corner in your laundry room, an empty closet in your home, a shelf in the garage, a basket in the trunk of your vehicle… whatever serves your needs best AND is visible enough to remind you to collect items for donation in that spot and drop them off when the spot is full.
If you tend to declutter frequently and your donate box fills up quickly, you could schedule a monthly trip to the donation center; if not, you could drop off items quarterly or even biannually. Or you could schedule a pickup from the VVA if you're US-based.
7. Dedicate a "Leave the house" basket or area
It's so easy to forget to take returns to UPS or drop off that kids jacket that was left at your house or bring that form to work that you need to turn in. How do I handle that? With a “leave the house” basket!
It could be a small basket, a large basket, a table, or an entire corner of your home. Mine is actually not a basket at all—it's just a little side table right by the door we use most often to leave the house.
The point is that this is your go-to spot before you leave the house. It’s where you keep your keys, purse/wallet, watch, things that go with you every day, plus important one-off items whose next location needs to be somewhere else (library books, dry cleaning, even just something that needs to go back into the car and stay there).
8. Use your bulky pickup service annually
My good friend Greg suggested that I should make sure we are thinking about using our local bulky pickup services if they are available to us, and I thought that was a great idea!
In most municipalities, there is a service to come by your home once a year (usually at no cost) and pick up and dispose of anything that is too bulky for putting out with your normal trash and recycling.
We're talking things like very broken or stained couches that are not usable anymore, a large broken item that cannot be repaired, bags of broken toys that cannot be passed on to another child, plumbing fixtures in disrepair, or old appliances.
Here's two easy steps you can take:
Google to figure out if this kind of service exists in your area.
Set a reminder to think about whether you need to use it (perhaps a recurring annual reminder).
We sometimes even let our neighbors know about our scheduled bulky pickup in case they have something they'd like to add.
9. Recycle those batteries!
Okay, this one isn’t so much about simplifying your life, but it is a really important home tip.
In my house, we typically try to use rechargeable batteries, but sometimes various things come with batteries already and those are not OK to throw away in the normal trash, for many reasons.
I used to live in Oakland, CA, where it was so easy to recycle batteries that I didn't even appreciate that it's not as easy everywhere. Since we’ve moved and had to find a new approach, I did a bit of a deep dive into how to recycle batteries.
This article from Wirecutter suggests multiple methods for recycling batteries, and I landed on getting this box for our house to use.
Check out the options available to you and simplify your battery recycling, for the good of the planet.
Want more tips?
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About The Author
Jessica Eastman Stewart is a consultant, workshop facilitator, and podcast guest expert. She teaches busy professionals how to get more organized at home and at work so they can stop feeling worn out and start living a Joyfully Managed Life! Thousands of readers drop everything when her weekly newsletter, The Friday Five, arrives in their inbox. Every Friday, you’ll get FIVE amazing tips to help life feel INSTANTLY more joyful and easy!
