5 quick ways to organise your home-life
ONE. Meal planning
I am not a fan of cooking. I love to eat, but I don’t enjoy making food. Don’t get me wrong, I can do it… and I’ve even been on a few different night classes when I first moved to Glasgow to up skill, but there are just other things I’d rather be doing with my time (makes sense that I think about these things, given I’m a time management coach!!). When I was first living on my own, and I only had myself to feed, I lived off chicken + broccoli stir frys! I would quite happily eat the same thing over and over again! Now however I have the kids to think about, and they don’t enjoy having the same meals on repeat - I’ve already been told to stop making bolognese so often!!
Having a meal plan helps massively when it comes to making decisions over what to have for dinner! I’ve played around with putting together a weekly plan, a monthly plan and have landed in the middle. So I tend to map out two weeks of meals at the one sitting.
Did you know that seemingly we waste 3 hours a day on a handful of decisions - what to eat, wear, watch + when to go to bed!
TWO. Subscription services
Having some of my groceries and household goods on subscription (not from Amazon I’ll quickly add!) makes things a little smoother too. It might take a little playing around to get the frequency right, but once you figure that out it’s a few less things to think about. I have the following items delivered on subscription:
Dog food
Laundry capsules
Dishwasher tablets
Toilet roll + kitchen roll
Milk
You can check out the businesses I recommend here.
THREE. Cleaning rota
One thing that made a big impact on my time was scheduling the recycling bin rota into my calendar! Sounds really simple, but read on…
The sound of the bin workers lorry woke me up… it was silly o'clock, and I realised that yet again I'd neglected to take the recycling bins out.
As a single mum, the majority of the household tasks fall onto my shoulders… including sorting out the recycling. I've tried to add this as a task to my kids GoHenry accounts, but they're not interested in dragging out the bins for an extra 50p (I should have started them doing chores when they were younger!).
Each week I'd log onto the council website to determine which bins I was supposed to be putting out, and then it'd get to the night before and I'd most likely forget to actually do it!
Missing a simple bin pick-up had a knock on effect on my available time… because what then happened is that I needed to take a trip to the local recycling depot (which is about a 45 minute round trip).
The task was taking up valuable headspace and precious time.
The fix?
I got the rota from the council website, and figured out that each bin was on a three weekly pick-up.
Then I plugged this into my Google Calendar (the love of my life!! 🤣) as a recurring appointment.
What gets scheduled gets done!
I’ve now got all my cleaning tasks mapped out as recurring items in my Asana project management tool (more on this below!).
FOUR. Decluttering
I share a lot about decluttering, because our environment can have a massive impact on our time and energy.
But one quick tip that I’ve learnt is to take a few minutes at the end of the day to ‘put my rooms to bed’.
Have you heard of 5S before? It’s a concept that was introduced to me in my time in the corporate world of pharmaceuticals, and is a workplace organisational method that was first developed in Japan. Each S refers to a Japanese word, which translated are: Sort, Straighten, Shine or Scrub, Standardise and Sustain. There’s also more recently been a 6th S added, which is Safety.
Within my work, this approach was applied to the warehouse, our laboratories and so on.
I was working within Project Management, and I didn’t have a lab to manage. However, I did have an office with lots of paperwork and stuff!
What I did with my desk was I took everything and put it into a couple of bags for life under my desk, and only left out the essentials that I used each day. This is basically Sorting, or decluttering, the environment.
I then made sure I had a designated space for everything on my desk; I Straightened my belongings. With 5S, particularly in manufacturing spaces you’ll find that areas for equipment might be marked out on the floor for example. So I had actually marked out a little space for my stapler to live and my pen pot! (I know, I’m mental.)
Then it’s Shine or Scrub - so basically get everything clean.
Then Standardise - so this involves documenting the plan. You could take a photo of how your desk should look and then get this up on your wall as what good looks like.
Then lastly it’s Sustain… so you need to maintain the area.
In terms of then applying this to your home…
Well, as part of my evening routine - in addition to putting the kids to bed (although a lot of the time now I’m in bed before them!!), I put each of my rooms to bed. I know what good looks like for each room, and there is a designated place for everything. So before I go to bed, I’ll go round the rooms and just reset them back to how they are meant to be. This means that in the morning I’m waking up to a tidy and organised house…. and let me tell you, it feels good!
FIVE. Using Asana for personal projects
Lastly, I’ve been using Asana for a wee while now for my business and have started to use it for my personal life too. It’s so much more than a to-do list.
As I mentioned above I have my cleaning rota all mapped out, as well as my meal plan, my household to-dos including the recurring tasks like ordering repeat prescriptions from the GP (for my Crohn’s meds!), flea + worm treatment for the dog and so on. It really does free up so much head space having this all captured in the one place… I love it!
Asana is also great for any personal projects you might have, especially if it’s one that you repeat - I’m thinking organising a child’s birthday party as an example or packing for a holiday. You can create templates that you can copy with a few clicks!
Project Manage Your Life
Want some help with this stuff? I’m opening the doors to my signature programme, Project Manage Your Life, on Friday 22nd March. It’s perfect for busy professionals and small business owners who are feeling overwhelmed and wish there were more hours in the day. I’ll be teaching you all about time management, organisation and more in this live programme (taught over Zoom). Have a look here on my website for more information, or drop me an email if you’d like to chat.