Episode #159 - Time is on Your Side – Cut the Clutter, Save the Minutes, Simplify the Day

Simplify Your Day May Podcast Series. Hello friends and welcome back to Organizing With Ease. I'm your host DeAnimal and we are diving into our continued May series, Simplify Your Day. Now, tell me if this sounds familiar. You wake up good with intentions, you got a list, a plan, and then somehow it's 3.47 p.m., your inbox is overflowing, your lunch is still sitting on the counter, and you're not quite sure where the day went?

If you've ever felt like your time is just slipping away, well guess what? You're not alone. And today we're gonna do something about it. This is the episode, it's all about simple, realistic, time-saving hacks to cut the clutter, stop wasting minutes, and bring more flow into your day. Plus, we're gonna go deep onto meal planning. Yes we are. It's not the Pinterest perfect kind, but it's the kind that actually makes your week a little bit easier. Let's dive right in.

Why you feel like you're always behind? Well, let's start with some truth. Most of us don't lack time. We just lose it in little ways we don't even notice. According to a 2024 rescue time productivity study, the average person spends three plus hours per day on tasks they didn't plan for. That is over 21 hours per week. Basically an entire extra day spent on things like, you ready? answering unimportant emails, reacting instead of planning, switching between apps or tabs, scrolling, refinding things that we just used yesterday and then we didn't do anything about it. But let's not forget that black hole of, I'll check on this one more thing. Let me just look at it one more time. And then for somehow that 20 minutes turned on to Instagram and then watching a reel of a raccoon that was making pancakes. And then all of a sudden I wound up going into the 20 minutes that it wound up going into longer, it's that black hole of just, let me just check this one more thing. It's not just about the time, it's about your energy too. Where does the time go? Here are some top five drains I see a lot, okay? One is, I'll check this trap. Innocent at first ends in doom. Two is your decision fatigue. What's for dinner? Who's doing what pickup? Should I answer this email now or?

Should I answer this group chat of WhatsApp? Number three, the daily scavenger hunt. Lost keys, lost shoes, lost sanity. Are we listening to that sanity part? What about multitasking? Sounds efficient, actually. Just means doing three things, half done. Five, unclear priorities. We do a lot, but we don't always do what matters most. So let me tell you about a mom who was actually, she swore by this, that she,

She says that she never had time. She wished she had instead of 24 hours a day, she wishes she had like 38 hours a day. But what we did was we actually tracked her week and we found that 45 minutes each morning checking her email before she even got dressed. 30 minutes of the in-between task scrolling on her phone and 15 minutes daily looking for things. Another hour managing those last minute decisions.

So if we added all that together, that was nearly three hours a day we found the time and it was just leaking out. was just off it went. So let's fix that with five time saving hacks that you could start today. Number one is the big three. Each morning list your top three must do tasks. Not 10, just three. Example, I'm going to start the laundry.

Call the pediatrician, I'm gonna finish that proposal. Simple, just three. Batch the boring stuff. Okay, hear me out on the boring stuff. Check emails twice a day, morning and mid-afternoon, that's it. Unless of course, there's work-related emails that you know that are time-sensitive. You wanna bundle your errands. Don't leave the house five times in five days. Why don't we just try to...

Bundle your errands and try to make it maybe into one or maybe into two, depending on where you are doing your errands as far as logistics within your city. Create a drop zone, one designated place for the skis, your chargers, your bag, your sunglasses, even getting prepped for your errands. So if you have returns, place them in one specific area. If you have donations, place them also in one area, okay?

This actually can save you time and gives you back, in all honesty, about 25 minutes a day, especially if you have these drop zone areas. Laundry light, hang more, fold less. You wanna create maybe grab and go bins for those socks, those infamous socks that for some odd reason you start with the pair in the washing machine and sometimes in the dryer you either get the full, the two, the one, or maybe none. Not sure of how these lost socks ever happened.

But again, you wanna create a grab and go bins for the socks, pajamas, and maybe your underwear as well. Kids clothes, less matching, less stress. Number five, decide once. This is a lazy genius trick. Are you ready? Pick your meals weekly, once, and stop re-deciding every day. So we're gonna now go a little bit more into depth into this meal planning made easy. And I wanna share with you what I have done over the years and I still do. and it really does work. The dinner panic is totally real. It hits right around 5 p.m. Does that sound like about right? 5 p.m., maybe 6, sometimes even later, especially if you have those that are the athletes that do soccer practice after school and you don't get home too really late. The biggest question is what's for dinner? I'm starving. I don't know what you want. Should we just order? That's so much easier. So here's what we can simplify. If you wanted to, you can assign each day a theme.

It's easy to remember and it's totally easy to shop for. Here I'll give you some examples. I'm sure you've heard these all before, but just as another recap, as a reminder, you could do meatless Monday, pasta with veggies or veggie tacos, taco Tuesday, ground turkey fish tacos, or just an evening of nacho night, okay? One pan Wednesday. You could also do a sheet pan of chicken and veggies. Take out Thursday, budget for it.

budget for it and have zero guilt. Family Fridays, you could do pizza, pasta, do a pasta night. These are just some type saving ideas. You can also use frozen veggie mixes and you could just maybe just prepare it for one of those nights throughout the week. Choose three meals per week and rotate every week. What are you talking about? Well, it's actually called the three by four system.

whereby the first week is an example of, you know, you'll pick then chicken stir fry, pasta and salad, breakfast for dinner. You could do eggs, fruit and toast. And then it's repeatable, it's relatable, and it makes grocery shopping so much easier. You could build a bowl nights, create a buffet of the following grains, rice, couscous, quinoa, protein, grilled chicken, chickpeas, tofu.

Veggies, raw or roasted, or you can actually put them in the oven, so that's where you get your roasted part. Sauces, you could do pesto, hot sauce, tahini. Everyone assembles their own bowl. Basically, this is the biggest bonus of them all. It's the fewest complaints, because guess what? They're creating their own meal all at once in that one bowl. Number four, decide once a meal with a list. So once you decide a meal, make that list. making master list of at least 10 to 12 meals that your family just loves and just rotate them out, you know, weekly. So here's some of my favorites, Deanna's favorites, ready? Turkey chili, baked ziti, taco bowls, stir fried, chicken, and bagged salad. Loved by bagged salad and I just keep adding towards it. And do also, you can also do like a snack plate for dinner. You can print it, you can hang it up, and then it's done. Or if you're digital, again,

Created put it in the family chat and off it goes Do freezer backups? Perfect perfect perfect and also included as part of your Sunday minute prep So your 30 minute prep 60 minute prep However, you use your Sundays if you do do your weekly planning on a Sunday Do also your freezer backup this at least you want to keep two to three emergency meals frozen You could do your stir-fried veggie mix anything Trader Joe's totally a game changer, because you know me, I love Trader Joe's, ravioli and jarred sauce. Take out 30 minutes on Sunday. Again, this is part of my meal planning. I wash my fruit, I chop my veggies, I marinate my protein, and I definitely, definitely fill my snack bins. You don't have to prep all 10 meals, but you just want to get ahead of that mass scramble of

What's for dinner? Where am I getting to go? What do I need to get? I have all my ingredients for the recipe? So here I'm gonna break it down even more as far as how the fresh start method time addition, I'm gonna break it down into details. So again, this method is not just for decluttering your closet, it's also a mindset. It's a system you can apply to anything, including how you manage your time. So let's go step by step.

This step is the first step of course as you find in your sort. This step is all about awareness. You can't fix what you don't track. So what you wanna do is you wanna take two to three days and write down everything that you're doing. Not just the big stuff. Track the in-between quote unquote time as well. Example, do you take 20 minutes scrolling on Instagram after a task? Maybe it's not 20 minutes, maybe it's at half an hour.

Do you also take 15 minutes searching for that lunchbox or is it, you need to find those Tupperwares for your kids' lunches? Do you even know where they are? 10 minutes checking your email and again and again. So what tasks drain your energy or take away longer than they should? What parts of the day feel chaotic or rushed? And when do I feel most focused and productive? So here's a tip. Use your note apps on your phone or a paper planner just to jot down your time. Time blocks. You quickly see where things go sideways. Yes. Where you're on track and then you just kind of get derailed, so to speak, right? Step two, you want to reduce and evaluate. Now that you found your time leaks, it's time to Simplify. What? What to eliminate or reduce? It's that unnecessary notifications. Do you get notified every single time you get an email? What about you check your emails 14 times a day? Or what about it's you're popping into a store and it's more than three times a week. You're repeating the same decision. What's for dinner daily? What's for dinner daily? Or I don't know, I don't know. What am I gonna do? So you need to think about how

I and you can stop doing what doesn't need to be done every day. So you have to ask yourself, can I batch this task like my social posts, reading them, following them, TikTok, YouTube, whatever it might be. Can you batch your errands? Can you batch your emails? Can I delegate it to someone, to a partner, to a child of age, if you would like, or even to an app. You can definitely delegate it out to an app.

And think about this, ask yourself, can I let it go completely? So if laundry is eating you up in your afternoons, try setting laundry days per week and ditch the laundry every day cycle. Again, laundry is magnanimous as we all know and have heard me time and time again. That is why I do laundry three days a week. I break it up. This has been a schedule now that has helped me tremendously.

I know that three days a week is sometimes better for others, sometimes not, but just look at laundry. If it is eating you up on those afternoons, why setting laundry days? Three, systemize and harmonize. Now that we've cleared some clutter, let's build habits and systems that support your glow. And you're like, what, what do you mean? All right, so I'm gonna give you examples. A family calendar. shared digitally or printed in the kitchen. As you can tell, kitchen is making that as your command center. You can also do a visual launch pad near the door with keys, bags, and shoes. A daily quote unquote top three list on a Post-it or your whiteboard or wherever you write that down. A weekly dinner rhythm to reduce food and decision fatigue. Again, remember weekly dinner rhythm. to reduce food decision fatigue. A timer for focused work about blocks and break reminders. Super key on this part is a timer so that you could set, focus and go and get productive and things done. And guess what? At the end of the day, you're really gonna think yourself. So you're gonna ask yourself, what would make my mornings easier? What system could replace this stress? And where can I be proactive instead of reactive. So systems don't have to be fancy. They just have to be repeatable. That's where the magic is. Number four is sustain and tidy. This is where we make it stick. It's not about doing it once. It's about staying consistent in small ways. So you want to look at it like this. A 10 minute evening reset, prep tomorrow's outfit, clear the kitchen counters.

Check your calendar. A five minute daily declutter of your digital space. Say goodbye with those 47 open tabs. Yes, some days they seem to be more than 47, but just sharing. Weekly planning on a Sunday night. What's coming up? Where's that white space? You want to ask yourself, how can I make this easy to maintain when during my day I can do a quick reset?

Is there a visual cue or reminder that could help? Here's your tip. Stack this with something you already do. So after brushing your teeth, do your top three list. After dinner, prep lunches. Make it a rhythm, not a routine that you dread. So here's my final thought. This method is powerful because it's flexible. You can apply it to your time, to your meals, to your digital life, to your family routines.

Anywhere you feel overwhelmed. You don't need more hours. You need fewer time leaks, clearer systems, and small habits that keep things flowing. And you can do this step by step, little by little. You will never find time for anything. If you want time, you must make it by Charles Buxton. Here's your challenge for the week. Pick two of today's time saving hacks or meal planning methods. `and try them every day this week. Then check in with yourself. Did I feel less scattered? Didn't it feel easier? Did my day flow just a little bit better? If yes, amazing. Add one more. If not, no shame. Adjust and keep going. Remember, step by step, little by little. You do have enough time. We just have to protect it.

And I'm cheering you on, my friend, until next week.

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