Between shuttling kids around, taking care of my Dad, taking care of the house (sort of), writing this blog and just basically living life, I sometimes feel like a #HotMess. Am I the only one? Some days, I feel like a dynamo and really get a lot done and other days, it all just kind of falls apart or I get distracted from what’s really important. I started thinking (and I did a little research too) about why some days are so great and why some are so terrible. Here are 10 ways to help you and me both get our lives together, get organized and get things done. 1. Take Care Of Yourself Taking care of yourself may not directly help you live a more organized life, but it has a huge effect on how you feel. I find that when I feel good, I have a lot more energy to get things done and I just plain think my life is going better than when I’m not not feeling good. Eat healthily and stop drinking all that soda. Nothing saps the body of energy more than too much sugar. Adding more veggies to your diet won’t hurt either. I could write an entire post on this, easy… so important. Even though it takes time, get some exercise and stretch. You don’t have to become a marathon runner if you just hate to exercise. I’d suggest finding something that you enjoy even if it’s just a walk and do it almost every day. It always helps to find a friend and do something active together. Go to bed 30 minutes earlier. Most of us don’t get enough sleep and it’s making us cranky and depressed. Try it for a week and see how you feel. I’ll bet you notice the difference. 2. Quit Hitting Snooze Just set one alarm and if you have to, put the clock on the other side of the room so you have to get out of bed to turn it off. Hitting snooze over and over is a total waste of time and you will actually feel more rested if you get up after the first alarm. When I first moved in with Paul, he used to set the alarm early then hit the snooze a few times and it was ruining my morning. I felt cranky and tired every day and I finally told him that I couldn’t live like that. I felt much better after we started getting up right away and he did too. 3. Write Things Down Either use an app on your phone or get a notebook to carry around with you so you can write things down as soon as they occur to you. You won’t have to stress about remembering them and you won’t forget anything. Just keep everything in one place. I call this my brain dump list. From the brain dump list, create a to do list and learn how to separate the urgent from the important and prioritize. I like to take about 10 minutes each morning to write out my to do list for the day, but you could do it the night before too. 4. Embrace Batch Processing Email can be a huge time drain. I find that it’s more efficient to set a particular time each day to answer emails and handle them all at once. Then get on with your life and don’t revisit you email until the next day. I’d also suggest emptying out your inbox of all the junk that’s been sitting in there for months (years?) and then keep it cleaned out. Attend to things right away and delete those emails. Unsubscribe from all the junk newsletters that you’re not really interested in. Not mine of course, ha. 5. Quit Binge Watching TV We all love to binge Netflix, I know, but it’s a huge waste of time. I like to watch something in the evening before bed, but I don’t watch it during the day any more and I don’t stay up late at night watching TV. As a result, I get a lot more done. It’s been shown that binging TV can make people feel depressed too, so it’s a double whammy. 6. Plan Your Meals I’m not good about this one, but I wish I were. What I know I should do is pick a day (maybe Sunday) and plan out the meals for the week, then go grocery shopping and pick up everything that I’ll need for the week. It saves time to only grocery shop once a week and it’ll encourage healthier eating too. 7. Clean Out Your Purse & Car Come on guys, this is an easy one. Cleaning out your purse takes 10 minutes and cleaning out your car won’t take too long either. We spend so much time in the car and we use our purse every day. If they are both clean and tidy, we just feel more organized. 8. Finances If you want to feel in control of you life, rather than feel controlled by your life, you’ve got to get a handle on your finances. This could be a whole series of posts, but here are some basics: Check up on your retirement fund and the kids’ college funds. If you don’t have either of these, go out right now and get one and start saving. Nothing gives you peace of mind like having money in the bank. Review your last month’s expenditures. If you’re not saving as much as you need to, look into areas where you can cut back. There are all kinds of apps and websites that will help you with budgeting, saving and tracking your expenses. Go paperless and put your bills on autopay. It’ll save you a lot of time each month. Just make sure to balance your checkbook each week so you know how much money you have in your accounts. 9. Declutter I know this is a big one, but declutter your house. Nothing makes you feel disorganized like a messy house. You’ll feel so much more together if your house is organized and everything is kept put away in it’s place (yeah, I’m still working on this one). Start small and do one thing at a time. I like Marie Kondo’s method (see posts here and here), but if that’s too overwhelming, just tackle some smaller areas that you’re constantly having to deal with like the fridge, the junk drawer, your desk or your closets. 10. Find One Thing To Improve My last suggestion is to think about your life and identify one thing makes you feel like a #HotMess. Then figure out what you can change to fix it. This is one you can visit again and again, but the key is to just concentrate on one thing at a time so you don’t get overwhelmed. Ha, just writing this post is motivating me to get up and do something. I think I’ll tackle my next decluttering category. What Do You Guys Think? I’m sure you’ve got some GEMs to add to this list. PLEASE let us all know in the comments! What have you done to get your life together? What are you struggling to overcome? Would you like blog posts about a particular topic? Talk to me, friends!
The post 10 Ways To Get Your Life Together appeared first on This Main Line Life.