Tell me at one or two small thing you've done to make your life easier

[listsandbudgets]

I've done 2 this year

1. I've unsubscribed / marked as spam from nearly all my mailing lists. Now my inbox is an oasis of calm and I don't spend what feels like hours every week wading through emails I don't want My spam file is brimming over!
2. I found a sharpie and (once I was sure they were the right way round!) labelled my double fitted sheets with side and top - wish I'd done this years ago not having to shuffle them about trying to work out which way up they go

Getting my towels, sheets and duvet covers serviced washed

this started when my washing machine was broken. Yes it’s an expense but well worth it than having them dry all around our little flat

I filter my emails into separate folders for when I'm ready. Eg, I have a folder called 'shopping' for all emails that I don't want to unsubscribe from, eg Hush/Tatcha so I don't miss out on the real offers/sales but I don't want them coming in to my inbox when I'm vulnerable to spending on a whim! lol. I filter them out so they are marked as 'read' and sit in my shopping folder until I am in the right frame of mind to check for anything I might actually want to read. Saves time, irritation, and impulse buys.

I pile all clean socks into a 'sock mountain' at the top of the stairs, and each child has to retrieve their own the next time they go up the stairs. Saves me a lot of time!

Someone mentioned 2nd toothbrush for DC downstairs.

In a similar vein, I got into a habit of keeping a couple of clean cloths for cleaning bathrooms (we kept yellow jCloths for bathrooms, green/red/blue were all kitchen and general cleaning - but you can't get the colours anymore 😭) along with a bottle of cleaning spray and one of bleach in the upstairs bathroom. It was much easier to clean that when I had a spare 5 minutes, especially when it was hot and steamy after a shower, than thinking about it and having to go find all the bits...

Downstairs was generally bringing the same cloth down for the wash and grabbing the spray bottle and bleach kept downstairs beside the washing machine for general cleaning to do before I threw the cloth into the machine.

@CurlyhairedAssassin thankyou so much! I had no idea about the tick list function on notes - it will revolutionise my shopping experience

When starting tasks I may not be able to complete that day I gather the tools I need in a builders bucket and just take out what I need as I need it if I don't finish I put the one or two items in use back in the bucket, it can dissappear until I have a moment to continue.

Similar with bulkier items start with a dust sheet or old sheet spread out your task if you can't complete, gather up corners and you can then move out of way.

Add tick boxes on Samsung Notes here.

For gmail users, this really helps manage spam. Give out your new email address to any company signups - e.g. my.name+spam@ gmail dot com.

By simply adding a + to the end of your username (but before the "@") you can create infinite variations of your Gmail address. For example, [email protected] will direct email to your main address without giving it away to spammers. You can then filter messages containing "username+junkmail" into your junk or trash folder so you never have to be bothered to delete them again.

I don't have room for 3 separate laundry baskets so I use 4 large white mesh laundry bags with zips in the one basket. Every time I put a wash on I presort it into the bags and wash the biggest load. It saves me lots of time as I then only have to sort the top layer each time. It also stops me procrastinating as I know it isn't a huge job to do.

This is genius!

Unnecessary use of plastic. I am a chef. Use a bowl for all your scraps as you go along. If you're not one who makes stock then just empty it into the bin /compost?

I don't have a compost heap and we have no means of disposing of food waste other than it going in the bin! And I'm not having rotting food waste sitting in my kitchen bin, without it being in a bag! I've already said my little bags are biodegradable, I don't know why people take issue with this either! Biodegradable rots down? Another poster said she uses used bread bags, yet she didn't get jumped on?! Surely that's worse as the ones I've come across are totally non biodegradable plastic!

Bags inside black sacks and chucked into a rubbish heap won't biodegrade.

Maybe walk outside with your bowl and chuck it directly into the outside bin..

@MoonWoman69
The bags don't breakdown if sent to landfill.

Unfortunately landfill is not conducive to biodegradation so your bags are probably not making much difference and there's the cost of creating and transporting them.

www.bbc.com/future/article/20191030-why-biodegradables-wont-solve-the-plastic-crisis

And I'm not having rotting food waste sitting in my kitchen bin, without it being in a bag!
My little thing that makes life easier is using a bin bag in the kitchen bin so all the waste lands in that, instead of myriad tiny bags…

I use bread bags for waste bits tbfthough the bag is getting a second life before being binned and I'm under no illusions it's not going to bio degradable? Also only use if it's smelly onion ends

Bought a recipe file from a charity shop and collated all my recipes and chucked a load out

We are very lucky to have a food waste service and have a caddy then goes out in food waste bin

Again INSTALL A WASTE DISPOSAL UNIT in your kitchen sink. Life changing for smelly food waste.

Biodegradable bags only break down if sent to an industrial food composting facility. Yours are being put in general rubbish so are going to landfill where they will never biodegrade (it’s not possible) and will be around for thousands of years. May as well save your pennies and buy freezer bags tbh.

Me too...

A lot of these suggestions need you to be switched on ALL THE TIME!

Never leave a room without picking something up, never go upstairs or downstairs without taking something back to its home etc... makes me sweat thinking about it

Blimey! How quickly do you think food waste will be 'rotting' or else how infrequently do you empty your kitchen bin?! FYI biodegradable is a much misused term. Many items will eventually biodegrade but if the 'compostable' bags used by my home's previous owner are anything to go by, the timescale is at best variable.

Or just not scrubbing something that no one ever sees!

I'm going to be selling my house. I want it clean.

There’s also a good free app called ‘to do’ or maybe ‘to do list’ where you can set up multiple tick lists and share those you wish to with other people