Easy Time Saving Tips

The alarm goes off and your day starts with a laundry list of to dos stretching out in front of you.  If you are like most of us you have silently (or not so silently) wished you had more than 24 hours to complete your tasks, or that you were one of the lucky few that didn’t require such silly things like sleep to take up so many of your usable minutes in the day.  In lieu of more drastic measures, like cutting out sleep, try these tips to save precious moments in each day.

1.       When prepping for a meal that includes small amounts of chopped onions, jalapeno’s, or peppers pre-chop large portions and freeze them. Next time you need these ingredients they will be on hand and ready to go, no prep required.

2.       When you have the time to prepare a nice meal triple the recipe. For example instead of making only one pan of lasagna make three. This will give you one pan to enjoy that evening and two pans to freeze for a future date. By doing this for a week straight you will have frozen enough meals to feed your family for two weeks. Wouldn’t it be nice to take two weeks off? Or not to have to panic when a child’s activity or a work meeting runs late and ruins dinner plans. This tip will save you time and money as it allows you to skip the drive thru when you are in a pinch!

3.     Multitask cooking and the clean up effort. Leave your dishwasher open while preparing dinner. Slide dirty dishes in as you make dinner. Keep a sink full of warm soapy water ready for all the dishes you want to hand wash, or if you aren’t lucky enough to have a dishwasher in your home. Then use the time while your dinner cooks to finish up the dishes in the sink. If dinner requires both hands to cook soaking dishes will still stop gunk from hardening on your prep dishes, making washing them after dinner much faster. Either way this will cut a good amount of clean up time out of your evening after dinner.

4.       Keep clean up easy by storing extra garbage bags in the bottom of the can. When your bag is full simply pull it out and have another bag there at the ready. This is especially a timesaver if your cleaning supply cabinet is being guarded by a baby lock!

5.       Use the time while you are filling up with gas to clean out the car. Take the time to throw away any garbage. Keep moist car wipes under your seat or in your trunk so you can wipe down the interior of your car. Clean your windows on the inside and out. You won’t need to reserve a weekend day to clean out your car.

6.     Create a card organizerso you don’t have to take the time to run out to the store every time you need a birthday or graduation card. Just get a small file box and put in folders labeled - Birthday, Thank You, Graduation, Baby, Wedding, Anniversary and Blank. Buy cards in bulk when you are at the store and keep them in the appropriate folder. Then, when you need a Birthday card it will only take you a matter of a couple of minutes to get one off in the mail. This also allows you to stock up on cards when they are on sale. 

7.     Write your grocery list using categories. Compiling your grocery list in groups that coincide with the sections and aisles in your grocery store will spare you from having to backtrack up and down the store. For example group all of your produce, meats, or dairy items together. Then when you are ready to check out you won’t look down at your list and realize you missed the chicken breasts and have to spend another 5 minutes walking back down the aisles for them. 

These tips should help you carve out extra time during your day and as a bonus help with your home organization. The minutes that we don’t have to waste taking longer than necessary doing the necessary chores during our day leave us more time to relax, do things we enjoy, or even check one more thing off our to do list.