5 Ways to Simplify Your Life
Quite often, it can feel like we are scrambling for time. Our days go by in a flash as we tick off our to-do list and take care of our family. With our endless tasks and errands, we feel there is no time left over to do the things that we love and enjoy doing.
Rushing around creates stress. A feeling of being in a constant flight-or-fight state. While a little stress is normal and can motivate us into action, feeling stressed for long periods can wear us down. It can affect our health negatively, and have a snowball effect across many areas of our life.
There are things that we can do that help us reduce the intensity and duration of feeling stressed. We can simplify our life. When we let go of the unnessisary, eliminating the things that drain our energy and time, we create space in our day to do more of what feels meaningful.
Here are a few suggestions for how to simplify your life.
1. Simplify your wardrobe
If you look into our wardrobe at the start of the day already confused and unsure about what to wear, you may begin to feel flustered. Simplifying your wardrobe and creating a capsule wardrobe can help ease the confusion and inability to make a decision. Deciding the night before what to wear the next day will help your morning flow better.
Have a pair of jeans that go well with several tops and a pair of shoes that coordinates well with them all. Keep the colour palette simple and in tones that work well with one another. Find brands that fit well and pieces that are made with quality fabrics.
Putting thought and care into our wardrobe will take time initially, but it will help us long term, saving time and confusion about what to wear.
2. Simplify your meals
As a parent, it can feel like we finish cooking one meal and already we are thinking about the next one. Having a week of meals planned can save time and reduce stress. It also reduce the temptation of ordering takeaway if recipes and ingredients are ready and available in our kitchen.
It can help to have a handful of simple recipes that you know and do well, and alternate them throughout the week and month. Recipes that contain simple ingredients which crossover from one to the other. For example, I make a big batch of homemade tomato sauce which I toss through pasta, stir through risotto, spoon over chicken parmigiana or use to make Friday night pizzas. And when there is more time available over the weekend, I use that time to experiment and cook more elaborate meals.
3. Simplify your routine
Quite often we add more into our week than we need to. We do more trips to a grocery store than necessary or fill the afternoons with activities for our children. We fill our weekends with activity which leaves us feeling exhausted rather than recharged.
By meal planning we can reduce our trips to the grocery store. We can keep our children’s activities to a minumum, focussing on one activity each semester rather than overloading them with more. Children also need down time to run around and play freely. We can gather and do activities on Saturday and leave Sunday for rest and relaxation.
4. Simplify your home environment
Our physical environment can have a huge effect on our well-being. When our home is organised and calm, it can help us feel calm within. When there is space within our home, we feel more at ease as we go about our day. Going through our home and letting go of the clutter, organising what remains and curating our pieces with care can transform a chaotic home into one that feels peaceful.
5. Simplify your work
While we can’t always control our work environment, we can simplify our space and tasks that we do have control over. We can simplify our desk, organising files and papers every week and tidy our desks at the end of each day. We can batch our tasks so that we are doing similar tasks in one session. When we batch our work it allows us to give one task our complete attention, rather than our mind darting between multiple tasks, breaking our attention. We can also dial down distractions, like costantly checking our phone or email.
When we simplify these major areas of our life it creates time–white space in our day to do more of what we love to do. It gives us more space for quality time with our family. It reduces the feeling of forever running to keep up with life.
