3 LIFE CHANGING Tips to Start Organizing Your Life! | Mom of 8

All right you guys, it's 2024, a brand new year and I wanted to sit down and give you guys three tips to have a more organized, more productive, more like freedom for your year. This is an area that we have struggled in for way longer than I'd like to admit. Think like arms flailing, running around, putting out fires. That's kind of how life was for us for a long time and then I realized we need structure. We need some systems in place that are just gonna like lighten the load so that we can really, really be intentional with our family, with our work, with our home so that things don't pile up on top of us. We don't, like if you guys feel like you're drowning, if you feel like your fuse is always short and you are constantly like have a mile-long to-do list and not enough time to do it all, like you don't have enough time for your family and your kids and your mealtimes are chaotic and there's so many things you're dreaming about doing but you just can't seem to get to them, this video is for you. Stay tuned, we're gonna go over three tips, just three. It's gonna be short and sweet and hopefully so helpful and fruitful for you guys but three tips to make this year really count. Okay, so tip number one is gonna be to automate things as much as you can. If you can get a system running in place that you don't have to check on, that you don't have to like really update or do anything with, this is gonna be life-changing for you. You guys, this is like auto-pay, set your bills to auto-draft, don't think about it, don't think about mailing them out, just pick a date that you know is gonna be good for you to be consistent and have that auto-drafted from your account. Another example is brought to you from filter buy. Okay, this is life-changing for us because we are forever forgetting to change the air filters in our house which is so bad for you because there's so much dander, dust mites, pollen, like all kinds of things that can accumulate, even mold if your filters aren't being changed regularly but I always forget to get them at the store and then you get to the store and you're like, I don't know what size I need, this is awesome. Filter buy allows you to go online, order what you need, they have so many different sizes and you can even customize the size if you need to. They're made in the United States, improving your air quality so if you have pets or dirty kids, which we do, they play outside all day, they're gross, or seasonally as the seasons changes, different needs for your air, I'm hoping that these ones specifically are really helpful for our kids upstairs who are getting really stuffy at night. So anyway, it's free shipping on everything, they come right to your door, you can just pick what you need and set it to auto-deliver, when it shows up, there's your reminder, hey it's time to change your air filter so you can like get that knocked out and you don't have to think about it. This is the key you guys, don't think about it. You can go to the link in the description for filter buy and you guys can get started today with that but this is the key, this is the month, we're at the beginning of the year, it's a perfect time to go through, set up auto-pay on everything, set up your air filters to come automatically, go to subscribe and save options, pretty much every store right now has a subscription option so you can get your pet's food delivered regularly without thinking about it, you can get things for your home, paper towels, we get all of that stuff delivered right to our door, it's life-changing. So automate is step one. Step two, plan and organize and be intentional. If you are like me, probably there are a lot of you, maybe, maybe this is wishful thinking, I have bought planners every year, really beautiful one planner, I'm like one planner, this is it, maybe that's you and maybe that works for you and it's really great and you're already an expert at this and I am the one that's just needing to catch up but if it's not you, if you're like me and you have that planner and you never use it, you could try what I'm doing. I have like five this year, I've tried one and it didn't work for me so I got five and you might think, Danielle, that sounds absolutely crazy, I don't know what you're doing but I will tell you we are a couple weeks in and I am already consistent which is a lot more than I can say sadly for years past. I need to separate things, I need like little compartments, okay, I need like this little box for our budget. So here's a budget planner, this is strictly that, it says it on it, it's organized, it's for that purpose, it's laid out with expenses, it's just like specifically designed for budgeting so that is so helpful because I don't have to like try to write it in one notebook and share it and get it mixed up and flip a bunch of pages, this is just it when it comes to budgeting. Meal planning, this is another one, we're going to talk about this because it's actually tip number three but I have a specific journal for that and then I have this one which is just like kind of a daily planner so I can break down because I can't look at a whole month, if I try to plan out a whole month in advance, I'm going to get overwhelmed so this is like a week and it's just kind of at a glance. I have one more planner on the way that I'm really excited about because it breaks down each day by the hour so I can literally sit down with John on Sundays and we can say okay Monday, what time are we doing school, what time are we like running any errands, what time and I can block out the times because a lot of times especially with this one, I love this one, I'm using it already, let me show you, I've already got things written in it but I can write two things down and it could be like a phone call, like here I have a phone call, a video, um some editing that John has to do and I'm like oh man the day's full, in reality the day's not full so having a daily planner is going to allow me to really see how many hours I have in a day that are not being used and then I can just be wiser with my time because that's the thing is that I really believe we have more time than we ever realize because we just aren't actually looking at it as something tangible but if you were to look at it like 24 dollars and every time that you spent minutes you had to give away those pennies you know um I think we would value it a lot more so that's kind of what I'm trying to do is really plan out, organize my life into compartments, um organize my days so that I can be incredibly intentional with each moment and it's going to allow me to see where I have free time or to prioritize even when you're laying it out on paper and you're saying okay these are how many hours I have in a week, what's the most important and we put that in first and then after that you can go to okay next important okay what are the things that really if we get to it great if not fine then once your blocks are filled in you'll see where you have pockets of time that you can do that and you might even be surprised with like how much more free time you actually have um because that's kind of what we've seen the more planned out we the more we are planning out our days the more we're like oh okay we actually have time to sit and just play a game and just relax and not worry um so that's super cool and then I have one more notebook that I just use to keep a running list of all my thoughts um or any like lists that I need to make um any projects that we're working on this is kind of where I'm putting all of those ideas I guess it's an idea book but my goal is to be organized and plan out your days that's tip number two be intentional with your time so that you can use it wisely and not feel like you've wasted it okay the last thing I said we're going back to meal planning I have this meal planning notebook this thing has been so cool um I bought this one for a couple reasons one it's really simple I need it to be simple I don't want it to be overwhelming I don't want it to be a month worth of meals and I don't need to have like recipes and a million other things in it I really just need a place to write out what are the meals gonna be so that's I have all these boxes so we can write a week's worth of meals um I can write our pantry and freezer inventory that we already have we buy in bulk so this would be really full all the time so I'm not really using that as of right now um but I might use that for like we have guests on this day in this day just to like remind me that we need extra portions or a meal that maybe is allergen friendly for other people whatever and then what's so cool is that it has a little shopping list that you can tear off like this so you can take that right with you to the store I use these for our Costco haul um or anything I need John to actually run into a physical store and get that goes on one of those because a lot of my shopping I do online again I love automation if I can just go on order what I need without browsing the aisles and getting a bunch of stuff I don't need I save money I save time somebody else gets it they put it in bags we go and pick it up and it saves so much John can take the kids for a ride I can get stuff done here he doesn't have to worry about taking kids in the store and trying to figure out what we need and getting scatterbrained it's just like you know keeping things running smooth and then what I really love is on the back of each page it has an expense tracker so I've been using this for our Azure orders because those are in bulk I'm able to write down when I ordered things so I can see how quickly we're going through them for example I ordered five pounds of baking soda in June of last year and we still have that we have not gone through that but I ordered six things of this really good probiotic sour cream and I've ordered that every month so that's something that I need to plan to budget for every month because we're going through six of them a month or if I buy 12 things of a gluten-free fettuccine pasta I can look here I bought it in July when did I run out and just kind of keep track so that is going to allow me to better budget in our budget planner budget for our groceries my goal this year is to be frugal figure out where we can cut spending and just make wise financial decisions feed our family on a budget because it's crazy out there and to try to be organized while doing this so I hope that those tips have helped you just to go back over on one automate everything you can to put your life in a schedule in a planner I know sometimes it's hard to be organized like some people this is their sweet spot and they're organized with anything and everything for me I value organization but I'm not great at it it overwhelms me I buy the notebook and never fill it out I have 12 notebooks that are completely empty like I just it's part of that ADHD mind I guess um but this system has been working for me separating it into compartments and keeping each one very simple not over complicated um and just knowing like not to bite off more than I can chew but truly laying out our days has already helped us like be so much more intentional with what we're getting done and the third one is to meal plan I know it's hard but when you can get a meal planner out just take a week at a time you will find that you are spending less time cooking because you already know what you're going to make that's half the battle less time shopping for groceries you're spending less money and you're able to plan for like leftover meals that's one thing we do a lot too so all of those things have already been so helpful for us in freeing up time freeing up brain capacity and allowing us to just kind of enjoy our days more enjoy our family more and feel good I hope this has been super helpful for you guys let me know what are the top three things you are automating in your home um or planning to do to get more organized to get more structured let me know when you sign up for filter buy because again this is the thing I think that we could all use that reminder there are a few things in adulthood that you just it might just be me and John I don't know but I feel like that you just like don't think about this is one of them for us it's the air filters I look at it I'm like oh it's starting we need to change it John can you change it and then we forget about it for another two weeks so this is going to be super helpful this year all right see you guys later