10 Simple Ways To Organize Your Time

Perhaps curiosity mixed with desperation delivered you to this post. You want to know how in the world you can organize your time with all that you have going on.

In today’s rapidly moving culture it’s so important to stop, slow down, and make time for ourselves. But you already know that. The question is how do you do that while managing work, home, the kids’ school activities, sports, playdates, parties, and on and on it goes.

Let’s face it, it’s hard to get out of survival mode when you live this way. Is it any wonder you might struggle to organize your time?

But here’s the thing, organizing your time isn’t about getting things done for the sake of crossing them off of your to-do list. It’s about making sure you have the time for those things that matter most.  Follow these tips to renew focus, become more organized, and have time for the things that matter most to you!

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1. Organize Your Time With A Weekly Planning Session

Sunday’s are my planning days, it helps me start the week off right. Each Sunday I look at the coming week’s events and organize my schedule of must do’s.  This is also the time I meal plan for the entire week.

During your weekly planning session, focus on writing down the things you absolutely must get done every day in order to run your life and not feel behind. This is not the time to write down what you’d like to get done, only what you truly must.

This will help you organize tasks into what is ‘truly important so you’re not constantly chasing the tyranny of the urgent.

Each night, as part of your evening routine, check your schedule and prepare anything you need for the next day.  Since I started doing this, I’ve been able to start the next day in a much more relaxed and focused way.

My all-time favorite planner that I use to organize my entire life is the Living Well Planner.  This planner has space for keeping track of my goals, my must do’s, even my budget is set up in this planner.  You can get more information on the Living Well Planner here.

I also offer a free planner to my newsletter subscribers that will help you keep track of not just your schedule, but also there are spaces to keep track of all the kids’ schedules and meal planning.  You can see more about the planner here, or just click below to sign up for my newsletter and you’ll be sent a link to download the planner.

2. Determine The Best Time of The Day For Your Tasks

There are certain must-do tasks that are better suited for certain parts of the day. I know that I have the most physical energy in the first part of the day. For this reason, the morning is the best part of the day for me to accomplish cleaning tasks. On the other hand, after dinner, I am pretty much done, physically. This is why I choose evenings to focus on more sedentary tasks such as scheduling or responding to email.

Also consider what times are best for scheduling appointments, such as doctors or car maintenance. The first appointments of the day are usually the best for saving time because they are less likely to be running behind.

In addition, consider batching similar tasks together such as running all your errands on the same day.

The key here is to take a few moments and write down when you think the best time of day might be for you to accomplish each task.

3. Simplify Meal Planning

Meal planning is the key to organizing your time. When you know exactly what your making for dinner each night, you avoid wasting time trying to figure out what to make at the 5 o’clock hour. Plus, meal planning also helps avoid extra trips to the grocery store to get last minute ingredients.

One of the top ways meal planning has helped me organize my time is that I can easily double up on a recipe when I know there’s an extra busy week coming up.  Simply place the second meal in the freezer so it’s available when time is tight, this is a huge time saver.

If you’re really on a tight time budget consider buying groceries online. Amazon Fresh will deliver groceries right to your doorstep.  Such a convenient way to save and organize your time!

Another huge time saver is to consider a meal planning service. One of my favorite meal planning services is the $5 Meal Plan. For only $5 (yes, really), you receive a week’s worth of meal plans and the grocery lists for making them!

Side note: the founders of the $5 Meal Plan actually wrote the super popular $5 Dinners. So not only will you save tons of time, but you’ll save money as well!

At only $5 a month, the $5 Meal Plan is totally do-able on almost any budget.

(If you’re more of a techy, you would love eMeals.  They have tons of meal plan options with their user-friendly app.  You can even shop your grocery list right from the app and have it ready for pick up!)

4. Declutter Your Home

You knew I was going to bring this up at some point ;).  But honestly, organizing your time truly starts in the home. In fact, removing the excess has been the number one thing I’ve done to keep my time organized. I cannot emphasize enough how having a clutter-free environment reduces stress and distractions, freeing up so much time.

I have written many posts on how to get started decluttering, how to declutter when you don’t have the time, finding the motivation to declutter, staying clutter-free, and many other decluttering topics. A great place to start is the Ultimate Guide to a Clutter-Free Home.

One easy trick to make decluttering a little easier is to invest in a couple of decorative baskets that you can keep around the house. When you come across an item you don’t need, immediately place the item in the convenient decluttering basket. Any clothes, toys, or other clutter items taking up space and time can go in this basket. Once it’s full place the contents in a bag and drop off at your local thrift store.

5. Break Up Big Tasks

One of the biggest roadblocks to organizing your time is trying to complete big projects and still get all those must do’s done! A great example of this is decluttering your home. Our homes are filled with both necessary and unnecessary stuff and the thought of decluttering it sometimes seems too difficult. So the trick is to break it up into little tasks.

If you’re working on decluttering the bathroom here are some ways to break it up. You can do one task per day or week, depending on your schedule.

Clear out the medicine cabinet and toss all expired or old products
Clear out under the sink and toss anything not used in the last 3 to 6 months
Do the same with your makeup drawer
Go through the linen closet and toss anything ripped or stained. Keep one extra sheet set per family member and two towels for each family member, get rid of everything else.

You get the idea and can do this for each room in your house. This way you’ll manage to stay sane and accomplish your goal just by breaking up your tasks.

A word of caution — when you break down your larger tasks into small bite-size pieces what can happen is that you look at the long to-do list and those feeling of overwhelm come rushing back in. But do not get intimidated by the size of your list. There is great satisfaction in crossing things off!

6. Avoid Multi-tasking

Multi-tasking is a myth. We like to think we can, but we can’t. Attempts at multitasking actually rob our focus and increase the time need to complete each task.

This, not to mention, affects the quality of our work and increases our stress. Think about it, you’re talking on the phone while making dinner, and helping one child with homework. Another child comes in and needs something. The end result equals one distracted mom, plus one burnt dish, and two frustrated children.

Trust me, it doesn’t work. Instead of flooding your brain with multiple tasks, take your time to finish one by one. You’ll complete each task in much less time and actually feel organized and accomplished!

7. Go Digital

Sometimes I seriously wonder how I managed my life before I discovered Trello.

If you don’t know, Trello is this amazing and FREE tool that allows you to have everything all in one place, accessible on your desktop, tablet, or phone. My to-do list, appointments, meal plan, grocery list even the kids’ school projects are all organized on Trello.

Trello allows you to invite people to some or all of your boards so that you can give your family members access to your home boards and school projects while allowing you to keep those Birthday and Christmas lists private.

I wrote an entire post on how I use Trello to simplify and organize my entire life. You can read that here, or go ahead and sign-up for Trello here. It’s totally free!

8. Have a Morning Routine

A routine is simply doing the same thing at the same general time automatically.

When you set up routines for the things you must do each day, life begins to run rhythmically. These rhythms allow you to keep a handle on your time while accomplishing the things you really need to do each day or week. They automate the musts and remove the stress of remembering every single thing every single day.

For example:

6:00 am: coffee and devotions.
6:30 am: Make the bed and do a quick tidy-up.
6:45 am: Get dressed and ready for the day
7:15 am: Wake up kids and get breakfast ready.

Look at your normal day to day must do’s and look at ways you can set up rhythms and routines. Is what you normally do working for you? What would you like to find time for that you can make a part of a regular routine?

By setting up regular rhythms and routines, organizing your time to accomplish the things you really want to do will naturally follow.

9. Stay True to Your Core Values

First, look at what your values are and put your energy and focus there. Certain things might seem important but are they really supporting your values, or is it creating more stress for the entire family?

If one of your values is having regular family time, you might want to limit the number of activities each of your kiddos is involved in.

Part of being organized with your time is saying no to those things that are not in alignment with your core values.

10. Take Care of You

Regular self-care is one of the most important things you can do to organize your time. Making time for self-care is essential to reduce stress and get organized.

Attempts to organize your time feels overwhelming without taking time for yourself. This is because it’s nearly impossible to organize your thoughts if your mind is constantly racing and your running from one thing to the next.

Stopping and taking even a 10-minute breather to do something for you, will not only refresh your mind but will relax your body and help you focus better.

If you are over-burdened and just can’t handle anymore, don’t take up more tasks than you need to. Understand you are not magical you do not have superpowers show yourself some grace because not everything is going to get done.

Be proud of what you did accomplish, focus on the essentials, and remember tomorrow is a new day.

Organizing your time isn’t about accomplishing everything on your to-do list. It’s about clearing space in your life so that you have the time for those things that matter most. Commit to one or two of these tips this week and be amazed at all you accomplish!