Many little things over a period of time add up in the home. It doesn’t often start out that way in my experience, but little habits over time can add up to so much. Today on the blog, I’m sharing about five ideas to create a simpler home. I hope the ideas are helpful!

Lately we’re needing work on some routines around meal times because some days…it’s a bomb over here. Oh my. Simpler isn’t the word I’d call it, but hey, one thing at a time is the goal, right?

“Little habits over time can add up to so much.”

A home mat at the front door.

FIVE IDEAS TO CREATE A SIMPLER HOME:

  1. Pick up as we go (as much as you can). I’m talking about seeing something at the top of the stairs that need to go downstairs or those scrap pieces of paper on the table. If you have a minute, picking up as you go can help so much overall. It’s a habit our family is working on too, a little bit at a time! Sometimes this isn’t doable, though, because we have a home full of children, so we do what we can when we can. Read more about the one minute pickup rule here.
  2. Focus on high traffic chores for tidying daily such as the kitchen and laundry. These two places in the home tend to explode easily without consistent attention. Focusing on those two areas will help create a simpler home, even when the rest of the home is a bomb. That’s what we do when we need to scale back for various reasons such as having a newborn or someone being sick.
  3. Meal plan. If we don’t meal plan in our home, it becomes very obvious very quickly. There’s nothing like having a hangry crew waiting for their supper! ha. Even taking five minutes every week to do a loose meal plan can help so very much. Starting somewhere is better than having no plan at all, right?
  4. Write routines down. Research shows that writing things down will help commit whatever you are writing down better to memory. Linkkkk. By writing those routines down, it’s going to have a greater chance of sticking. Plus it won’t be easily forgotten. Why should we write things down? There are a lot of benefits to writing things down, but here are three of them:
    • Writing things down helps commit to memory better.
    • Writing things down helps us to follow through with plans better.
    • Writing things down helps us to reduce our mental load.

    Here is a blog on more benefits for writing things down.

    If you are working on a new habit, a routine, a project, new ideas or planning a vacation..really anything that is floating around your brain: Try writing it down.

  5. Tidy or clean something that needs it on top of regular tidying every day. I keep track of that kind of housework by using a master task cleaning/tidying sheet. I pull from it most days and deep clean or tidy something. Read more about how I use my master cleaning task list here.

My journey to creating a simpler home

About five years ago, I started my journey to simplifying. I was a stressed out, super high expectations mom, and had no solid routines or systems in place for our home. This was when I realized something needed to change. I started with decluttering and then everything snowballed from there.

FREE printable list of 20 routines to look at to save time in your home

You can find that freebie HERE. And if you’d like a deeper dive into creating your routines for your home life, you’ll find a unit just on routines in my course: Simplify Your Home Life: a Course for busy moms. You can find more about the course HERE.

SAVE FOR FUTURE REFERENCE:

A blog image overview with a picture of feet on a mat in behind it.

SIMPLIFY YOUR HOME LIFE: a course for busy moms

Routines is one thing I teach about in my Simplify Your Home Life Course. You can find more about it here or take my free pre-curser class: 10 Questions to Help You Simplify Your Home Life.

The Simplify Your Home Life: a course for busy moms is a six week flexible online course designed to help busy moms explore how to simplify home life in many key areas such as daily routines, decluttering, and habits. Participants gain access to course units (both text and some video) as well as a course guide full of guided printables, journal prompts, resources, and more.

Review:

“I really enjoyed Kelly’s course! I think it’s perfect for busy moms trying to find ways to organize their home, create systems and better routines! My favorite module was the time management lesson! But every module gives practical and easy to follow tools to better your home life! Such a great course!” - Shelly

Other blogs of mine you may enjoy reading:

Hi, I’m Kelly! I’m a mother of four children - three boys, one toddler girl - and our family lives on the beautiful east coast of Canada. I’m a past elementary teacher, turned stay at home, work at home mom eight years ago after I had my second child. I’ve found that the busier I’ve become and as my children age, that it’s become even more important to figure out what is most important to me and us as a family. Living a simpler lifestyle has helped us in so many ways in our home life - from better routines to faster tidying up times. It has been through my children that I have been inspired to learn how to effectively manage my time and to simplify in all areas of my home and life. I enjoy helping busy moms simplify home life by teaching flexible planning methods and skills. Enjoyed this blog and think it would be helpful to others? I'd love if you shared it. Thank you!