Organization Hacks to Keep Life Running Smoothly

1. Sunday = Non-Negotiable Me Time

Get in the routine of spending a few hours every Sunday to focus solely on yourself, in order digest all of the goals, tasks, and other things you want to accomplish in the coming week.

Note: This is especially important for anyone who’s automatic reaction to that last sentence was “yeah right, how could I possible find time for that?!”

Prioritizing self-care doesn’t necessarily mean running a bubble bath (though it totally can if you want). Instead, this is time that you have carved out for yourself to spend a little alone time so that you can pause, reset, reflect on the past week, and get everything in order for the week that is to come. Even if you can only find 20 minutes, you’ll have a head start on feeling like you can tackle anything that comes at you during the week ahead.

2. Buy Multiples of Everything

If I added every second I’ve wasted searching for my Chapstick, I could probably tack on a full month to my life expectancy. It’s the tiniest, dumbest little thing, but constantly searching through which purse I most recently used, or which room I left this absolutely lifeline in was driving me crazy — until I realized I can just buy a ten-pack.

Now, I have Chapsticks strewn quite literally all over the house — one on my desk, one on my nightstand, one for each purse, one more my car, and several floaters that appear randomly around the house. When I tell you that this has revolutionized my life, I mean it. Of course, I’m sharing this because it doesn’t just apply to Chapstick — phone chargers, pens, tissues, sunglasses, hair ties, scissors, headphones, water bottles, deodorant, hand sanitizers, you name it — buying these things in bulk and scattering them around your life will cut out so many tiny annoyances you didn’t even realize were draining you.

3. Always Keep a Physical Calendar

In today’s totally online world, most people underestimate the power of simply using pen and paper to get things done. A printable calendar is one of the best examples — you can have the most organized Google calendar, full of color-coding and automatic reminders. But if it stays buried inside your laptop, you might not check it on a daily basis.

Using a physical, printed-out calendar to keep track of upcoming birthdays, events, deadlines and all of your other life to-do’s is a million times more effective because you can keep it somewhere that you are bound to see it multiple times a day — on the fridge, on your nightstand, or front and center on your desk.

4. Meal Prep That Doesn’t Take Over Your Life

In an ideal world, every Monday morning, your fridge will be stocked with perfectly pre-portioned meals and healthy snacks — grapes already rinsed and de-stemmed, healthy breakfasts ready to be grabbed on-the-go, a dozen Tupperware lunches that can be popped in the microwave, and of course, all of this with enough variety that you’ll actually look forward to eating what you prepped.

But life is not a Pinterest board, and the reality is that meal prep can be extremely time-consuming. What might start as a healthy, well-intentioned plan, quickly disintegrates once life get busy.

That’s why you should aim for consistency, not perfection. Try to meal prep for just one or two days at a time, and once the habit begins to stick, see if you can scale up from there. And even if you only have the time and ingredients to prep breakfast for the week, that’s better than nothing.

5. Make the Trash Can Your BFF

Not to sound all Marie Kondo, but throwing things away (or donating them) is downright therapeutic. Living in a clutter-free space calms the nervous system, XX and makes your everyday life easier when you aren’t wrestling through a mountain of clothes stuffed in your closet just to find one specific shirt.

That packed-to-the-brim spice cabinet that nearly topples over every time you open it? Take 10 minutes to sort through it and toss all of the crusty seasonings and half-used, expired packets that you should have probably gotten rid of a year ago. That stained Tupperware that lost its lid a decade ago? Trash it.

Decluttering is truly a habit, and once you start, you’ll get into the mode of thinking “is this really necessary to hold onto?” everything something new pops up at home. Start small, and tackle one problem area in your home per day or week — your kitchen junk drawer is probably great place to start.

6. Embrace Handwritten Checklists

Besides just being an organization hack, there is a sweet, sweet, sense of dopamine-fueled accomplishment that comes with crossing off things on our to-do list — and I mean quite literally crossing them off, by hand. Using a hard copy checklist or keeping your to-do list in a physical notebook provides so much more XX than a digital list ever could (or worse, only relying on a mental list).

Re-writing your daily to-do list helps you reprioritize things, and acts as a good reminder when you’ve been procrastination on getting something done. When two weeks have gone by and you’ve re-written “make annual dentist appointment” for the fourteenth time, that just might be the kick in the butt you need to actually do it (and I promise, it will only take a few minutes!)

P.S: You can find an entire collection of cute printable planners, morning routine checklists and daily priority planners right here!

If even one of these organization hacks buys you back a few minutes of your day — or better yet, provides a tiny bit of extra mental sanity, then my work here is done.

Life can be chaotic, there's no denying that. But these small, intentional actions will help you build better habits and keep your days running smoothly. I bet you'll be surprised how much these things add up!

Happy organizing!