These Life Hacks Will Make You More Efficient at Home

From dovetailing tasks to streamlining filing, these simple tricks will free up more time for fun and relaxation.

Want to be more efficient with your time? Check out these quick and easy ideas to find out how you and your household can banish time-wasting and be more productive.

Fill the gaps

Got a monotonous household task to complete? Make use of your time by combining it with something more interesting or useful.

While you wait for the kettle to boil or a pan of rice to cook, for example, you could tidy and clean the worktops, empty the dishwasher, or zoom round with the vacuum cleaner. Similarly, while you’re folding laundry, take the opportunity to listen to a podcast, audiobook or radio programme.

Identify your clutter hotspots

Take a look around your home and work out which areas tend to gather most clutter. It could be the hall console, a kitchen worktop or perhaps the dining table – anywhere you tend to dump things such as papers, keys, gloves, pens or notepads.

These dumping grounds aren’t going to disappear, so you may as well embrace them. Buy storage specifically for each spot, so you can easily collate and organise all the items.

Put things where you need them

If you want to clean your home without making a meal of it, little and often is key. To ensure the task is as easy as possible, put your cleaning products in the room where you’ll use them.

Store a caddy of household cleaners and cloths in the bathroom, for instance, so you don’t have to traipse to the kitchen to pick up your essentials. Or keep the vacuum cleaner in a cupboard near rooms with carpets, rather than those you need to sweep and mop.

File all your home information

Avoid wasting time searching for essential information about your home by keeping it all in one place.

Whenever you sign up for a new bill, buy something for the home, or even paint a wall, keep the related paperwork. Allocate a few folders to store the information, no matter how trivial you might think it is – you never know when you might need to refer to old flat-pack instructions or find the name of a particular paint shade.

Audit your belongings

The most efficient storage is that which provides a home for all your items and is easy to access. Put aside some time to go through your belongings, donating or recycling anything you don’t need. Once you’ve identified the items you want to keep, you can begin to devise the perfect storage.

Hang shelves, buy cupboards or hire a carpenter to build some bespoke storage for you, ensuring each item has a home – preferably near to where you use it.

Collect your mess

No matter how tidy you intend to be, there are always going to be items left out at the end of the day. Rather than making lots of journeys to put things away in various rooms, gather them up in a clutter bag or bucket.

Pop a basket, box or bag in each room, and use them to store anything that’s been mislaid. Allocate a regular time slot when you can take your clutter bucket around the home and repatriate your items.

Article taken from Houzz Online - Written by Amanda Pollard