I was recently listening to The Lazy Genius Podcast, which is a great resource for making life easier. She emphasizes being a “genius about the things that matter, and lazy about the things that don’t”, which is a nice departure from feeling like you need to be crushing it in all the things. Her latest episode (Jan 15) was about ten small changes she has recently made that make her life easier, which got me to thinking about any recent small changes I’ve made that make our life easier.

ONE

Moving my skin care into the top drawer with my makeup.

So, not a huge change- I moved it up from the bottom to the top drawer in our bathroom, but the simple act of not having to bend down to pull it out and then put it away, and instead having it at top height makes me much more compliant with actually using it, especially at night. I’m a little weird about like things being together, but I usually use these things to remove makeup, or right before I put it on, so it works. Plus, my new makeup drawer organizer makes it possible to still keep it organized.

Favorite/ Current Products: (Day) The Ordinary Caffeine Eye Serum, ELF Triple Bounce Serum, ELF Holy Hydration Face Cream (with SPF); (Night) Neutrogena Makeup Melting Balm, Olay Regenerist Retinol24 Night Cream, Laneige Lip Mask

TWO

No social media until after quiet time first thing in the morning.

I’ve tried and failed at this a few times before, but it seems to be sticking so far this time around. When I get up in the morning, I check my email, and then nothing else on my phone until after I’ve at least written in my prayer journal, and typically also done my BSF reading/ questions for the day. What this really boils down to is no social media before I’ve talked to God, and spent time in Scripture for the day. It’s a small habit to break (and it’s literally been trying to break a muscle memory of opening my phone, swiping to the left to my social media apps and automatically opening them).

I think not allowing that in first thing in the morning, especially before I’ve taken in anything else makes my day smoother and more stable. It has also kept me more accountable about finishing my BSF by the discussion time because I’m not having to do several days in one sitting. Now, I never said it was to have quiet time only solo- pictured is Saturday morning when Henry got up and snuggled with me while I wrote and read.

THREE
Moving shoes and socks to the laundry room/ mudroom cubbies.

Am I the only one that struggles with keeping up with kids’ shoes and socks? They seemed to constantly be where they didn’t belong, most of the time in the floorboard of my car. I tried for four, almost five years to keep them unsuccessfully in kids’ rooms, which would then also mean still in the car, or in a Rubbermaid tote in the garage from when I would just clear everything out of the car and hadn’t put everything away yet. We were constantly searching for shoes, and the sheer chaos made me crazy.

When we moved into our house, we now have a set of “cubbies” by the garage door in our little mudroom area. There are two cubbies under the seating bench, and I put a large wicker basket in each one- a shoe basket for each kid. All their shoes go immediately in this basket when we come in the house. We are 85% successful at this without prompting, and it has made everything so much easier. We just know that all their shoes are in the basket, and when it’s time to go somewhere, we can tell them to get shoes and they can easily retrieve their own shoes and put them on.

For some reason it took me longer to extend this to socks also, but eventually I let go of the thought that their socks also had to go in their rooms. Now they each have a drawer in the laundry room with all their socks, just around the corner from their shoes. Ideally, I wanted the drawers to sit under the shoe baskets, but my current drawers and baskets are just a hair too tall to fit in the cubby space. But we can now tell them to get socks and shoes and they can get both and put them on themselves.

As they get older and more responsible, we’ll probably consider moving them back to rooms, or some system that makes the most sense, but for now this has made my life exponentially less chaotic!

In all these things, probably the biggest obstacle has been overcoming my thought process of how things are “supposed” to be or “need” to be, instead of what will work the best for us. We are in our “what works best for us” era now, and I’m loving it!