10 ACTIONABLE WAYS TO SIMPLIFY YOUR LIFE AND CULTIVATE HAPPINESS

Do you ever feel like you need to simplify your life because you feel so overwhelmed by the world around you that you can’t take having to make another decision?

This blog post details 10 simple ways you can simplify your life and how this will save you time and improve your mindset and overall wellbeing.

Decision fatigue is a phenomenon that was coined by social psychologist Roy F. Baumeister and highlights the feeling of fatigue when we are making to many decisions and our lives are feeling too overwhelming. According to the Victorian Institute of Forensic Mental Health we sometimes make up to 40,000 decisions daily.

This year I have started on a quest to simplify my life and reduce the amount of decisions I have to make in an attempt to not feel so tired. Reducing the amount of decisions you have to make can definitely simplify your life. Here are the 10 best actionable tips to simplify your life.

Declutter your closet

Having to decide what to wear everyday can be confusing and frustrating. So why make it harder with too many choices?

Start by going through all of your clothes and getting rid of anything that is broken, ripped, stained, really old or that doesn’t fit. There is no point keeping things that are worn out or that don’t suit your body.

Next find that prices of clothing that you may love, but never wear because you haven’t been able to find anything to wear with it. Even though you may love it, clothes are no good just sitting in your closet. If you can’t find anything to go with it, it probably isn’t your style or you don’t feel comfortable in it.

Now look for anything you haven’t worn in the last year. If you haven’t worn something in a year, then you don’t like it anymore or don’t feel comfortable in it anymore so get rid of it.

Now you should have only clothes that you love, feel comfortable in and wear regularly. When you go shopping, remember this exercise and consider if this is something you will really wear and love. If you continue to keep the number of clothes you have to a minimum, this will simplify your life.

Simplify your meals

I love food. But I can never decide what to eat and if something is not pre made, then I need to have energy to cook before eating.

To make sure I am eating well throughout the week, I like to meal prep on Sundays. This simplifies my life. However, it can be difficult and overwhelming to decide what to meal prep.

I recommend making a menu to narrow the options. On my menu I have options for quick snacks, microwave, prep and freeze and stove top. Therefore, no matter how much energy I have, I will always have something to eat.

Simplify your finances

I have struggled with budgeting, it’s always been a bit confusing for me. That is, until I found Up Bank. Up is based on the Barefoot Investor ‘buckets’ by Scott Pape. But you can do it with your bank as well.

Basically you should have a seperate account for everything you spend money on, e.g. emergency savings, rainy day account, health, groceries, rent, petrol, phone bill, music, and car insurance. You can also have an account for something specific you want like a jacket or pair of shoes.

Then you should work out how much money should be allocated to each account each pay. Up makes this really simple and automatic.

Reset your week

Every week, I try to go through a reset routine on Sunday. This involves doing a brain dump of all the tasks I can think of that need to be done which helps to clear my mind, ticking any items I can off my to do list, cleaning the bathroom and tidying up my space and organising the next week. This helps to simplify your life and declutter your mind.

Have a physical inbox

My favourite YouTuber, Muchelleb (https://m.youtube.com/user/muchelleb) taught me about the power of a physical inbox.

Just like an email inbox, a physical inbox is a tray or small box that stores all the new things and papers that need actioning or that you need to find a place for.

As soon as you get home, put all things that don’t have a place yet, or that will need actioning in the inbox and that way things won’t be scattered all over your house and important things won’t get lost.

Clear out your inbox on your reset day and find a place for everything and action anything that needs actioning.

Declutter your mind

If your mind feels too full and too busy, then you will find it difficult not to get overwhelmed. One way to clear your mind is to practice mindfulness. Being mindful can be really hard to do at first, but with practice it will get easier. Your mind is a muscle and it has to be trained like the rest of your body.

You can practice being mindful in different ways – one size does not fit all. One way is by journaling. Journaling doesn’t mean you have to write about what happened during your day or how you feel, though you can write about that if you want. You can use your journal to brain dump everything that is happening in your mind to get it out of your head or write a stream of consciousness. You can also write three things that you are grateful for and three things that you need to do that day.

Another way is to meditate which can also be done in a couple of ways. You can follow a meditation track or quietly draw while listening to gentle music or look into the flame of a candle. Whatever feels right for you.

Make lists

Do you ever get to a free day, or even free hour, and you don’t know what to do so you just end up scrolling instagram?

Me too, until I made some lists! Like the menu discussed above, having a list of your favourite activities and hobbies can make it easer to decide what you should do so that you make the most of what little free time you get.

I have a list of all of my hobbies generally and a list organised into low, medium and high energy and difficulty making it easier to decide on an activity based on how I am feeling at that moment.

I also have a list of things I can do on a no spend weekend so that I don’t always default to activities that require money, like shopping.

Unsubscribe

Clear out unwanted emails!

It’s amazing how many emails I used to receive and how many I used to delete without even opening them because I knew I didn’t care about what it said.

It’s also amazing how many people I know that have 50,000 plus unread emails, and always miss important emails.

There are apps you can use to help clear out your inbox. However, I went back through my deleted emails and unsubscribed from all emails I didn’t want anymore. I didn’t get all of them, but I got most of them and from then on it was a lot easier and less time consuming to unsubscribe from any further emails that came through.

Emails that I unsubscribed from are emails from shops that make me want to buy something, marketing emails from websites that no longer served me and spam emails.

Make bags for different adventures to keep by the door

How often do you go to the beach or park and forget to take something?

Having different tote bags for different occasions can make sure that never happens again. This is another tip I learned from Muchelleb.

For example: I would pack one tote bag with swimmers, a towel, sunscreen, and a hat for a beach bag. Keeping this by the door simplifies your life and makes it quicker to get to the beach.

Don’t do things that you don’t have to do

If you don’t enjoy doing something, why do it?

Sure there are some things in life that you just have to do. But we tend to waste so much time on things that we just don’t have to do.

For example, ironing. Most of the time, if you hang up or fold your clothes nicely they tend not to crease. It is also a good idea not to buy clothes that crease easily, like linen. I do own a couple of linen items, but I only wear them occasionally knowing that I will have to iron them.

My sister and I generally don’t iron and our clothes always look fine. So why spend the time doing it?