Hi, everyone. Welcome back to my channel. In today's video,
I'm going to be sharing with you my best time-saving hacks, because let's face it,
as a busy mom or a busy person, you might feel like you have no time
or some days you're just not productive. So the tips I'm going to give you today are things that
I do that allow me to get loads done in a short amount of time. And I hope you really like them.
If you do, please give us a thumbs up. And if you would like hacks, I have so many hack videos and
so many hacks up my sleeves that I would love to have you. So please consider subscribing.
And with all that said, let's get into the video. And a huge thank you to Blinkist for sponsoring
today's video. They are one of my favorite time-saving hacks when it comes to multitasking.
And if you don't Blinkist is by now, it's an app that you can download to your phone and it
allows you to read or listen to a book in just 15 minutes. So they take the best insights and key
information from over 3000 non-fiction books, they condense it all down to just 15 minutes,
and you can listen to it podcast style. I don't know about you, but since becoming a mom,
I find it very difficult to actually find the time to sit down and read a book. So for me, it works
so well that I could be listening and taking in the highlights of a book while I'm multitasking.
So I listened to Blinkist while I'm putting my makeup on in the morning, when I'm cooking,
when I'm cleaning or working out. And I love that I can still be reading and learning something new.
It might be about self-development. It might be about parenting or things to do with work,
but there's so many different categories on the Blinkist app. There is literally something for
everyone and they don't only do the little short blinks as they call them, which is the
whole book condensed. They do also have full length audio books, if that's what you like,
or they now do short casts as well. So they'll actually condense down popular podcasts,
so you can get to the heart of a podcast really quickly. And Blinkist have also said that the
first 100 of my viewers to click on the link in my description will get unlimited access to
the Blinkist app for a whole week. And it's completely free to try it. You can cancel it at
any point in the seven days, but if you do like it, you'll also get 25% of a full membership.
So you can test it out for yourself. See if you love it as much as I do.
But just for instance, this morning, when I was doing my makeup, I listened to the book,
Rich Dad, Poor Dad, which was 16 minutes. And I also recently listened to The Power of Showing Up,
but there's so many good titles on there, literally something for every interest,
whether it's marriage, mindfulness, working out fitness, like there's literally something
for everyone. So anyway, that link will be in the description. My next time-saving hack is to wake
up a little bit before the kids, because you can get so much more done when they're asleep.
As soon as they're awake, they're going to want feeding, they're going to be asking you questions.
They're going to need help with things. So even just waking up 15 minutes earlier than them
in the morning, it means you might be able to have quick shower and put some clothes on for the day.
And that can be a game changer. And recently, I actually tried the 5:00 AM wake up challenge. And
there were loads of benefits to that, but it's not something that I could commit to long term, but
even just waking up 15 minutes, 30 minutes before the kids means that you might be able to get your
makeup on, your clothes, maybe start on lunches, just little things like that, you can do things so
much quicker. Another huge tip, which is going to save you so much time in the morning is do not go
on social media first thing in the morning. It is the biggest time zapper. So you might think,
"Oh, I'll just watch a couple of reels on Instagram." And the next thing you know,
you're sat there 15 minutes later, still scrolling. So I try not to go on social
media until our morning routine is all done. My next tip is something that I repeat to myself
often, and that is that done is better than perfect. I think there's lots of
perfectionists out there and sometimes that can stop you from getting a task done.
If you can't get it exactly how you want it, you might just avoid it completely,
but it's such a time-saver if you just go head on and get it done. And I actually had some
comments recently on my garage transformation, people saying that it wasn't perfectly labeled,
or it wasn't perfectly Marie Kondo'd, but we still got it done and it's so much cleaner
now. So you don't have to worry about having all the right organizational boxes and all of that,
just get it done. And another little tip when it comes to your phone is if you find that you get
very distracted from all of the notifications coming through, when you're trying to get work
done or play with the kids, then the iPhone has a really good setting called Do Not disturb.
So you just pull the top down and hit the little moon button and then you'll stop all the
notifications and buzzing. But it's a great little setting because if someone calls you more than
once, it will allow that call to come through. So you won't actually miss any emergencies.
My next tip is to consolidate food shopping and errands, and this will save you so much time and
money as well. So what we do is once a week, we will do our grocery shopping and we do it online.
Online shopping is such a time-saver and the thing that I love the most is
once you have done one online food shop, it remembers the stuff that you like and often
you're ordering or buying the same kinds of foods each week. So it's even quicker for us, now we can
just go online and re put things back into our baskets, order anything new and it just arrives.
And it's the most time-saving thing. I'll often just order our food while I'm watching TV in the
evening, so it doesn't feel like this big task of going to the shops. And also if you do need
to run errands, try and just do it once a week, on a specific day. If you're running
to the bank one day and then the post office the next day, and then to the pharmacy the next day,
it will actually take up so much time. But if you aim to run your errands all at once, you'll save
loads of time. And while we're talking about food, I couldn't not mention meal planning and meal
prepping, these are such time savers. And I have a meal planning principle that I'll link below. But
if you think about all the meals that you're going to have for the week at once, it saves you so much
time and thought during the week, you don't have to think about what are we going to do for dinner?
Because you've already planned it, and same with meal prepping. It's such a time-saver, I've
made so many videos about it, so I'll link some down below. But if you find meal prepping quite
daunting, even just doing things like washing and cutting up fruit and having that in the fridge
and washing and cutting up veg as well, then you have that on hand for meals and for snacks as well
for the kids. And I often get asked how long that actually will last in the fridge, but it lasts for
a good three to five days. Another foodie hack is to batch cook. So when you are actually making a
meal, make double or triple it, and then you can put some of it into the freezer and your future
self will thank you. I've also made some videos on slow cooker dump bags, so if you spend an hour
one day making loads of slow cooker dump bags, then you can have them in your freezer on hand
for a morning when you are rushing out the door, and you can just stick it into your slow cooker.
And it's so easy. The next time saving hack feels like it's taking you longer to begin with,
but then it actually saves you so much time. And it is the stack to unpack dishwasher method. So
this is just grouping things together when you're stacking your dishwasher. So put all the forks
together, all the spoons together, all the knives together, all the side plates together and so on.
And that way, when you're actually unloading your dishwasher, it makes it so quick and easy to do.
And the next step is such a simple one, but I thought it was worth saying in case it's
something that you don't have yet. And that is to have a family WhatsApp group, so that you can
update your family on the kids really easily. This was especially great during the pandemic,
but say yesterday, Caleb learned how to do a backflip and he wanted everyone to know about it.
So I just uploaded a video onto the family group and then all of his aunts and uncles
and grandparents saw that he can now do a back flip. And I didn't have to message
everyone individually. Everyone feels connected to us and it's just really quick and easy. Another
tip is to reorganize your home based on how often you use things. So recently we had a de-clutter
and I really thought about if things were in the right place. So for instance, our first aid kit
used to be really high up and out of reach because obviously I thought that was safer, but now that
the boys are older, we actually use it so often we need plasters, we need hayfever medication,
we need creams and all kinds of things. So I decided to move it and it's made my life so much
easier. And equally, there were some electrical appliances that we don't actually use that often.
So I have moved them out to the garage to make room for the things that we actually do use.
Another huge time-saving tip is to get everything ready the night before. So in our house, we think
about everything that we're going to need the next day. We lay out the kids clothes on the banister.
I also lay out my clothes, even if it's just leggings and a t-shirt, nothing special.
We think about what clubs they have. Do they have football? Do they have gymnastics? Do they have
karate? Do they have swimming? There's just so much. Life is so busy and it's far easier to plan
all of that the night before. The next hack helps me to manage the kids clothes. And I don't know
if this will be relevant to everyone, but it's been so helpful for us. We have three boys and
they're all catching each other up in size. And I'm constantly looking at labels when I'm
folding laundry. And I really wanted to speed that up, so we've done a couple of things. So when it
comes to the boys underwear or pants, we've made it so that one boy has all solid color underwear,
one has all stripe and one has all camo and that means it will also work when things are handed
down as well. And when it comes to the kids' school socks, because they wear a school uniform,
but all of the seven-year-old socks are just all gray. And then all of the ten-year-old socks have
camo on the bottom. So when I'm folding laundry, I can just quickly look and just know what pile it
gets chucked into. And when it comes to laundry, I've started to just chuck the boys things
into a pile and then get the older boys to actually helped me fold it and put it away.
And this is saving me so much time and it's also giving them great life skills. And another huge
time saving hack is to outsource things. You really don't have to be able to do it all,
all of the time. And I feel like we should really move away from that culture and just
play to our strengths. Obviously, do the things that you're good at and that you like doing,
but if you do have the money to outsource things like say, you hate cleaning, why not get a cleaner
every other week? Or if you need help with your business, why not just get a VA to help you with
that? And now that I've mentioned cleaning, I also wanted to say that setting a timer on your phone
is such a great way to speed up your cleaning time. If you set a timer for 10 to 20 minutes,
you will be amazed at how much you can get done. And it can really stop you from procrastinating.
If you're like, "Right, I'm going to speed clean this room for only 10 minutes." You'll be amazed
how quickly you get stuff done. Another really cool time-saving hack is to create a VIP photo
album on your phone. And you can put anything important into that. So you can do things like
screenshots, school trip information, or party invitations, but also you could take photos of
things like your passport, your license, your national insurance number, all of that, and have
it in one place. And you can also add a password if you want to. And the last tip that I wanted to
share with you is don't be afraid to have quick, easy dinner some nights. For the kids, I'll often
make pancakes with bacon for dinner, and it's literally their favorite, or we'll also do things
like beige buffets, especially here in England. When the kids get hot dinners for lunch, if
they're eating a roast dinner for lunch at school, I think it's okay for them to have a more relaxed
panini or sandwich for dinner. That's just me. And it's probably one of their favorite things.
Anyway, I hope you enjoyed this video. Let me know what you think in the comments below. And
if you have any other time-saving hacks, I would love to hear them. And don't forget the link
is in my description for Blinkist. If you want to try it out for free for a week,
and thank you so much for watching. I'll see you in my next one. Bye, guys.