Eight tips for running your home smoothly

Let’s dive in.

Tip #1: Clean your space

According to one study, people who describe their living spaces as “cluttered” are more likely to be fatigued. A clear workspace will give you the energy to run your household smoothly.

You might feel especially challenged by your piles of papers. Cloud storage, like OneDrive, can help you organize them. Cloud storage allows you to relocate all of your documents to a secure platform online. All you have to do is make digital copies of the physical papers. Then you can load them onto your cloud platform. It can store:

• Mementos, like photos
• Papers, like bills
• Backups of important documents, like passports

You can save a lot of space by storing these items online instead of in drawers and on other surfaces. You may be able to locate them more quickly when they’re organized online, too.

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Tip #2: Communicate clearly

Family members can make it easier to run your household smoothly. They can help complete projects or show up when they’re supposed to. You need to communicate with them clearly to encourage them to follow through.

Technology makes it easier for you to connect with family members. For example, a tool like Microsoft Teams offers group chats. You can use these chats to:

• Check in
• Make requests
• Ask for availability
• Send reminders about upcoming events

Your household projects are more likely to succeed if you can connect with your family easily.

Tip #3: Use shared calendars to coordinate

Organized family schedules are vital if you want to run your household smoothly. But it can be hard to keep track of them. You may struggle to keep everyone on the same page even if you have a master calendar in your kitchen.

Shared online calendars can help you and your family members stay up to date on work and home schedules. A shared calendar empowers you to:

• See everyone’s daily commitments
• Send invites to events
• Set reminders

Shared calendars even allow you to hide details of events if you’d like them to be a surprise. They’re a great tool to keep everyone on track while maintaining some privacy.

Tip #4: Create organized meal plans

You might be one of the many people who feel particularly stressed about mealtime. It’s hard to organize meals for more than one person. Not to mention cooking or ordering them, too.

Meal plans take the stress away from mealtime. Plan out meals (and snacks) for each week, and you won’t have to wonder what you’re going to eat every few hours. A tool like Excel can help. You can arrange rows and columns to represent days of the week and mealtimes, then plot meals accordingly.

Meal planning also speeds up trips to the grocery store. Write down ingredients on a grocery list as you work out what you’ll eat during the week. A list of food to buy will speed up your household shopping trips.

Tip #5: Automate chores

Weekly or monthly chores consume a lot of valuable time. You do them over and over. Then you have to do them again. But they’re a big part of running a household.

Automate chores to save time. You can automate many tasks, including:

• Paying bills. Most banks and credit companies have an auto-pay option.
• Vacuuming. Robot vacuums are a relatively inexpensive investment.
• Cooking. Crockpots do most of the cooking for you over a period of 6-8 hours.
• Taking care of pets. Tools like auto-feeders and auto-litter boxes make it easier to care for your cats and dogs.

You can focus on more important (or fun) tasks when you automate simple chores.

Tip #6: Make your home smarter

Automating chores will introduce a few essential tools into your home, like robot vacuums and auto-feeders. There are plenty of other ways to make your home “smarter.”

Smart homes are simply homes that connect to Wi-Fi and allow you to control central items through an app. You can use smart tools to help run your:

• Security systems. There are plenty of smart security systems on the market. You simply install cameras, then connect to them through an app. These smart security systems allow you to keep track of your home security from anywhere.
• Thermostat. You probably tinker with the thermostat on a regular basis. The weather’s changing frequently, and it’s hard to keep your home comfortable. You can control your home’s temperature from your phone with a smart thermostat.
• Lighting. Smart bulbs empower you to set lighting schedules, so you don’t have to turn on the household lights each morning or turn them off in the evening. An automated lighting schedule can even help your family wake up and go to sleep on time.
• Outlets. Saving electricity can lower your household bills. An easy way to reduce electrical use is to turn off outlets you aren’t using. Smart outlets plug into your normal electrical outlets. You plug other items into them, like your TV or fan. You can turn the outlets off or set them on a schedule from your phone.

It’s easier to run your household when you live in a smart home.

Tip #7: Keep a running to-do list

There’s always something to do when you’re in charge of a household. It can be easy to forget what your tasks are if you don’t jot them down as soon as they come up.

An easy solution is to keep a running to-do list. Add any household task to this list, whether it be big or small. A tool like Microsoft To-Do can help. It allows you to:

• Create organized to-do lists
• Share lists with your family
• Assign tasks to family members
• Access lists from any device

A to-do list can help you know what you need to do to run your household smoothly.

Tip #8: Delegate.

You’ve got a team of helpers if you’ve got family members. You may want to manage most tasks by yourself, but that doesn’t mean you have to do everything. Delegation is an important tactic when you want to run your household smoothly.

Delegate higher-level tasks to your spouse or teens. Use your shared to-do list to assign tasks. They can manage laundry, pick up kids from events or practice, and go grocery shopping. Even little kids can help. Kids can:

• Put up silverware
• Pick up toys
• Wipe up spills
• Put dirty clothes in a hamper

It’s a lot easier to run your household smoothly with others to help.