It’s that time of year again! Spring started officially on Tuesday, so it’s time to start thinking about doing a good spring cleaning. Usually, when I think of spring cleaning, I think of things I need to do around the house or getting all my pictures and digi supplies in order. In reality, our day to day routines need to be updated every so often. Today, I’m going show you how to spring clean your day to day routines in five easy steps.
Step 1: Take Inventory of All of Your Routines
Go through your day planner, get out cleaning schedules, and stop and think about all of the routines you have right now. If this is overwhelming, focus on one area of life at a time. For example, write down all of the routines associated with scrapbooking like uploading pictures, editing pictures, and printing layouts.
Step 2: Batch Any Tasks that Go Together
You’d be amazed at the amount of tasks that can be batched together that we don’t even realize. Look through your list and see if there are things that go together that you haven’t been tackling together before. Grouping like tasks helps to get them done in a more efficient manner.
Step 3: Adjust The Frequency of Your Routines
Look through the routines you have listed. Are there any things that would be easier to do if you did them more often? How about things that you could actually start doing a little less? For me, I used to upload pictures and organize them only once a month. I found that if I upload and organize the pictures once a week, it’s a lot smaller of a task and gets done in a shorter amount of time.
Step 4: Delete, Delete, and Outsource
Take a look at your routines. Are there any routines that you can delete from your list? It’s amazing how we can get into a habit of doing something even if we don’t need to do it. Also, look for routines that you can outsource. Now that my two girls are getting older, there are more and more things that I can add to their list of chores to do, like emptying the dishwasher (score!).
Step 5: Organize It All Into Manageable Chunks
Now, take what’s left and start organizing it. Use a calendar and start putting tasks onto the calendar when you need to do them. I highly recommend using Google Calendar for this level of planning. It’s integrated with Google Tasks and is really easy to use and read.
Once you’ve followed all five steps, you should have your routines nice and streamlined and ready to go. A little spring cleaning can really go a long way. Now, if I could just spring clean my closet!
Aaron Morris contributes to Simple Scrapper each month, sharing his expertise and life experiences on time management.
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