Life can get pretty crazy at times, which is why it's so important to learn how to simplify your life!

I was writing down my daily to-do's in my bullet journal the other day and the list kept getting longer and longer...which made me feel more and more overwhelmed. Why am I cramming so much "stuff" into my day/life? Sometimes my brain feels like a Chrome browser with thousands of tabs open all at once.

We're adding to our to-do list before we even get a chance to drink our morning coffee. We shouldn't have to deal with the added stress of all the little things. We should be able to take control and simplify.

Here are some ways to get rid of all the excess in your life so you can focus on the important things.

Unsubscribe //

Do you suffer from FoMO? The fear of missing out is a real thing. In my inbox, on a daily basis, I had at least 11 new emails every morning from newsletters/promos I was subscribed to. Did I read these emails in full and get something out of them? Heck no. But I took the extra time each morning to open them.

Go through your emails and unsubscribe from the ones that don’t serve you anymore. I love being kept in the loop by subscribing to newsletters, but there comes a time where it doesn’t benefit me anymore. I also don't need to get the daily deals from websites I'm probably never going to shop at, just because I don't want to "miss an opportunity".

Seeing sooooo many unread emails in your inbox can just add to the stress of your day. Unsubscribe, my friends.

Tip: You can use unroll.me to effortlessly unsubscribe from these emails.

Don’t waste time on being negative //

Negative thoughts can be hard to battle at times, but a trick I try is giving myself 5 seconds - that’s it, just 5 seconds, to be negative ….. Then I have to move on.

So, say for example I’m running late for an appointment when I see the perfect parking spot and someone else snags it before I get a chance. Bummer, right? I’ll let myself throw a little fit (and maybe curse under my breath) for 5 seconds and then tell myself that this situation is beyond my control and doesn’t really matter, in the grander scheme of things.

You can waste a lot of time and energy giving into negativity, but it’s not worth it.

This one can be a little harder to master but I think it's the most beneficial of them all!

Disconnect //

Close your laptop, power down your smartphone, turn the TV off (or better yet, cancel your cable subscription) and make some time to drink some tea (or wine) and relax.

As a blogger, it can be really difficult to turn away from social media sometimes, but it can be harmful to your productivity if you get sucked into it all. You can spend hours going through videos on Youtube or scrolling through images on Pinterest when you were supposed to be writing your next post (#guilty).

I have the worst habit of keeping my phone close to me while I’m at work. As soon as I get a notification I look to see what it is, even if I’m in the middle of something. Then it takes me twice as long to get back into my work. Now I try and make a habit of turning my phone on Do Not Disturb (and putting it upside down so I can’t see the LED flash) and only looking at it when I’m taking my 10-minute stretch breaks.



Declutter //

We are in the age of overconsumption. We have SO. MUCH. STUFF. Let me rephrase that….we have so much USELESS stuff. The funny thing is, we often buy all these things because we think they’ll provide us with happiness or will help us be more organized, when in fact the opposite is true.

Go through your house and get rid of the “extras”. Getting stressed making dinner because all your tupperware keeps falling on you everytime you open up the cabinet? Get rid of some - you don’t need it all. Trying to meet a deadline but you keep knocking over trinkets on your desk? Toss em’ (or sell or donate)!

Tip: Check out The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up by Marie Kondo to help improve your decluttering game. You can read my review of this book here

Clear Your Mind //

The older I get the more I realize that it’s vital to your sanity that you find an activity that brings you peace of mind. This could be meditation, reading, drawing, writing, going for a walk...the options are endless.

The world can get a little noisy at times and if you don’t have a way of silencing it, your stress levels will go through the roof.

When I was younger I used to take horseback riding lessons. It didn’t matter what was going on in my life (seriously though, how stressed out could a high school kid be?), when I got to the barn on Sunday morning, everything just kind of faded away. Now I try and practice meditation to clear my mind.

If you haven’t found your mind tamer yet, try and explore different things. There is literally no limit to what it could be. Baking, listening to music, painting your nails, going to the gym … they’re all good things!



Learn to say NO //

No matter what you’d like to believe or how much you want to help - you can’t do everything for everybody.

For some people, the word “no” does not exist in their vocabulary. If someone asks you to do something and you’re already swamped with your own stuff, it’s okay to tell them no or not right now. It’s not healthy to pile more on your plate when you’re already drowning. You especially should learn how to say no to things you don’t even enjoy.

Repeat after me: No is not a dirty word.

Meal Plan //

I don’t know about you, but coming home from work with a stomach that won’t stop rumbling and having to look through my fridge and cupboards to figure out what to make for dinner just adds more stress to my life than I need.

Creating a meal plan can save you so much time and effort when it comes to meal time. It doesn’t have to be high-tech or fancy, all you really need to do is come up with an outline of meals you want to eat in a given week.

Tip: Get a dry erase board and take inventory of what’s currently in your kitchen. This makes the meal planning process a lot easier.


Automate what you can //

With technology the way it is now, we can automate just about everything. This means we don’t have to worry about whether or not something is getting done.

Setting up automatic withdrawal for your bills or subscriptions is an amazing thing to take advantage of. You won’t have to worry about whether or not you paid this month's energy bill because it automatically gets done on the 15th of every month.

If I don’t have bills that get paid automatically I set up a recurring notification on my phone when they are due. So again, I don’t have to stress about whether or not something is paid because an automatic notification will let me know!

Tip: Whoever came up with Amazon’s Subscribe and Save is a genius! For the things I regularly purchase (dish soap, beauty products, paper towels, etc.) I “subscribe” to these items on Amazon and they’ll ship them to me automatically, based on the frequency I request. No more running to the store at 10 pm because I forgot to buy toilet paper ;)