7 Simple ways to calm the chaos

Has your life got a bit crazy and chaotic recently?  Do you sometimes find that you do things in a bit of a rush because there doesn’t seem to be enough hours in the day, or enough days in the week?! You’re not alone. Sometimes we can get so busy that we end up living in a chaotic state.

Here are my top tips on how to calm the chaos.

How do you calm the chaos?

The most important thing you can do is figure out what is causing the problem. Is there a simple step you could take to calm the chaos?

If it’s caused by being busy at meal times and you find yourself constantly eating on the hoof, consider spending a little time prepping some soup or a pasta salad that will last a couple of days, that you can simply dig into when you’re hungry.

Or get a slow cooker and start putting dinner into that first thing in the morning so you can simply dig out your portion when you get home without having to start faffing on making dinner when you’re tired. 

If you find the chaos is caused by not having the right food in when you need to cook it, try ordering your groceries online, or sign up for a fruit and veg box service, and/ or create a meal plan in advance. 

Top Tip:

If you find you run out of key grocery items like dishwasher tablets, tea bags, toilet rolls, etc, try hiding a few in a different cupboard so you ‘run out’ when you’ve actually got a few left.

Have a power hour

Set a timer for an hour and see how much you can get done. If you find that you’re well into the swing of what you’re doing after the power hour you can of course keep going until the jobs are done or until you’ve had enough, depending on what happens first! 

It can help if you put on some upbeat music (there are some fabulous housework playlists on Spotify) or put on a podcast and get cracking. I’ve added my latest upbeat playlist below! 

It can be helpful to gather up items that are in the wrong place and take them back to where they should be. When I’m tidying my study, the first thing I normally do is to remove any items that belong to anyone else in the family.

You can gather lost items into a laundry basket or cardboard box and then return them to their rightful place in one go! 

Have a charity donation box, (and a Vinted account!)

If you have too many clothes, or find that your family has outgrown some of their clothes, try having a charity donations bag or box either in your wardrobe or somewhere more communal like the hall or landing. This way you can simply pop items in as you come across them and then take them to the charity shop when you have a few items gathered up. There are charity collection bins in many supermarket car parks and by local fire stations. 

Or try selling items on Vinted. It’s a free selling site, where you simply upload some good clear photos and an accurate description of your item, set a price and off you go. Download the app or go to www.vinted.co.uk 

Ditch the clutter

Do you find that you’re ruffling through loads of items that you don’t use to get to the one thing you do want to use? If so you may be drowning in clutter. A good way to stop this is to carefully consider what items you use regularly and put them to one side.

Put all the other things in a box out of the way. Write the date on the box and if after about 90 days you’ve not needed the items in the box you’re probably safe to donate them to charity.

Obviously keep the seasonal stuff separate, there’s no need to donate the Christmas stuff just because you don’t use it in July, August and September! If you find you need an item from the box that’s fine. 

Do one (or two) loads of laundry every day

If you have a busy household and your laundry basket seems to have a lot in common with the magic porridge pot, try doing a load of washing every day.

Declutter anything that looks raggy or tatty before it goes in the washing machine. Raggy knickers? Bin them! Holey socks? Ditto. Life is too short to wear raggy pants.

Do similar tasks together

If you have a lot of the same type of task to do, do them all in one go. It can be very distracting if you answer emails as they come in.

Try dealing with emails as a batch, or diarise some time to answer those telephone calls, for example.

Make note of any 2 minute tasks and do those when you’re waiting for the kettle to boil.

Do a quick daily reset

At the end of the day, throw any children’s toys into a lidded basket, tidy up the sitting room so it looks nice, have a quick wipe around the kitchen, and squirt a little bleach down the loos.

This way it won’t LOOK like chaos when you come down the next day.

Take a break from the chaos.

Sometimes when life is very chaotic, it can completely get you down and feel overwhelming and impossible to see a way out of.

Taking yourself completely away from the chaos can be really helpful. You don’t have to go far or for a long period of time.

A quick trip to the coast and a bag of chips is often enough.

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