More Ways to Simplify Your Life: The Homebody Edition

Today, a cool collection of original household hacks to save your time, your money and your last nerve.

Let’s face it — life at home can be just as hectic as life outside. If you’re the CEO of your household, then you’re managing logistics, supply chains, customer service, inventory and waste removal, and occasionally refereeing minor civil wars over who gets the cozy, soft blanket.

Here’s some good news: You don’t need a full home makeover or a trip to the container store. These original, under-the-radar tips can help you simplify without breaking a sweat — or the bank.

1. Use masking tape to date everything. Pantry items, freezer containers, half-used jars in the fridge. Slap on a piece of tape with the date it was opened written on it. You’ll never again stand in front of a mystery container wondering if it’s soup or science.

2. Keep an “out the door” basket. Designate a small basket by the front door for outgoing items — returns, borrowed books, packages to drop off, that sweater going to Aunt Marge. If it’s headed out, it lives here until it does.

3. Store kitchen manuals in a zip bag taped inside a cabinet door. Forget the filing cabinet. Just tape (or otherwise attach) a gallon freezer bag to the inside of a cabinet and toss in all those appliance manuals. Out of sight but not buried under tax records from 2017.

4. Install an adhesive corkboard inside cabinet doors. This is where you pin takeout menus, school calendars, dog shot records and the name of the plumber you liked but forgot to save in your phone. Instant sanity station.

5. Put a “quitting time” on cleaning. Instead of cleaning until you drop or give up, set a timer. Twenty minutes of focused cleaning beats three hours of procrastinating while holding a Swiffer.

6. Create a micro pantry in a closet. If your kitchen storage is laughable, claim a linen closet, laundry nook or hallway shelf as your “deep pantry.” Stock nonperishables and backups so you’re not playing grocery roulette every Tuesday.

7. Designate a “leftovers night.” One night a week, dinner is a buffet of everything in the fridge that has a lid. No one complains when they’re allowed to eat mashed potatoes with leftover pizza. Plates get cleared, and you get a night off.

8. Keep scissors in your laundry area. Perfect for snipping tags, trimming threads or opening the packaging of whatever new thing you forgot you ordered. Bonus: stringy dryer sheets, begone.

9. Use colored bins by activity, not room. For example, red for crafts, blue for batteries and lightbulbs, green for pet gear. Label and stash. When you need something, you go to the bin — not four different drawers in three different rooms.

10. Store extension cords in empty paper towel rolls. Coil, slide, label. No tangles, no digging, and you’ll always know what belongs to what. Great way to recycle those cardboard tubes, right?

11. Make one laundry basket your “don’t care” basket. This is the basket where the things that don’t need to be folded go to live. Pajamas, cleaning rags, workout clothes, dog towels. Toss and go. Keep your good energy for things that go out in public.

12. Use top shelves for “out of season” living. Dedicate those high, hard-to-reach spots to seasonal stuff — picnic ware, holiday linens, that one appliance you only use when it’s eggnog season. Out of the way but not forgotten, provided you’ve kept a list of what is where.

13. Freeze your butter in usable portions. Cut sticks in half or quarters and freeze in a mason jar or silicone muffin cup. They thaw fast, and you don’t risk chipping a tooth trying to spread a frozen log on toast.

14. Build an “oops kit” for the car. Not survivalist stuff — just a kit with napkins, trash bags, snacks, stain wipes, quarters and maybe a spare phone charger. Great for oops moments that don’t warrant a full evacuation.

15. Keep a “rebuy list” on the inside of your pantry. Tape up a sheet of paper and a pen. When someone uses the last of something, they write it down. Revolutionary, I know. It might even keep the people in your house from asking if we’re out of ketchup while holding the empty bottle.

Simplifying isn’t about perfection. It’s about not losing your marbles over socks, soup or missing glue sticks. These tips won’t make your home look like a catalog, but they will make it run like a calmer, kinder version of what you’ve already got.