How to Make Life Easier: 14 Simple Ideas to Try

If you’re noticing life is feeling hard, complicated or stressful and are wondering how to make life easier, you’re in the right place!

I’m sharing 14 simple things you can do to make life feel a little easier, less overwhelming and less stressful.

How to make life easier, even if every day isn’t easy

Not every day will be easy or always go smoothly. No matter how much you plan and simplify, sometimes life just happens and things aren’t always easy.

But there are things you can do to learn how to make life easier in general. Things you can do to help your days go more smoothly more of the time. And make everyday life feel easier overall.

Simple things that set you up for success. Helping you do what you can to make your days go smoother and feel easier overall.

How to make life easier: 14 ideas to try

Here are 14 simple changes and ideas you can try to make life easier.

1. Identify pain points

The first step in learning how to make life easier is identifying what feels heavy, stressful or frustrating on a regular basis.

Once you know what the pain points are, you can start looking for ways to simplify them or make them a little easier.

For example, if you notice evenings feel really busy and rushed, you might be able to adjust when you do some tasks. Maybe meal prepping in the morning so it’s easier to get supper on the table during a busy evening.

Or if mornings feel really rushed, there might be things you can do the night before to make the mornings run smoother and feel less chaotic and stressful.

Your journal can be a great tool to use to identify pain points. And to start to brainstorm creative solutions to ease those pain points.

Become a problem solver! Don’t be afraid to think outside the box and get creative when thinking of potential solutions.

2. Clear the clutter

One of the biggest things that can make life feel more difficult than necessary at home is clutter.

Clearing the clutter is a great way to remove the excess and the distractions stealing your time, space, energy and attention.

Decluttering means you have less stuff in your home to manage and take care of. Helping to ease your workload at home, making your home easier to manage and maintain. Reducing the time needed to keep up with things at home and reducing a big source of stress in your life.

Not sure where to start? Check out my complete decluttering guide, Your Clutter-Free Home. A step-by-step decluttering guide with detailed decluttering checklists for every room in your home!

3. Have a place for everything

Once you’ve cleared the clutter, take some time to designate a place for everything you’re keeping. (And bonus, this will be a lot easier after you declutter and have fewer things to find places for!)

Having a place to keep everything in your home makes it easier to tidy your home and keep it tidy. And easier to find things when you need them. Without spending time and getting frustrated looking for things you know you have, but can’t find!

Life feels a lot easier when you can find what you need when you need it. Then easily put things away when you’re done so your home stays tidier and under control.

4. Create good routines and rhythms

Developing good routines and rhythms at home is a great way to make life easier.

Routines and rhythms help you get things done without wasting a bunch of decision-making power. Daily, weekly and other household tasks can happen almost automatically when you have good routines and rhythms.

You don’t need to waste time and energy figuring out what you need to do, how you’ll do it or when you’ll do it. With good routines and rhythms, those tasks are already built into your normal flow. Happening without requiring much extra thought or planning.

Building good routines, rhythms and habits supports you in the moment, supports your future self and helps make life easier in general!

5. Meal plan

Another way to support your future self and make life easier is by meal planning.

We all need to eat. But often, figuring out what to make can be a big pain point for many of us.

Set yourself up for success by planning your meals in advance. Either on a weekly or monthly basis. Making your days easier and meal times less stressful. Especially because meal times are usually when everyone is already tired and hungry!

My favourite way to simplify meal planning even further is by planning once and repeating it.

Make a month-long meal plan with all the meals you and your family love. Then repeat it every month. Making meal planning even easier, while still helping you always know what to make!

6. Make fewer decisions

The more decisions you have to make in a day, the more time and energy you expend making decisions. Not to mention decision fatigue setting in when your brain gets tired of making so many decisions and the quality of your decisions starts to decline.

Make life easier for yourself by reducing the number of decisions you have to make. Think of areas in your life you can simplify to make fewer decisions.

Maybe this means owning fewer items in a category so you have fewer things to decide between.

For example, only own 1 travel mug so you always use the same one each day. Never needing to decide which mug to use.

Or it might mean creating a formula you can repeat so you don’t have to make new decisions each day.

Having a rotating month-long meal plan is a great example of a simple way to have a formula you can repeat to make fewer decisions each day.

Another example is using a capsule wardrobe or uniform dressing to make deciding what to wear faster and easier.

Having a set outfit formula or uniform means you can simply repeat the formula and easily get dressed each day.

A capsule wardrobe simply gives you fewer clothes to choose from to simplify deciding what to wear and reduce the number of decisions you make about getting dressed.

Another example is having a cleaning schedule you follow for household tasks. Instead of having to make as many decisions about what you need to do and when to do it, your schedule makes it automatic.

7. Automate what you can

Another way to make fewer decisions is to automate what you can.

You can automate bill payments to pay bills automatically. You can set up auto deliveries for items you need to buy on a regular basis without needing to remember them on your own.

Setting up automatic savings or investment contributions is another great way to automate a task, make life easier and set your future self up for financial success!

8. Plan ahead

A simple way to make life easier is planning ahead.

Planning ahead helps you avoid forgetting about commitments, tasks or things you need to do. As well as avoid letting things sneak up on you, surprise you or catch you off guard during the week.

Choose a day each week to sit down, look through and plan the week ahead. I find Sunday evenings or Monday mornings are a great time to do this, as the week is just getting started.

Take note of anything scheduled or needing to be done during the week. Plan for any events, commitments or obligations. And generally, plan out your week ahead so you know what needs to get done, will get done.

9. Prioritize your to-do list

A great way to stay on top of what you need to do and make life easier is by prioritizing what’s on your to-do list.

A prioritized to-do list lists the most important things, or your priorities, first.

Then following the list, you aim to do the most important things first. Knowing your priorities are covered and the things that are most important are always getting done.

Using a prioritized to-do list is also a great way to set realistic goals for what you can get done each day. Aim to set 3 – 4 priorities you’ll focus on first each day. This can help keep your to-do list from becoming a never-ending list you will never realistically accomplish and then feel like you’re failing for not keeping up.

Focus on what matters most first. Then be realistic about the time and energy you have to do more.

10. Audit how you spend your time

In addition to identifying the pain points in your day, auditing how you spend your time can be really eye-opening and helpful too.

Track in detail how you spend your time for a week or two. Particularly noticing time-wasting activities. The things you do that eat up your time but don’t add a lot of value back into your life.

Once you’re aware of the time-wasting activities, you can be more conscious of them and aim to spend less time getting sucked into them.

For example, social media can often be a big time waster. Have you ever checked social media, started scrolling and then realize an hour has passed?

Knowing this, you can take steps to pay attention and only spend an amount of time on those apps that feels good to you.

11. Create a good paperwork system

Paperwork is a big source of clutter in many households. Having a good system to deal with paperwork not only keeps it contained and stops paper clutter from taking over. It also makes sure important things aren’t lost or forgotten.

I find it helpful to have hanging folders to keep paper clutter from piling up. Then having a set schedule to deal with the paperwork in those folders each week so I stay on top of things and paperwork doesn’t pile up or get forgotten about.

A big paperwork game changer for me is a suggestion from Dawn at The Minimal Mom. She suggests having a “time will tell” folder. A place to keep all those random papers you don’t necessarily need to do anything with, but might want or need in the future.

Because there are no action items in your “time will tell” folder, it doesn’t really matter if things pile up a bit in it. And it also gives a home to all those random papers you keep in case you need them but don’t have a specific home for.

12. Set boundaries

Setting and holding boundaries is definitely not always easy. But having good boundaries is a great way to protect your time, protect your space and make life easier in the long run.

Boundaries let you prioritize what matters most to you. And keep clutter (both literal and figurative) from filling your home and your schedule.

It’s not always easy to hold a boundary and say no when someone asks for your time. But the more you practice it, the easier it gets. And the more you’re able to keep your time, space and energy for your values, goals and priorities.

13. Embrace a slower pace of life

We live in a busy world. One where there’s often pressure to do more, go faster and always stay plugged in.

But it’s important to remember that it’s ok to stop trying to do it all. In fact, you’ll probably be a healthier, happier, better version of yourself if you slow down and stop trying to do it all!

Intentionally slowing down is a great way to make life feel a little easier. Choosing to do less so you have more time, space and energy for what matters most to you.

14. Take care of you

And finally, one really important way to make life easier is to take good care of yourself. Everything feels harder when you’re exhausted, hungry, stressed, frazzled, overwhelmed, etc.

Prioritize getting enough sleep, fueling your body with good food and taking good care of yourself.

You can’t pour from an empty cup. So do what you need to do to keep your cup full!

How to make life easier

No one’s life is perfect. We all face unexpected challenges at times. There’s nothing you can do to make every day feel easy all the time.

But there are things you can do to make more days feel easier in general. Setting the baseline of life at an easier level. Setting your future self up for success by doing what you can to make life easier overall.

What’s something you do to make life feel a little easier in general? Is it on this list? Leave a comment below and let me know!