Prioritized Living

Master your money. Get organized. Take back your time.

Getting Started with Time Management: Create a Time Map

This post is part 4 in the series Getting Started with Time Management.

Getting Started with Time Management - Create a Time Map

You now have a comprehensive list of what you need to do, what you want to do, and estimates for each activity.  You’ve also got documentation on your where your time currently goes.  It’s time to put it all together!

Enter the time map.

Some people refer to this same tool as a time budget, drawing a nice analogy between planning your time and planning your spending.  Either way, the concept is the same — you plan out your day or week by creating a personalized schedule for yourself.  Here’s the process: [Read more…]

10 Ways I’m a Failure According to Mommy Blogs

10 Ways Im a Failure According to Mommy Blogs

The mommy blogs are silently judging me.

I feel their condemnation every time I scan through pictures of the cool moms’ color-coordinated lives, perpetually clean children, and hyper-organized homes.

There are some things that are just part of motherhood, according to these blogs, and no one bats an eye to question that. No more! I’m not ashamed to admit that I fail to meet these ten “basic” requirements for life as a mom . . .

Read the rest of my recently-published blog post on Parent Co!

Letting Go of Clutter

Letting Go: Why You Should Get Rid of Clutter

Clutter is the enemy of an organized home.  It manifests itself in piles of mystery stuff that grow and spread, but the impact doesn’t end there.  The physical refuse of your life also costs you time, money, fun, and sanity.

Consider these eight reasons to lose the clutter that’s choking your space and your life:

You waste time looking for things.

How much time have you spent trying to find your keys, your kid’s permission slip, that shampoo you could swear you just purchased, your left shoe, or any number of other things?  Clutter is not just an organizational annoyance but a major time suck as well.  You have plenty you want to accomplish with your time.  Going on a frantic scavenger hunt for your belongings probably isn’t on the list. [Read more…]

Make It From Scratch: Fancy Granola

Make It From Scratch - Fancy Granola

Note:  This post contains affiliate links.  Read my policy here.

Granola makes for a delicious breakfast, a great snack, and an excellent and crunchy topping to yogurt.  However, it is seriously pricey to buy (and sometimes the store-bought stuff is still tragically dry and crumbly).  Making your own fresh, amazing granola is easier than you think and insanely inexpensive.  Here’s the cost breakdown:

Cost comparison of granola:

  • Store price:                   $0.19/oz. for the generic stuff up to $0.55/oz. for the premium stuff
  • Price of homemade:  $0.11/oz.
  • Savings:                           41% – 80%

[Read more…]

Don’t Forget These 21 Expenses in Your Budget

Dont Forget These 21 Expenses in Your Budget

Note:  This post contains affiliate links.  Read my policy here.

Just as there can be easily-forgotten activities that suck up our time, there are some expenses that are frequently overlooked but can really add up.  Sometimes we neglect them because they’re infrequent and sometimes because they’re small costs that we pay mindlessly over and over.

Have you remembered to include these 21 expense items in your budget? [Read more…]

Getting Started with Time Management: Track Your Time

This post is part 3 in the series Getting Started with Time Management.

Getting Started with Time Management - Track Your Time

At this point, you’ve performed a brain dump of every activity in your life (and the activities you’d like to include in your life) and have quite possibly recoiled in horror at the magnitude of it all.  Before we attempt to bring order to the chaotic — and pages long — list, we need to do one more step.  In the first post of this series, I said this:

To get on top of your schedule, you need to know what you have, what you don’t have, and what you need.  [Tweet.]

Consider this:  You want to organize your disaster of a closet.  It currently has little to no structure at all, so you know you’ll need to get some closet rods, shelves, bins, and other supplies.  Before you make your purchases, you write down a list of things you’d like to put in your closet and things you remember storing there.  If you stop there and skip off to The Container Store without looking in your closet, you’re in for trouble.  You’ll invariably find 30 clothing items more than you thought you had, along with four-foot stuffed Pooh.  Then it’s back to The Container Store for you . . . with less skipping this time.

Likewise, while it’s a critical starting point and gets you flying down the path to success, it’s not enough to write down what you want in your schedule, what you recall having in your schedule, and what amount of time you estimate that each of those activities occupies.  In order to create a time management plan that truly works for you, you need to see what’s really occupying your time and how long those tasks are really taking. [Read more…]

Hacking Your “System” of Paper Piles

Hacking Your System of Paper Piles

Are you one of those people who carefully creates a “system” of paper piles throughout your house?  Maybe you’ve got thirty distinct mountains of papers in your office, a stash of incoming mail on your coffee table, or some unpaid (or overdue!) bills on your kitchen counter.  If you’re using your paper piles to remind you to do things — pay those bills, write a letter, try a recipe, and more — your system probably isn’t really working . . . and your house might be getting pretty cluttered!

Check out my recent guest blog post, “Hacking Your ‘System’ of Paper Piles,” on Dumb Little Man to find solutions to the problems created by your piles of paper!

Quick Tip: Shrinking Your To-Do List

Quick Tip Shrinking Your To-Do List

Note:  This post contains affiliate links.  Read my policy here.

Floating around in your head, scrawled on a scrap of paper, meticulously documented in a spreadsheet, or penned in a planner is a list of things you need to do this week.  It’s not a short list.  There’s a significant chance that’s it’s an unachievable list — a list that you can not complete in its entirety this week.  Have you inadvertently set yourself up for failure?  That’s no way to start your week.

[Read more…]