Life is starting to return to normal and that’s something worth celebrating… but getting back to work, socialising and spending more time out of the house in general might leave you with less time and money for household tasks.

To help you rebalance your life, free time and finances in a post-lockdown world, here are some handy ways to ease the burden of looking after your home.

Cleaning

Simply keeping your household clean and tidy can sometimes feel like a monumental task all on its own. Fortunately, that doesn’t need to be the case. Here are a few tips to lighten the load…

Buy Universal Cleaning Products
As great as purpose-specific cleaning products are, sometimes it’s just too much of a financial burden to buy different sprays, wipes and detergents for every part of your house – not to mention the time spent searching for them all. Universal and all-purpose cleaning products are a godsend when you just want to get things looking spick and span without dilly-dallying. The Pink Stuff, for example, is both super affordable and capable of deep-cleaning a wide range of surfaces and materials, ranging from pans and cookers to glass and garden furniture!

Go Minimalist
By adopting a more minimalistic approach to your home, you’ll save a ton of money and plenty of time cleaning. With fewer unnecessary items cluttering your household, there will naturally be fewer things to dust, wipe down, wash and vacuum beneath. This will also mean using fewer chemicals and cleaning products too, making cleaning even more affordable. And, to top it all off, a minimalistic mindset will help you prevent splashing out and spending on things you don’t really want or need in the future.

Cooking

Even those of us who love to cook know that it can be a time-consuming and costly activity. Read on if you want to cut down the time you spend in the kitchen!

Bulk Cook
To avoid having to cook every night after a long day out at work or a weekend out with friends and family, try bulk cooking your lunch or dinner for the whole week on a Sunday. Not only does this save hours every week by making sure you don’t have to cook every night, but it also helps out financially. If you’re only buying the ingredients you know you’re going to use, feeding yourself or your family for the week will cost less and you’ll not be as likely to splash out on takeaways and ordered food instead. On that note, bulk cooking makes it easier to eat healthily too, so it’s a win all around!

If you consider giving bulk cooking a go, make sure you have the ovenware you need to prep multiple days worth of food in one session.

Freeze Your Food
Figuring out how much food you’re going to need during your weekly shop can be quite the dilemma. Far too often do we overbuy, and this leads to food going past its use-by date and getting chucked as a result. By freezing your leftover or uncooked food before it goes bad, you can end up with a full freezer to turn to if you’re ever in need. This saves time and money – and that’s not to mention what a pleasant surprise it can be when you open your freezer to see one of your favourite meals or ingredients just waiting to be thawed and cooked up!

Gardening

Who doesn’t love gardening in the summer months? It’s just a shame that gardening, like many hobbies, occasionally becomes more stressful than it is fun – especially if you need to keep forking out on new tools, or if your expensive plants aren’t making it through the summer as you hoped. Here are some steps to take to nip such dilemmas in the bud!

Take Care of Your Tools
Gardening tools aren’t cheap, so replacing them when they get too rusty or stiff is the last thing you want when spring comes around. However, by using protective sprays to save your tools from rust and corrosion, this doesn’t need to be a worry any longer. Keep your shears shining and your spades sparkling with some anti-corrosion and anti-rust solution, and you can make gardening a breeze once more!

Start With Seeds
Kicking the gardening seasons off with seeds is a great way to massively reduce the cost of a beautiful garden. Fresh plants or seedlings tend to come with a larger price tag, but packets of seeds can be picked up for mere pennies. Besides, isn’t it much more rewarding to know you nursed the plants growing in your garden from scratch anyway?

Travel Prep

Getting ready to travel is time-consuming, not to mention costly when you aren’t sure what you are or aren’t going to need to buy or prepare for your trip. Take some of the stress out of packing and prepping for your travels before you even leave your home with the following tips.

Use a Portable Charger
Running out of battery on your gadgets during your travels is a nightmare, especially if you’re relying on them for tickets, maps, documents and any other vital travel information. This is where portable chargers come to the rescue. Not only do they allow you to stay charged on the go, but they also take away the need to rush around pre-charging all of the gadgets you’re taking with you at home beforehand. Talk about a time saver!

Weigh Your Luggage Before You Fly
If you’re flying somewhere, accidentally overpacking for a holiday is a downer for a number of reasons. First of all, having your suitcases and luggage exceed the weight allowance for your flight can cost a small fortune. Not only that, but not knowing how much your luggage weighs while you’re sorting out your suitcase can result in hours of packing and unpacking, trying to make sure you’ve got everything you need without overburdening yourself. Fortunately, digital weighing scales for luggage make this whole process so much simpler, helping you avoid the oft-expensive risk of overpacking altogether.

General Maintenance

We all love taking pride in our home, but maintaining it sometimes feels like more stress than it’s worth – whether it’s the amount of time you put into it or the amount of money you spend on it. So, to finish off, let’s take a look at how you can cut back on both when it comes to the general maintenance of your home and its appliances.

Repair, Don’t Replace
The amount of money that often gets spent on repairing home appliances that are actually perfectly repairable is staggering. Next time you find an appliance not working as well as it could in your home, be it your fridge, washing machine or oven, make sure you take a good look at it to see if a quick fix can save it from the scrap heap. This could save you a fortune!

If you aren’t feeling especially confident about identifying your appliance’s faults, don’t worry. We’ve all been there. That’s why we have our Appliance Repair Help & Advice Centre, to make fixing your appliances easier and to save you from the costly endeavour of buying new ones when it isn’t actually necessary.

Thank you for taking the time to read our guide to saving time and money at home! Speaking of which, if you’re trying to find some quick or temporary repairs to save some money on household faults or damage until payday comes, check out our blog post on How to Get Powerful Temporary Fixes Using Tape.

Tags: Money Saving, Money Saving Advice, Money Saving Tips, Time Saving