austin-moms-blog-apps-to-simplify-life

It’s a new year, and if you’ve already fallen off the resolution wagon have no fear. You still have 10 more months to make up for it. While mine are still to drink less coffee (3 cups today), workout more (does lifting a toddler count?), and eat healthier (hello, Twix, you look delicious), I do have one that is sticking well. That is to “simplify” my mommy life.

Now while some may argue that technology is what is making our life harder, I’m here to disagree. There are several apps out there that can help a great deal to keep your life simple with just a click of a button. Here are five of my favorite apps that I’ve been using to greatly simplify my day-to-day shenanigans. Plus, they are all free!

unroll.me (Email spam)

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Anyone who wakes up and immediately checks their inbox knows that spam can take over — here was me most mornings “OHHH!! Tea is having 50 percent off — must. buy. now” OR “Kendra Scott is doing 2-for-1 earrings? Say whaaaaaa! Must buy as Christmas present for EVERYONE.” However, with this app, you can simply click what you want to still be in your inbox that you subscribe to, or unsubscribe from a ton of what you don’t want to see. If you still want to be tempted, but just don’t want all the messages in your inbox, it can show up as ONE email with a nice little list that you scroll through quickly.

Chorma (Cleaning Schedule)

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Pick up your living room/play room/toy area every day. It makes such a difference to see it clean — plus with my crazy shedding pug I run the “Roomba” every day. That in itself makes my life more simple and my floor that much cleaner. However, for around the house I was using was a simple cleaning schedule printout from Pinterest — but that feeling of “checking” it off wasn’t doing it for me. So I found an app Chorma that I can make a list to schedule for each day of the week. You can even share the app with different house members to share the wealth of cleaning.

Food.com (What Ingredients Do I Have? Recipe App)

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I have a major obsession with Pinterest to find recipes. However, I hate that I have ingredients and I don’t use them up because I’m on to another recipe the next day. The app Food.com puts it all together and lets you input an ingredient to search for recipes that fall into that category. You can get the ingredients added to a grocery list AND shop for sales in your area to add to your grocery list.

Mint (Budget)

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Sometimes it’s hard to see the big picture of what you are spending. Mint allows you to see spending trends for each month. You can sync it with your credit card/ bank account to see the big picture of what you’re spending all in one location. You can set personalized bill reminders, it will give you alerts about spending, and you can set up your own budgets for particular categories.

iCal (Put everything on your calendar)

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Now I love Apple for some time — I love how my phone syncs with my computer and my iPad — to me it’s glorious and one less step to add to everything. But most of the time my husband didn’t know what was going on with our days — so now I have him “subscribed” to my calendar. Anything I add goes right on his iPhone AND sends him an update. It’s been a savior for being Miss Forgetful and Mr. Forgetful.

What are your favorite apps to simplify life?

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