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These are the 21 things I quit to simplify my life.
But let me start with a quick disclaimer though: I am in no way saying this is the right way to live your life. This is simply me sharing with you some of the things that I quit that I hadn’t even thought about before. Not doing them anymore has improved and simplified my life and has given me some of my time back.
I’m listing them in this article in case you might benefit from some of these as well.
Oftentimes it can feel like we’re just going too fast through our days. One day rolls into the next, and we’re so used to the things we’re doing as we see them on social media or in society in general, that we don’t even second-guess them.
Yet there are things we can quit in order to simplify our lives, have more time for things that matter to us, and even save some money. Feel free to go through this list and see what applies to you and what might be useful.
The 21 things I quit to simplify my life
Feel free to keep reading below or watch the video:
1. Always looking for new recipes on Pinterest
This is something I used to do a lot. If you go to my old food and recipe videos on my channel, you will see that I used to constantly look for new recipes to try. I felt like I had to bring a lot of variety to our meals.
Since those videos, I have found that actually, I don’t need to have all of these fancy recipes that require 20 different ingredients I don’t even have in my cupboards! For so many of them, I would go out and buy ingredients, use a tiny amount, and then I would be left with that ingredient, never to be used again. This felt wasteful.
On top of this, always trying new recipes requires a lot more time to prepare and go through all the new steps.
I’ve now simplified the whole process of meal planning and cooking. I created a list on my phone with recipes that I use regularly. Some of them I’ve made for years now, I know how to make them by heart, I don’t need to have the recipe in front of me, so cooking is so much quicker.
This means that when I meal plan every Sunday, I sit down, go through that list, and pick five dinner recipes. And that’s it, quick and easy! I’ve simplified my life and the whole process takes way less time than before.
2. Doing big food shops in person
Now, ordering grocery deliveries can be expensive, depending on the area or the service that you use. But for our family, we use Tesco Delivery which, for about £8 per month, gives you unlimited deliveries.
We place one big food order every week, so every delivery comes down to about £2. This is really convenient for us, as it saves me so much time and headache. We have a baby and a six-year-old, and going grocery shopping with them in tow wouldn’t allow me to focus and get everything on my list.
Also, being in shops means there’s a lot more impulse buying going on as well. So having groceries delivered saves me not just time and energy, but also money. It’s just brilliant.
And yes, I might pop into the shops now and then to get bits and bobs, but the stress of that big food shop is completely gone as I do that online.
3. Buying or keeping plastic bags
I don’t store plastic bags anymore. We just have two or three reusable carrier bags that we use over and over again. I easily take them with me when we go shopping, and they don’t take up much space in my house.
Some things I buy may sometimes come in plastic bags, that’s inevitable, but apart from that, I don’t buy plastic bags. This has simplified my house and life a lot.
Hands up if you’ve got a plastic bag of bags. I used to have one too!
4. Storing Tupperware without lids
Storing Tupperware without lids felt like I was saving space in my cupboards as I had them stacked into each other. But then I was left with all of these lids on the side that kind of flung around in the drawer and made a mess. Then I’d need one but it was hard to find in all the chaos.
Now I just store each one of them with a lid on. And it turns out, with the lids on, my Tupperware doesn’t take up that much space! How much Tupperware do we really need in our lives anyway? I currently have one drawer with different sizes of Tupperware and that’s it.
5. Testing skincare
Testing skincare can be so tempting, right? You go into the shops, they’re beautifully displayed, they all have these amazing claims on them, ‘removing wrinkles’, ‘making you look young’, ‘making your skin look nourished and pretty’. Of course, it’s very tempting to buy a lot of skincare!
Yet what I have found is that having less and testing less skincare on my skin makes a big difference.
Now I am just sticking to a few basics that I’ve loved for years (mostly CeraVe as they’re fragrance-free), and I use them daily. They work really well for my skin, and I no longer feel the need to be constantly testing new skincare on myself.
6. Feeling like I need to keep up with trends
This is something that I’ve had to be a bit more conscious about and I even unfollowed a few accounts on Instagram and YouTube. It can be so easy to fall into the trap of, ‘Oh, I need this new trouser that’s in right now because the old jeans that I have are not in.’
For me now, it’s more about finding my own style and the things that I love to wear, make me feel good, and feel flattering on my body. I no longer look out for specific trends. I just try to stick to what I know makes me feel good while wearing.
7. Buying because it’s on sale
I used to love bargain shopping, so I know this can be a tricky one. Marketing makes us feel like, ‘Oh, it’s a good sale and if I don’t buy it right now, I’m going to miss out.’
Yet more often than not, it’s usually stuff that we don’t really need or want. Just because the price tag says it’s on sale doesn’t mean you have to buy it. You’re not missing out if you’re not buying that item.
And the reality is, sales come again and again. You’ll always find things for that price. Plus you can always go on Vinted and buy pre-loved. This is what I do now, and I feel like that’s taken a bit of pressure off of feeling like I constantly have to get that ‘bargain’. Nowadays, you can find most things on Vinted for a bargain anyway.
8. Shopping as a way of dealing with feelings
If you know my story, you know that we have gone through quite a few years of infertility, a lot of struggles and several baby losses. I’m so grateful that now we have our second baby, I will never take that for granted! But during those years of infertility, I do feel like I relied on shopping as a way of covering up my feelings.
Whenever I felt down, sad, or had some anxiety about going for fertility testing, I would go and buy something new because it made me feel good in the moment.
Looking back though, I realise I was just filling my house with a lot of clutter and stuff that I didn’t really need. Maybe it would have been more useful to deal with those feelings in a different way. And this is something I’m a lot more mindful about these days.
If you’re in a situation that’s bringing you down and you’re using shopping as a way of dealing with that, I get it, I’ve been there. And I know it can be tricky to find a different way to deal with that kind of stuff.
9. Most of ironing
I quit most of the ironing. Sorry, mom, if you’re reading this!
I very, very rarely iron, maybe a shirt here and there. Our system for the laundry is that once clothes are out of the washer, we hang dry them. For anything that’s more wrinkle-prone (like a T-shirt or dress), I will put it on a hanger to dry, making sure I stretch the fabric a bit if needed. Plus the weight of the material smooths it out a bit as it dries. And when we wear them, our clothes look fine to me.
I know it’s a personal preference, so if you love ironing your clothes, go for it, no judgement here. But I personally don’t need my clothes to be straight when I wear them. And I feel like by not having to iron everything in my wardrobe, I’ve gained a lot of time back.
10. Buying clothes that need a special bra
I am so done with that part of my life! You know what I’m talking about: the strapless items or the things that have a weird cutout for which you need to have a special bra or otherwise, the straps would be visible. I’m done with them. I either don’t buy items like that or I find an alternative.
For example, my bodysuits that I love, I don’t wear a bra with them. I just got little insert pads (you can find them here), placed them on the inside of the bodysuit, and sewed them there. They work perfectly.
Other than these, I no longer buy anything that requires any special type of bra.
11. Using tampons (I’ve replaced them with a menstrual cup)
I quit using tampons and switched to a menstrual cup (I chose the BetterCup).
I think we all know plasticky tampons are not really great for us as they can mess up our hormones. And having endometriosis, I’ve become a lot more aware of these things and I’m trying to be more intentional about stuff like this. So I switched to a BetterCup.
The truth is, I was so terrified by it at first, as it had all sounded so weird to me for the longest time.
But I gave it a try and honestly, I’m never going back.
It’s amazing, and it’s a lot less messy than tampons. Depending on your flow, you only have to empty it in the morning and at night, and sometimes it feels like you’re not even on your period. That’s if you don’t have a condition like endometriosis, but it still makes the whole monthly experience way easier.
12. Buying lots of decor without a space in mind
I used to go into the shops and buy things that I thought were cute, nice, or aesthetic, or that I had seen on Instagram, without having in my mind a space for it in my home or a designated area to put it in. In short, I was overbuying decor items.
Nowadays, I keep my decor quite minimal and simple. I only have a few things that bring a little bit of something to our house, but I don’t have a ton of knick knacks or anything like that.
13. Letting things pile up (like dishes or laundry)
I’m nowadays trying my best to keep on top of dishes and laundry and anything that could result in a pile otherwise.
Yet I have two small children, so I can’t spend all day cleaning or tidying up my house. What I can do is implement small routines here and there to keep on top of things. I even wrote a separate article on one-minute habits that take little amounts of time and effort but give big results.
The thing is, being more minimal and having less stuff actually means you don’t have that many things that would pile up anyway.
14. Keeping many hand-me-downs from one child to another
I might’ve quit this because there’s quite a big age gap between my children of 5 years, plus a gender difference, having a boy and a girl, and their seasons are a bit off.
I did initially keep some baby items from my first baby for my second. Yet when we were going through infertility, those items used to make me sad a lot of the time, thinking that I may or may not ever use them again.
And then, when we did have our second baby, I realised a lot of those items I had kept didn’t fit when they were supposed to as my second baby is tinier and born in a different season. So I had kept clothes for over 5 years and ended up never using them and passing them on to a charity shop or friends.
This made me realise it can be a waste of resources for me to keep in my loft a whole bunch of baby or children’s clothes that may or may not ever be worn again. Plus keeping clothes adds a lot to our mental load, having to remember what clothes we have and having to go through them every time they grow or the season changes.
So I no longer keep many hand-me-downs. If I have certain items that I really love and I do want to pass on, I do keep some in the loft, but not that many.
15. Notifications on my phone
I’ve mentioned this before, and people were surprised by this because I am on social media. But that’s the truth, I actually don’t keep notifications ON on my phone, whether that’s Instagram, YouTube or other platforms.
Yes, phone calls and messages are ON, because I might get a message from a friend or a phone call from school or the doctor’s. But that’s it, all other notifications are off.
If I do have the time to go on social media, I can always go and check my messages or likes on Instagram. And that’s the thing, social media is always there for me when I want to go and spend time on it. I don’t need it to constantly distract me and pull my focus away.
16. Watching or listening to the news
I have quit trying to keep on top of the news for quite a while now. I realised what a negative effect they were having on me. I am quite empathetic and things that happen in the world can affect me a lot and make me feel really down.
There’s a fine balance here because of course, I want to be informed and be aware of what’s going on in the world. At the same time, I don’t feel like I need to be constantly on there reading every piece of news as this is just going to affect my mental health. I can’t afford that, I need to have strong good mental health for my children and my family.
And even though I don’t watch the news anymore, I do hear all the news. I will inevitably see it on social media and Instagram, and I will hear from my friends. I’m not out of the loop completely, I still hear about the important things going on in the world. They just have a lower impact on my mental health as I am not constantly exposed to it.
17. People pleasing
I say I quit people pleasing, but I still feel like it’s a work in progress. I used to be someone who cared a lot about what other people thought of me and tried to make other people happy, even at the expense of my own happiness.
In the last few years, I’ve been more intentional about this and tried to preserve my energy and strength. I feel like I need to have that to be able to take good care of my children and to be more present.
18. Overstuffing my to-do list
I used to make this huge to-do list on my phone. This list would honestly make me feel overwhelmed and less inclined to go and tackle things. Or I would tackle only two or three things and feel like a failure because I didn’t check all or most of them.
What I do now for my daily to-do list is pick three, maybe four tasks that are the main things that I want to accomplish for the day. For example, today I’m filming two videos and I’ve got a Reel to post on Instagram. These are the three main tasks that I’m doing for my work.
Simplifying my to-do list helped a lot!
19. Feeling like we “need” expensive family holidays every year
I know this is something that can be such an easy thing to compare, especially with social media around. People go on holiday, and they will post pictures showing how much fun they’re having. And why shouldn’t they? It’s not a bad thing! They’re having fun and want to share that, and it’s probably one of the times when they get to spend a lot of quality time with their family, so that’s something to celebrate.
You just need to be mindful when you go on social media and see all of those pictures and remember that you don’t have to do that. You don’t have to go on expensive family trips every single year to make fun memories. As for our children, spending time with them and being together is what they care about. Just doing something fun together is enough, whether that’s in the UK or a different country.
In our case, we were trying to buy a house (which we did, a few months ago) and we had been saving up for a deposit, which can be a huge chunk of money. So we prioritised that over having a lot of family trips.
This is not to say I don’t want to travel! I think travelling is a very enriching experience, and we do want to travel more in the future. But it’s also okay to not have five family trips this year. Be mindful and try not to compare and feel like you’re missing out.
20. Using credit cards
This might be controversial, but we quit using credit cards a while ago. We were never really big credit card users to begin with.
Yes, banks will tell you that having a credit card and having a good credit score is going to help you buy a house or get a mortgage, but I don’t feel like that’s the case. Bear in mind that I’m not a financial expert, I’m just speaking from our experience. Yet I think that having a credit card can impact you negatively as it increases the chances of you spending money that you don’t have. Because that’s what credit cards are all about.
In our case, we stopped using credit cards altogether. We don’t own one anymore, we only have debit cards, and therefore we only spend the money that we actually make and have.
Quitting credit cards can also save you a lot of money as you will avoid having to pay interest on them, which can add up quite a lot.
21. Exchanging gifts with my husband because we have to
My husband and I quit exchanging gifts just because we have to, be it for Christmas, birthdays, or other occasions.
Yes, we do still exchange gifts. If I have an idea of something I think my husband would really like and use, I will buy that for him without it being a special occasion. And that’s the thing, both of us being adults, I feel like I don’t ‘need’ to buy him things because he will usually buy them for himself. The same goes for me. He’s not going to know what dress I want or what book I want to read unless I specifically tell him.
Sometimes there’s this myth that the strength of the relationship is shown by how much your partner knows exactly what to buy for your birthday. But I think there’s more to a relationship than that, and for us, it’s not about that. So, we just quit buying random gifts for each other.
We got to the end of my list and I’m wondering what you think of it, or if you can relate to any of these points, so do let me know in the comments below.
And is there something else you would add to this list? What have you quit that simplified your life? I would love to hear from you as I might grab some of your tips to implement them in my life.