Hello all!
Happy February! New month, new start, new goals! Celebrating Valentine’s Day, Galentine’s Day and embracing winter are just a few things I plan to do to make the most out of another winter month.
If you have been around here long enough, you may have picked up that I am a huge fan of Simplified, a planner company by Emily Ley. Every year, her team creates a Simplicity Challenge in January. It’s a list of tasks that take 15 minutes or so for each day of the month. These tasks cover everything from organizing your car, cleaning out a medicine cabinet, restocking a fridge, or writing down a list of meals that are easy to make on busy nights.
You can find their Simplicity Challenge on their website, social media or inside your planner.
When I was in college, I did the Simplicity Challenge and found it to be very helpful at the start of a year and when I was back at school. I adopted some of the skills suggestions in my life back and still use them today. Here’s my Simplicity Challenge from 2019.
Since it’s been a while since I completed a Simplicity Challenge I wanted to do it again.
I completed most of the tasks on the days they were assigned. Some I didn’t since I already incorporate them in my daily life. For example, one of the challenges is to a load of laundry a day. I already do that everyday so I didn’t necessarily have to do it. But there were a handful of things that I did do.
For example, day one is go through and collect any trash or clutter. Right after the holidays I had lots of extra clutter laying around so it was good to get rid of it.
I still live at home and that means sharing a lot of items including food. Cleaning out and organizing the fridge was much needed after the holidays especially lots of extra food, drinks, snacks and people around.
A super easy task was cleaning out my purse. I keep it fairly organized but it’s always good to dump everything out, get rid of any trash and reorganize everything.
Another task is to keep a long standing list of people’s birthdays and put it in your planner so it’s easy to add birthdays and anniversaries year to year. This was such a useful and helpful tool for remembering the important days.
Setting an alarm for very day is something I already do. I like to keep a consistent schedule and that means getting up at the same time on my days off too. It makes it easier on my body to get the same amount of sleep and I get more done when I don’t sleep in.
Cleaning off my computer and getting rid of old files was so helpful to do both on my work and personal computer. I spend a lot of time on my computers so getting rid of old and unneeded files was such a good feeling.
I also cleaned out and organized my notes app. I use this app every day and I use a trick from Emily Ley by using three emojis for what each list is for, it makes it easy to find different notes.
These are just a few examples of all the tasks I completed. I love how these tasks are quick to accomplish they have you focus and simplify different areas of your life without getting overwhelmed. If you have completed the Simplicity Challenge, what were your favorites tasks and challenges? Let me know in the comments below!