There are several things I do to make life easier.  I am all about outsourcing and planning ahead – while this takes a bit of coordinating, I have found that things go so smoothly with these handy tricks.

Amazon Prime/Amazon Subscribe & Save/Amazon Dash

With a small annual membership fee, Amazon Prime gets you free shipping, 2 day delivery on literally anything.  I go to Target for fun, not because I ran out of wipes.  It is so nice to be able to read reviews on items, and have them magically show up at your door.  Plus, items are often sold for less money on Amazon Prime.  Coffee, clothes, toys….anything you need, and you can access it online or from an app on your phone.

Subscribe & Save is a program available through Amazon Prime, and you can save up to 20% on certain items when you subscribe to them.  I use this for baby items that I know how much I need of regularly: diapers, wipes, formula, and diaper genie refills.  There are thousands of more options, these are just examples of what I subscribe to.  I don’t even have to think, should I order more diapers?  They show up every month, and I get that awesome discount.

Amazon Dash is new – you can purchase these little buttons that you stick wherever you want and when  you run out of something or want to re-order, you press the button and THAT IS IT.  It sends the order to your Amazon account and the product arrives 2 days later.  I have Dash buttons for Clorox Wipes, toilet paper, paper towels, detergent, and trash bags.  The Dash button for toilet paper is next to the toilet paper in my hallway closet, so when I open the closet and notice I’m running low, I press the button right there.

Grocery and Meal Delivery

I used to go grocery shopping with my toddler; it was kind of fun to walk around and talk about the different foods, and he would always want a peach and it was super cute to watch him chow down.  Then I got pregnant, and it just physically became hard to get my son and all the groceries back in the house.  So I went to Vons online instead; you can save lists of items that you order so that after your first order, it is super fast to re-order items again.  There is a small delivery fee, but being able to order groceries from my couch, and then have them show up the next day and brought into my kitchen for me is heavenly.  There are several different grocery stores that do this – there is actually an Amazon app called Prime Now that allows you to order groceries as well in certain locations from fancy places like Sprouts.

I also get 3 meals a week delivered through a company called Gobble.  I used to use Sunbasket, because they have incredible organic, free-range ingredients, but for newborn time I switched to Gobble because the meals take 10 minutes to put together instead of 30.  But hello, even 30 minutes start to finish is a time saver!  You choose from a menu the meals you want delivered, and they show up in a cooler with pre-measured ingredients and recipe cards.  I store the meals in my fridge until I am ready to cook them (I usually cook them in advance, I don’t like trying to cook at 5pm) and they are healthy and delicious.  There are tons of competitors as well so plenty of options to choose from!  So then the other nights we either go out to eat, order in, or make something simple at home.  I am not a master chef so without this, we would be eating sandwiches every night.  I plan our meals out for the week using this adorable template.

Chore Checklist

I keep track of chores that need to be done daily, weekly, and monthly on an app called Chore Checklist Lite.  This really helps me break things up throughout the week instead of waiting until I realize the laundry is piling up and deciding to do it.  I used to hate doing chores, and now I actually love it just because I get to check things off in the app.  Here are my chores for reference (also, I have a housecleaning service come twice a month.  Again, I love outsourcing – this is why you won’t find any deep cleaning type chores on my list!)

Daily: Put away children’s toys, wash dishes, wipe off counters, take out trash/recycling. (This takes about 10 minutes total, and can be done while enjoying a glass of wine.  It is an easy way to wrap up the night, and it is glorious to wake up to an organized house).

Weekly: Sunday – laundry, Sunday – meal prep, Monday – empty diaper trash, Monday – pay daycare, Tuesday – put dry cleaning outside (because I use a service, another life hack!), Wednesday – laundry, Thursday – plan meals and place grocery order, Friday – nothing because I love Fridays!, Saturday – vacuum kitchen

Set up Several Diaper Changing Stations

I like to set up a diaper changing station in every room that we hang out in – instead of running around trying to find a diaper and wipes, I can just change within one minute.  For example, I have diapers, wipes, and a diaper genie set up in each kid’s room, plus one downstairs where we spend most of our time.

Order Extras of Most Used Items

With my first son, I had 4 bottles and was constantly washing them until my coworker was like, why don’t you order more bottles?  Duh!! That way, I could throw the bottles in the sink and clean them at the end of the day since I had plenty of unused ones for the next feeding.  I loved this idea so much that I thought, what else could I use more of?  Here is what else I stock up on: crib sheets, swaddles, pajamas.  This totally cuts down on the need to do laundry frequently.

Offer Bottles Cold or Room Temp

So this topic came up on a message board I was checking out and some women were so offended at the thought of not warming up every bottle that was given to baby and I thought they were being so silly!  If baby does not care about the temp of the milk/formula, why should you?  I used to warm my first’s bottles…until one day when he was crying and I was frantic and forgot to warm the bottle and just gave him a cold formula bottle straight out of the fridge and he guzzled it right down.  My second baby has no idea what a warm bottle would even feel like.  This makes outings convenient too if baby needs a bottle!