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The lazy girl’s guide to getting organised in 2018

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How many of us make New Year's resolutions only to have broken all of them by March? It's the reason I and a lot of you don't make them anymore. Check out the stats above.

I am far too lazy to follow through and I accept my limitations. Instead I just choose one goal for the year and focus on that.

One thing that I have been striving to do for a long time is to be more organised. Life is busy whether you're single or in a relationship and whether you have children or not.

Thanks to technology, it's become a lot easier to get your life together and it's all the help you'll need in setting a goal. Here are simple tips to help you spend the least amount of time getting your life sorted.

Don't check your phone when you wake up

The first thing most of us do in the morning is tap our home buttons and scroll or swipe our screens.

The next thing you know, it's half an hour later and you've been sucked into an Instagram black hole when you just wanted to check your WhatsApp messages or the weather.

If you have kids, get up an hour before they do. This way you can enjoy a cup of coffee in peace, get yourself ready and check your email before your children bring the noise and chaos. This time to yourself is a great way to get focused for the day.

Create an information centre

Put your Google Calendar to good use. You can create several calendars for the different areas of your life such as your personal agenda, the kids’ schedule, one for your work or as a blog content calendar.

My husband and I have shared our calendars with each other and also have a family calendar.

The best part of Google Calendar is that it sends you reminders so you'll always remember to get a gift for that birthday coming up this weekend or a meeting you scheduled months ago.

READ MORE: 5 Instagram accounts that will help ease your new year anxiety

Cleaning schedule

As a lazy person, cleaning is my number one battle. I hate it. It's easier to ignore the mess until it starts giving me anxiety when I finally do a major clean. But I've found that clearing the major clutter zones (e.g. kitchen sink and counter, dining table, night stand) once a day is a big help.

Create a timetable and clean one area per day.

Back up your photos

I take tons of pictures every day and I hadn't thought of automatically backing them up. You'd think that having my phone stolen twice and another one breaking unexpectedly, I would learn this lesson. It took running out of space on my phone to make changes.

Enter Google Photos. Download the app on your phone and set it up to update daily. Once a week, go in to clear space up on your phone.

Visualise it

Having your week planned out and up on the wall is a great way to remember that you need to pick up the dry cleaning on Tuesday or that your son has a swimming gala on Thursday afternoon or you've promised your girlfriends a dinner out to catch up on Friday.

It's also a great way to make sure that everyone knows who is picking up which kid. A great rule is: if it's not on the schedule, it's not happening. That way your partner won't schedule a golf game at the same time you have breakfast scheduled with the girls.

WATCH: 10 ways to be more happy, organised and motivated for 2018

Clean out your inbox

Unroll.me is a great website to see all of the newsletters your subscribed to and you can choose which ones to unsubscribe from.

It's such a liberating feeling to get rid of all that unwanted mail and focus on your important emails.

Get a money management app

Two great apps for managing your money are 22seven and Toshl finance. 22seven is a local app developed by Old Mutual. It's free to download and use. You can see all your finances in one place, create budgets and see your investments.

You can also download the apps on your phone so that you can keep track of your spending in real time.

Have some organising tips of your own to share? Send us a mail and we could feature it in a future article.

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