A Life Hack I Just Learned

If you are like me, you can have times where you are bombarded with decisions. You get up and you have to decide what to wear, what to eat, you have decisions to make at work, you have decisions to make when you get home, and if you have kids, the decisions seem to multiply exponentially. I have often found myself overwhelmed with so many decisions and choices. I have seen videos and read blogs about minimalism and how it can be freeing for people because it helps to eliminate the overwhelm which can be caused by having too many choices. However, I find that without enough choices, I get bored of the same old things and patterns. My usual favorite methods of making decisions, involve flipping a coin, eenie meenie minee moe, spin the wheel (I like this one here), asking someone else (such as where do you want to eat?), and of course, the detailed layout comparing each thing. Still, I can get decision fatigue and my brain starts to make less healthy choices because of it.

Recently, I started to put my pants on a cycle. Every night, I get changed and then pull-out clothes for the next day. This has been very helpful for me for years, although sometimes I don't because the baby is asleep and I don't want to wake her. What I started doing a few weeks ago is automatically default to the pair of pants at the bottom of the pile then decide what top to wear with it which in turn informs the pair of socks I will wear. By rearranging the order in which I pick my outfit out for the next day and removing the initial decision making, I have an insanely easier time than I did before. It finally feels less stressful and is certainly way less time consuming.

But what if I don't want to wear pants or what if it is too hot for pants? No problem. For me, pants are the default for colder days and skirts are the default for warmer days. You don't have to do it the same exact way as me though. If you prefer shorts, start with the shorts. If you like dresses, put your dresses on a rotation by always pulling the one on the left and putting dresses away on the right side. What this does is create an automatic cycle but because you more than likely aren't putting the clothes away in the same order every time, you get variety and variation in what you wear every day without having to think about it.

I haven't really tried integrating this idea into anything else, but I really think it could help. I don't know if anybody else has thought of this before in this way because I've never seen or heard of anyone talking about it. If you do this already or if you end up implementing it, please let me know if it works for you and how you used this idea. I would love to see other ways it can be implemented. I'm really curious.