or
Does it seem like you’re not maximizing the amount
of time you can devote to writing your books to
inform/entertain your readers and hopefully make
good money doing so? I can relate to your dilemma.
As one who moved into my own house just
under a year ago, I have been swamped with
repairs and projects. Although I still
have a good ways to go before I’m fully time-efficient
as a content producer, I have learned a lot and will
share my tips on how you can have more time to
write your books, beginning now.
More efficient bathing
• I recommend taking showers instead of baths. It
takes awhile for bath water to run, it’s hard to wash
your hair in a bath, you must rinse out the tub
afterwards and it’s a waste of water, leading to a
higher water bill. Instead of taking a shower/bath
every day, consider taking one every three days and
just washing up your private area on the days in
between.
• The best thing you can do for quicker showers is to
have a good shower head and a good bathtub valve.
After I replaced the shower head I inherited upon
moving into my new house a year ago, I immediately
began having warmer shower water but the water
still wasn’t fully as hot as I would have liked and my tub
faucet soon began leaking nonstop. Many weeks ago, I
had to have a plumber replace the cartridge in my valve
once I was no longer able to run any shower or bath
water. This has already paid dividends on my time in
which my faucet water is now so warm that I don’t have
to waste a minute or two letting the water warm up
before commencing my shower.
• Once you start your shower, wet your hair all over then
shut off the water then lather your hair then rinse your
hair then wet your underarms plus your private area and
buttocks then wet your washcloth, your back brush and
your bar of soap then shut off the water and keep it off
until it’s time to rinse your whole body. If you do all this,
you’ll lower your water bill and likely help the
environment but more importantly, you will surely
extend the lifespan of your shower head immensely as
you lower the overall amount of hot water you use while
bathing; the fewer times you must buy a new shower
head then install it, the more time you have.
Searching for items around your home and elsewhere
less
• It drives me crazy to waste vast time searching for
something. Besides being organized regarding the
placement of everything in your home, it helps to
visualize or verbally tell yourself where you’re
putting something you may not use immediately or
often such as paint, pet shampoo or insect spray.
• Stay aware of what’s on your person at all times.
While mowing my dad’s lawn lately, I had a small
book I brought along tucked inside my partially
buttoned shirt.
At one point, I realized the book was missing;
subsequently, I spent several minutes looking for it
around the front yard and back yard before finding it
on the western side yard behind a hedge. If I had
constantly felt my body for my book, I could have
avoided this predicament.
Making your socks last longer
Long toenails puncture socks. By always keeping
your toenails short, you should rarely have to go to
the store or conduct an online search to buy new
socks.
Smart refrigeration
• The most important step you can take to prolong
the life of your fridge is to keep it out of direct
sunlight and away from heat sources such as
radiators, stoves and microwave ovens.
• To ensure your unit works properly and to
keep the food inside it colder, make sure
there is five inches of space between this unit and
the wall behind your fridge and on the sides of
this appliance. Also, avoid keeping bags and boxes
alongside any part of your refrigerator. Don’t
overload any part of your icebox, including the
produce drawers, because food requires ample
circulation to stay fresh.
• While refrigerating items like blackberries and
raspberries, keep them sealed in Ziploc bags so
they don’t leak juice into your fridge and thus
make you lose time wiping up the juice as you
try to keep this spill from permeating the rest of
your produce crisper drawer.
• A living organism, mold requires the existence
of moisture in your fridge to thrive. If you opt to
rinse off produce before eating it, make sure to
dry whatever quantity of the produce you don’t
immediately eat before putting it back in the
fridge; if you want to immediately reuse a food
storage container like I often do, rinse it out
then fully dry it before putting it back in the
fridge with food in it.
In the event your unit has a natural tendency to
drip water from its ceiling like mine and you
can’t fight this by wiping up the water with paper
towels and lowering the coldness setting in your
fridge, I recommend freezing any leftovers you
want to have for another meal within the next
few days if you think the food will become moldy
in the refrigerator before you’re ready to eat it
again based on your gut or prior experience.
• Buy organic milk instead of regular milk which
generally spoils or turns completely watery
before the former. Refrigerate your milk
immediately upon returning home and make
sure it’s the first item you put away – adding a
pinch of salt to it can help. In the event it comes
out a little watery while pouring it into a bowl,
shake it up and it should be okay for staying in
good condition for at least two weeks. Before I
began buying organic milk a few weeks ago, the
regular milk I was buying in recent times would
always turn watery within a few days and stay
watery, no matter how much I shook the jug
and no matter its expiration date which I
paid attention to before making the purchase.
Now that I’m purchasing organic milk, I no
longer have to waste roughly twenty minutes
walking to my nearest convenience store to buy
more milk then returning home.
Fast internet speed/proper computer care
• If your internet speed is always slow, your
productivity can dramatically lag – for a fast
connection, please use Spectrum or AT&T.
• If you can make all your computers last
close to ten years or longer, imagine how
many more writings you can finish.
Refrain from eating and drinking anything
at your device which is sticky or likely to
get under one of your keys, protect your
device from direct sunlight and turn it off
if you’re likely to be away from it for at
least an hour, as excessive heat buildup
can shorten the life of your computer.
• Keep your blinds, curtains and shades
closed in the room you keep your computer
in while you’re away from home or while
you’re at home but out of your computer
room while there’s sunlight coming
through the windows there.
• When there is lightning and thunder in
your area, keep both your computer and
your radio turned off to protect these
devices.
Having good TV reception
• If you usually have to make too much TV
or antenna adjustment upon turning on
your TV set, you’re losing too much time. If
you use a SOLID SIGNAL antenna for your
your set like me, place it against the nearest
window for optimal reception. My biggest
problem is I don’t always get all the
channels I want. I’ve had this unit since
2015; when it stops working, I plan to buy a
big replacement for it then buy an antenna
that goes on the roof to consistently get
great reception.
• Never let your SOLID SIGNAL antenna
be exposed to direct sunlight. Remove it
from your window once you’re done
watching TV for the day or night.
Smarter Yard Work
• The most important thing you can do to
get the most of your lawn care is to spend at
least 400 to 500 bucks on a powerful, self-propelled
lawn mower which will likely last at least a few
years and makes cutting your grass quicker and
less strenuous upon your squeezing the third
handle which shifts your mowing from manual
mode to automatic mode.
• I urge you to mow any grass you can truly mow
rather than spraying it with weed & grass killer
because grass will often come back to life or
stay alive despite your spraying it. If there is any
grass on your lawn you just cannot mow because
it grows against a fence or any part of your home
or is otherwise just too deep to mow in some
areas, spray it as many times as it takes to keep it
out of commission for a while or to kill it altogether.
• Don’t mow any part of your lawn when it’s too
short, muddy or saturated – wait until grass is
about 2 to 3 inches tall before cutting it.
There should be times when you can skip mowing
your back lawn, your side lawn or parts of your
front lawn for about a week or two, easily giving
you at least 20 to 30 minutes of extra time in
your busy lifestyle.
• Besides cutting your portion of the side yard
you share with next-door neighbors, cut theirs
too, as it is irresponsible and doesn’t look good
if you only mow your side. Who knows? If you
do this for them, they may do it for you in
return, and this saved time may be huge for you
on any given day.
• Change the direction you mow your lawns from
week to week; if you mow from north to south
this week, mow east to west next week. This is
necessary to make your lawn grow evenly and to
prevent clumps of dirt from forming, which
makes mowing take longer.
• Always wear noise reduction headphones and
safety glasses while cutting grass. I recommend
buying safety glasses over goggles because the
strap on any goggles you get may come loose at
any point and you may then have too much
trouble fixing this. Before you don your safety
glasses, inspect them for cracks and scratches.
Wipe off any dust sitting on this eye wear.
• Don’t fill up your mower with gasoline indoors,
as this may cause carbon monoxide poisoning.
• Always keep a little bit of lawn mower engine
oil inside your mower and check to see that it’s
lubricated before you begin mowing each day you
cut grass. Putting in too much oil can lead to
smoke and an overheated mower and thus make
it too hard to resume cutting grass before you
can have a qualified technician fix your
appliance. A good way to see if you have the
right amount of oil is to pull out your oil cap stick
and check to make sure this stick only gathers oil
for about an inch starting from the bottom of the
stick.
• Before mowing, apply nonstick cooking spray
all over the circumference underneath your
mower, including the blade, to discourage
grass cuttings from adhering to your appliance;
before I began doing this, I lost as much as 10 to
15 minutes pulling out grass from under my
appliance on each grass cutting day.
• To prevent oil from running out of its
cartridge, particularly if your mower is a Briggs &
Stratton mower, lock your ignition cord by pulling
it toward your handle bar and slipping the top of
your cord underneath your handle bar key
which is shaped like a hook before tilting your
lawn mower to spray it or to remove grass from
it; always keep one hand off the handle bars
while pulling your cord with your other hand
when you want to lock it.
• Take a few moments to pick up any sticks,
pebbles, rocks, papers, bags and wrappers you
see on your grass before mowing over it; this will
save you time in the long run as you help preserve
your mower.
• When snipping off a tree or shrub branch, cut
off as much of it as you can so that it takes many
weeks to grow back. Before doing your trimming,
make sure there are no bees or wasps on what
you’re about to cut. Don’t leave any
wasp-containing structures dangling over your
lawn. If you accidentally knock one down while
mowing the lawn, wait til it’s vacated before
you toss it out of your way to a safe location then
resume mowing; if the wasps return, cut off your
mower and wait for the wasps to go away before
continuing.
• Speaking of shrubs, if you inherit(ed) a
property with poison ivy shrubs/bushes like me
and you’ve reached the point where you have
the thing down to a stub, cover it and any
surrounding weeds with a heavy brick/stone or a
wide, long board or a weed tarp you can buy from
The Home Depot (before going to one of their
stores to buy certain items like weed tarps, check
to see if it’s in stock at the location of your choice
besides viewing the item ratings on their website)
– I have found this to be the best way to kill off
poison ivy for good.
• Never make my mistake of buying an aluminum
shed whose retail cost is about 300 to 400 dollars,
as it will probably break down soon. I recommend
investing in an expensive, quality shed like the
Woodbridge by Arrow shed I recently bought then
buy a Master Lock for your shed once you’re done
having someone help you assemble it – using a
cordless power drill will be of major help.
• If you use a shed instead of a garage, you run
out of gasoline while your mower is close to the
street and you haven’t brought your gas can close
to your front yard from your shed which you
may keep a long distance away in the backyard,
take your mower with you toward the back of
your house so nobody can run off with your
appliance.
Reducing your trips to places like The Home
Depot/expediting your store visit
When I go to The Home Depot to buy something
I’ll have to continue using for awhile like weed
killer, I buy four bottles of it so I don’t have to
return to buy more of it too soon. If I have come
to buy multiple items and I’m running out of
time to get out of there in time to catch my bus
and not have to wait an hour for the next one,
I’ll settle for just getting up to half the items I
came for then head to the checkout line.
Streamlined Grocery Shopping
• Try going grocery shopping every 2 weeks
instead of weekly. Besides gaining more spare
time overall, it makes sense to do this,
considering that you can often make milk and
produce last two weeks.
• You’ll get out of the store faster by bringing a
well-written grocery list for which you have
ample space between each item, you can
easily read your handwriting and you have
organized your list according to where all the
items in the store are located and in what aisles;
once you finish making the list, double check to
make sure you haven’t omitted any items you
usually buy and those you specifically intend to
get on your next trip.
• As you get close to grocery shopping day,
check your cupboards, shelves and food boxes
to see if there’s anything you need to get now
because you eat it regularly or you may need it
for an upcoming dish. Cross off any items on
your list which you discover you don’t need to
get come shopping day or just before that day.
• Check to make sure you got all the cold items
you need before departing the refrigerated and
frozen foods section; it can be a big hassle to
check your list later in your store visit then
discover you must go all the way back to the
other side of the store to get a cold item you
neglected to get when you were just over there.
• Seek canned goods that come with a pull tab –
it often takes a lot of time and effort to open cans
that don’t have a pull tab, no matter how good your
can opener is supposed to be and no matter how
clean you keep it. Spend extra time seeking tabbed
cans once your chances for catching the bus
that’s due to arrive soon diminish.
• Before buying meats such as steaks and ribs,
make sure they have lots of white marble – the
more marble they contain, the less tough they
will be to cut up and eat.
• If you find it tough to open a clear produce
bag attached to other bags on a roll in the
grocery store, pull the front part of the bag to
the baseline of your hand then rub the bag in a
circular motion with your other hand.
• Split up your grocery store runs if you ride the
bus and go to more than two grocers. Every two
weeks, I go to Schnucks (where I buy many items)
late in the week then within the next two days, I
go to Dierberg’s to buy a few items then make a
7-minute walk to Goeke’s to buy many fruits and
vegetables or vice versa; when I did all my
grocery shopping at Dierberg’s and Goeke’s, I
usually either missed my bus going home then
waited an hour for the next bus or I had to catch
my bus, go home then soon leave back out to go to
the store I bypassed, only to have to wait about an
hour to ride home upon returning to the area. The
buses that run on the number 61 route near the
Schnucks location closest to me run 15 to 20
minutes apart during certain weeks or months, 35
to 40 minutes apart during other periods of time.
Check off all items you buy on the first leg of your
multiple day grocer run once you get home and
have put everything away.
• If you like to choose paper bags for your
groceries at the checkout line, ask the cashier
or grocery bagger to double bag your groceries
immediately at the beginning of your checkout
and pay attention to make sure your items
aren’t being put into plastic bags. Double-paper
bags are less likely to break than single-paper bags.
• Have your cash or credit card/debit card in your
hand while your items are rung up.
• Before removing your paper bags from
your cart upon exiting the store, grab them
by their sides or their bottoms rather than their
tops.
• Grab all your bags at once without
consolidating them if the expected arrival of
your bus is very imminent.
• Because I’m doing all this stuff for my trips,
I’m putting myself in a situation where I’ll
rarely miss my bus after having bought
food.
How to open cans and jars
• To open cans which have a pull tab, pull the tab
back fast then pull it up hard to reduce the likelihood
of the tab breaking off.
• When encountering tough-to-open jars, use a bottle
opener to pry open their lids.
• To open cans of refrigerated biscuit dough,
follow the directions on the can and simply
peel the outer label of the can along the arrow
until the lid automatically pops up; you don’t
have to waste time using a can opener for this
like I initially did.
Reduced cooking time
• Consider cooking two days a week then
having leftovers throughout the week. I cook
Fridays and Saturdays then have leftovers
from Friday’s meal on Sunday and Tuesday,
eat leftovers from Saturday’s meal on Monday
and Wednesday then generally microwave or
bake a quick meal on Thursdays – this makes
things so much easier on me, as I work outside
my home full time.
• I endorse the Oster food chopping machine for
chopping up veggies into small pieces.
• I recommend buying green or purple cabbage
regularly because it’s very nutritious, it’s likely to
last you a few weeks each time you buy it and you
can rapidly prepare it for cooking by tearing off
large chunks from your cabbage head.
Giving your dog a haircut every three weeks during
hot weather/retaining your grip
• Cutting my dog’s hair every 3 Saturdays during the
warm months provides a fine balance between
giving him too few hair cuts and cutting his hair
too often.
• To prevent your dog from giving you the slip as
you take him/her for a walk, use a tight leash whose
grip your companion won’t be able to wiggle out of.
Reducing the amount of flies in your home
• If you’re constantly going after flies in your home,
you won’t be able to do much pertaining to your
writings. You can pour bleach and hot water down
your sewer drain plus fight flies with a fly
swatter, bug spray and your bare hands but you can
foil them more effectively with the prevention
measures covered below.
• Look for where flies are coming from and
tape up cracks and gaps on your windows
and storm doors plus holes in your basement walls
and ceiling through which flies can enter your home
with Gorilla tape you can get from The Home Depot.
Ever since I taped up the gaps between the panes on
my basement windows many weeks ago, I have
stopped houseflies, which must be the most annoying
flies in existence, from invading my home.
• If flies are raiding your fridge
and the coldness inside it isn’t killing them, seal up
all produce and any other items you have in there.
If you cut off these pests’ food supply, they’ll surely
perish from food deprivation and stress overload
and thus be unable to keep reproducing.
• If a mosquito enters your home but it gets
away as you try to kill it, apply insect
repellent which repels mosquitos all over
your neck, your arms, your legs, your feet and
behind your ears. Spray your pets well.
• You can pour fruit-flavored vinegar and dish
detergent into a cup then wrap the top of the
cup with Saran Wrap then put a rubber band
around the cup but this method is likely to
only catch about 2 dozen flies at the most and
it isn’t likely to last that long. A better, more
permanent solution is to use Zevo spray over
the Raid fly spray; always push the nozzle
down rather than squeezing it.
• Another effective way to get rid of flies in
your home is to hang up Raid fly trap sticks.
Because I have taken all these steps, I have more
time to devote to my book writing. To get more of
my tips for authors, click here