Apps I Use To Help Me {Organise} Home Admin

Life can get crazy and I’m all for anything which can help make it that little bit simplier. This week I thought I’d share some of my favouite apps I use to help me stay organised at home. I have all of these on my iPhone but most are either available or have similar equivalents on Android devices. Having them on my phone means that 1) they are easily accessible and 2) I’m more likely to use them. {Note – these are apps I use for keeping my home admin organised rather than specifically for work or my blog – I’ll cover these separately}. Most of these apps are completely free, or at least have free versions, so I’ll let you know if I pay any kind of subsceiption as we go along. I’ve really noticed a difference since using them so hopefully you may find one or two you like too! {note – ignore the open or update – these are screenshots not clickable links 🙂}

Arguably a staple app for many people! Although I have “used” Google Calendar for many years I have always been more of a fan of an old-school paper diary and chosen to use this over it’s electronic counterpart. That being said there are many obvious pros to using an electronic calendar – probably too many to mention here. But I have been finding myself using the app more and more; especially since creating a family google account just so we can have a shared calendar for all {when I say all I mean Dan and I but would be good to give the kids access too when they’re older} to see and use. This has made our lives 10x easier. I also love the fact I can have all my calendars in one place and turn them on and off as I please. So I can quickly check my work, blog, family and personal calendar in one go. Not only that but I can invite people to view certain events and vice versa. Perfik. Oh and it’s totally free.

This is the app I use to track my daily habits {see 20 Daily Habits post}. It’s super easy to use and for me acts as a prompt to remind me to do relativly small tasks which help me to 1) create better/healthier habits, 2) ease my sense of overwhelm and 3) tackle tasks in bite sized chunks. There are free and paid versions of the app. I found the free version quite limiting for what I wanted so signed up for a 3 month subscriiption at £11.49 to see if I continue to like it.

This is a new favouite of mine to use as an online notebook for keeping track of my to-do list and general ideas or thoughts including post or video ideas, projects to do at home, birthday cards to buy etc. Another thing I use it for is to organise screenshots I take on my phone. I can then delete these from my phone’s gallery and they don’t take up unnecessary storage or get lost in the ether of my photos. You can colour co-oridnate and/or tag your notes to be easily vivsible or searched. You can also move them around and pin ones you want to highlight to the top. I use this on my phone and also have it as a bookmarked page on my Chromebook and laptop so I can easily access it from anywhere. Again this is free 🙂

I’ve tried out a few different money budgeting apps and so far this is definitely my favourite. In all honestly I don’t think any app I’ve found does exactley what I want but this comes the closest and allows me to set a budget and quickly see where I am at any given time of the month. I link my main bank accounts to the app {which I know some people won’t be comfortable with}. Mr H also has the app on his phone to we are both responsible for keeping an eye on our finances.

The only down sides are that it tends to be about a day behind “real time” and the budgets you set on one device don’t automatically transfer over to another so you’d have to set your budget for each device you use. I pay a subscription of £6.99 a month but there are different subscription options {and I may actually look to reduce this}.

I use the iPhone Notes app but there are loads of similar alternatives. It’s a nice quick and easy place to keep things like hashtags for Instagram or standard lines or paragraphs you may use for your blog, emails etc. which you can copy and paste into whatever document you want. It’s also good if you want to quickly write or draft something a bit more than a few notes or reminders. Again completely freeeeee.

I’ve recently started using the Google Photos app to back-up the photos I take on my iPhone. I already have iCloud but have to pay for extra storage; whereas Google Photos seems to have more storage space for free. It also enables me to free up a lot of space on my phone as when I delete photos from my gallery they don’t automatocally get deleted from Google Photos {my understanding is that if you delete photos from you iPhone they also get deleted from iCloud if you have these linked in settings} so you know they are properly backed-up.

This is another app which is great for screenshots. It allows you to search for words and even export the text within your screenshot {noting being mindful of plagurising of someone elses work!} Free of charge.

If you are a fan of Marie Kondo and her strict minimal paperwork policy you will LOVE this app. Put simply it enables you to scan {take a photo} and file your paperwork in a PDF, JPG or TXT format to digitalise documents and leave you paperless. There are also e-signature and text recognistion features and the ability to pin protect documents and scan multiple pages into one document. Again there are free and paid versions depending on which features you’d like to unlock.

If you’re anything like me you’re guilty of subscribing to waaaayyyy to many emails which clog up your inbox. Going through to unsubscribe one by one can be a real headache – this app scans your email account{s} for “chain” emails and gives you the option of unsubscribing. I have found that you need to go through the process a few times for it to make a real difference but it’s definitely better than unsubscribing manually. Again – completey free.

This great app allows to you capture online content to one place to save, read or listen too at a later date. Whether it’s a news article, recipes, YouTube video or blog post this app can save content from pretty much anywhere and store it in a clean, customisable display. Then here’s the best bit – Pocket’s listen feature allows you to turn any content into an audible, hands-free experience. Again, free of charge {although there is a premium paid version}.

I hold my hands up and say that I subscribed to this app by accident – I signed up for a 2 week free trial to send some free personalised postcards during lockdown and prompty forgot to cancel. This meant the best part of £50 {annual subscription} leaving my account unexpectedly – *sigh* – but when I actually looked into it for this I get 2 post cards or 1 greeting card a month which I can order quickly and easily through the app including postage {and sent on the date you want}. ~£50 a year equates to £4.17 / month which is easily less than I would spend on the equivalent number of cards plus postage a month. So I’ve decided to continue for the year {since the payment has already gone out!} and see how it goes – the key is to remember to use it!

Another really handy app for reducing the amount of “stuff” you carry around – this stores all your store/points cards in one handy place so you don’t have them clogging up your purse or have to remember to take the right card to Costa {or wherever}. Simples.

I hope you found this helpful and maybe even try out a couple of these apps to see if they can help you organise your home admin 🙂

Look out for my weekly and monthly reset tasks video going live on YouTube at the end of the week 🙂

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