You’re never just an entrepreneur.
You could be an entrepreneur plus a full-time day job worker, plus a wife or husband, plus a parent, plus a pet owner, caregiver, etc. There are always responsibilities on top of being an entrepreneur.
But often we get so consumed with developing strong processes or practices in our businesses, that we let our personal household tasks fall to the back burner.
But we’re integrated beings. We have one life, so when our home life is totally stressing us out, that’s obviously going to show up in our businesses. We only have so much energy to dole out.
I’ve come to believe that it’s important to treat our personal lives as strategically as we would in our businesses, because this is going to free up more time and energy to be able to pour back into the things that matter.
One way to reduce cognitive overload at home is through automated shopping systems.
If you’ve ever worked in retail, or a day job that you had to do consistent ordering for, you probably had a whole system around it—an inventory list, preferred vendors, a dedicated time to putting in the order every month, etc.
Why are we not doing that at home?
If we run our household with as much intention as our business, we’ll have that much more time to be able to invest back in our business and families.
I want to share some of my insider tricks for being able to automate whatever can be automated in terms of just getting the daily stuff stocked in the house that you always run out of.
Like the toilet paper roll that you run out of at 9pm and suddenly you’re not working on that lead magnet that you’re meant to, right?
We have enough cognitive overload as entrepreneurs without having to think about stuff like that.
So, my recommendation is to find retailers that set up your consumable household goods on an automatically recurring order.
I have two sources that I recommend for this:
A lot of people don’t realize that Amazon has a feature called “Subscribe and Save” at no additional cost. In fact, it saves you money because it gives you a 15% discount for ordering 5 or more products a month.
(You don’t have to be a Prime member, either.) They’re really growing and adding to the number of items that you can elect to be on auto subscribe and save.
I get almost all of our household stuff through this. Things like toilet paper, vitamins, coconut oil, paper towels, razors, protein powder, etc.—in effect, that stuff we’re always eventually going to run out of.
If you go to your Amazon account and click on “Subscribe and Save,” you can then search just for subscribe and save items.
Not every item on Amazon has that ability to ship out on a recurring basis. But you can actually run a filter if you first go to the “Subscribe and Save” feature, and look for items that can be set to autoship.
You get to set how often you want things to ship. Another good thing about using Subscribe and Save is that many of the items are offered in bulk, saving you even more money and eliminating the need to mess with tons of boxes every month. (Like the thrash bags and coffee filters that we still use now from when we bought a year ago!)
It’s like going to Costco, without having to actually go to Costco. No traffic, no overcrowded parking lots, and no people obnoxiously ramming those ginormous shopping carts into you every time you turn a corner. (Can you tell I hate going to Costco?)
Subscribe and Save will even recommend how often most people will refill a particular item, so that’s a great option to estimate your required “inventory” as you’re getting started.
BONUS >>>> Want to snag my Amazon Subscribe and Save inventory list? Click HERE!
The second resource that I really like is The Honest Company. You’ve probably heard of it. It’s by Jessica Alba.
It’s all very eco-friendly, so you’re not adding the chemicals that can lead to headaches, sluggishness, and even low metabolism (which you’ve heard me go into detail about if you’re a member of my Boss Body System).
Honest has awesome cleaning products, personal care products, and baby products.
Now, you can get Honest products at normal stores like Target. But I want you go order directly from the website, because you can put together a preferred bundle of core items you need, and then select how often you want them to send it to you.
A feature that I like with the Honest bundles is that they’ll send you an email a few days before your bundle ships, asking if you want to add or edit anything to it. So if I need something extra that month, or didn’t end up using as much laundry detergent because we were out of town, for example, I can just take a quick peek at it and adjust accordingly.
Decision overload is real, especially these days, and there’s only so much cognitive space we have,
Our mental energy is valuable real estate as overworked entrepreneurs. Don’t waste precious mental energy trying to remember to pick up paper towels on your way home from the gym.
Using automated shopping systems will help your household run more efficiently, freeing up time and energy to focus on the things that matter—and saving money to boot.
Plus, they just make you feel like you have your ($*@&!*$ together!
Ready to get started? I’ve made it even easier for you by compiling all MY favorite recurring product orders on Amazon and Honest into one handy shopping list for you.
I’ve already done the filtering, price matching, and non-toxic ingredient investigating for you. All you need to do is download the list and hit “add to cart”!
