5 Home Systems That Simplify and Reduce Overwhelm
Last Updated on November 12, 2025 by Kayla Ruetten
We can all use a bit of simplification in our lives. Some of us need A LOT. If you are in a season of overwhelm, perhaps with a new baby or young children, a new way of eating, working a home business, or just juggling a lot of demands of life, taking a look at daily routines, and how they can be simplified using better systems, is life changing! Read below for our family’s top 5 home systems that simplify and reduce overwhelm.
Home Systems That Simplify
We have a system for everything in our homes, whether we are aware of it or not: dishes, laundry, lawn care, wardrobes, bed time and waking routines, meals, date nights, gifts and celebrations, exercise, family time etc. When we are not intentional about our systems, our routines and habits work against us, rather than for us. Gift giving, for example, can include pre-planning, budgeting ahead, and making planned and intentional purchases. Or, it can look like a high stress event of 11th hour shopping and blowing the budget due to not having a good a gift giving system work for us. Likewise, laundry and getting dressed each day could be making a quick selection from a capsule wardrobe closet, or it could look like running late again while ourselves or children rummaging through several baskets of laundry to find what we are looking for and dreading 9 loads of laundry to catch up on the weekend.
The good news is, once we identify an area of opportunity, we can re-structure our habits and routines to improve our experiences and outcomes.
Common Home System Breakdowns
This list is not exhaustive, and the breakdowns might be different for your home, but here are some examples of where we have seen opportunities to alter our own home habits and routines:
- Cranky kids: bed time routine and screen time systems
- Drowning in laundry and overstuffed closets: capsule wardrobe systems
- Unclean home: routine chore scheduling and outsourcing system
- Eating convenience foods: meal system
- Relationship with spouse: date night/quality time system
- Disobedience children: quality time and discipline/setting expectations systems
- Cluttered home: minimizing/decluttering system
- Money Stress: budget and financial planning system
- Too much to do: family schedule system
- Repeat illness, overweight, auto-immune challenges: personal or family health system
- Anxiety: spiritual life system
Top 5 Home Systems To Simplify and Reduce Overwhelm
As you can see from the list above, we have many areas of our home with opportunity to steward well. Below is a list of the home systems that are most important to our family, that bring the biggest “bang for our buck”, or our time and resources spent on them. I did not include our spiritual system, which is at the top of the list, as this is different and personal for everyone.
1. Meal System
- GAPS diet: The GAPS diet has transformed our family’s health and way of thinking about food. We have healed from food allergies, auto-immune challenges, and have much better health and energy as a result. Read more about it here.
- Batch cooking for weekly meals: Why cook one pound of meat when you can cook six pounds? Shred leftovers to eat over salads and use with veggie casseroles for the week. We also make enough fermented kefir smoothies and fermented carrots to last a week or more at a time for quick and convenient side to scrambled breakfast eggs or for snacks. Batch cooking GAPS/Paleo/WAPF meals + preserving – cook large amounts of protein and prep veggies 2x/week and fill in the gaps with frozen veggies, fresh fruits, smoothies, scrambled eggs, freeze ahead treats (energy bites, healthy homemade popsicles, pudding, bars, jello, etc.)
- Batch cooking for the freezer: Why make 1 dozen energy bites when you can make 12 dozen? Might as well brown ten pounds of ground beef if we are dirtying a pot anyway. We typically make 5 gallons of soup, 3 gallons of spaghetti sauce, and 2 gallons of smoothie at a time and freeze what we will not eat the next few days to save time.
- Meal Planning: I reallllly do not care to make rigid meal plans and grocery lists, but totally see the value. I have found peace with a general list of meal ideas and a well-stocked pantry and freezer. This way, I can look at our week ahead and see which days we need some of that pre-cooked meat or frozen energy bites to fill in the gaps on busy days, and where to fill in with fresh produce and grocery store ingredients. If you are just getting started with transitioning your freezer and pantry to healthier options, check out my free e-book: 10 Steps to an Easier Diet Overhaul – A How To Guide For Families With Picky Eaters.
2. Consistent Minimizing and Decluttering System
Routinely examine areas of your home and see what can be eliminated. These are the most impactful places to start, where you will notice an immediate daily difference, in my opinion:
- Clothing: Most people can get rid of one third of their wardrobe without even really noticing!! Consider a capsule wardrobe and save 16 minutes/day per person for getting dressed. This adds up to hours per month, especially if you have several children! This will immediately cut your laundry time and closet organization time by one third as well, woohoo!
- Toys: Invest in higher quality evergreen toys that span multiple age groups and get rid of the rest. Studies show children feel less overwhelmed and play with deeper imagination with fewer choices. Let them choose which items to keep and release!
- Dishes: Donate any items you do not use every week or month. If you use a select few kitchen items only a couple times a year, such as hosting events, then box these items and pull them out only when needed. Pare down on daily use items, such as cups, plates, and bowls. If you cannot part with many of them, place these in a box in storage as well.
3. Financial System
- Budget: We consistently make choices that allow our family to live on one income. Though my husband and I both work, we could get by with just one of us doing so, and we have always made decisions with this goal in mind when buying homes, vehicles, making investments, and budgeting. This allows us to have great flexibility with our time and finances.
- Home based business: The flexibility to monetize a passion around the family needs has been a huge blessing to our family- both financially and time-wise. Look for ways to earn from home to be able to reinvest time into your family and enjoy tax savings.
- Debt or Saving Snowballing: We do not have debt (see #1), but we use the principles of “debt snowballing” by Dave Ramsey to “saving snowball” to meet investment or large purchase goals. If you do have debt, even a lot of it, there is hope! Check out the Every Dollar App by Dave Ramsey for a good starting point.
- To learn more how to balance the duties of a SAHM and working mom, see this 4 step checklist for peace and balance here.
4. Homeschool and Home Living System
- Seasonality: We try to make scheduling decisions somewhat quarterly and re-assess often across all areas of our life (homeschooling, business, travel, pregnancies and newborn stages, growing children, moving to a new home, etc.). Our goal is a seasonal rhythm and schedule that works well for the whole family. This can look like choosing to do a family sport during a certain season, taking a school and work break to do extended travel, limiting extra curriculars when expecting a new baby, etc…what works for our family may not for yours.
- Family Culture: Consider how to make being home together as a family more enjoyable. Surround your environment with plants, gardens, good books, evergreen toys, outdoor play tools, a campfire pit, hammocks, a large cozy couch, nourishing and tasty foods, etc.
- Make a list of everything you hope your children will learn before leaving the home. Re-visit this list often and be intentional about creating space and time to incorporate these skills into your daily and weekly rhythms.
What home systems work best for you and your family? I would love to hear from you in the comments!
Resources
Posts
What is the GAPS Diet – An Easier Explanation
3 Ingredient Fermented Milk Kefir & GAPS Yogurt Smoothies
How to Make Fermented Carrots (That Picky Eaters Love!)
Large Family Kitchen Essentials + GAPS Diet Must Haves
Free E-book: 10 Steps to an Easier Diet Overhaul – A How To Guide For Families With Picky Eaters
Favorite Books
Habits of the Household
A Mother’s Rule of Life: How to Bring Order to Your Home and Peace to Your Soul
Home Management, Plain and Simple
You Can Have It All, Just Not at the Same Damn Time
This post contains affiliate links, which means I make a small commission at no extra cost to you. See my full disclosure here.
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