Hey, do you feel like you never have time for anything, and you’re always struggling to catch up?
Do you feel like you’re behind on work, and you’re behind on things you have to do around the house, and every morning you wake up and say, “I’m just going to do all the household things first; get them out of the way,” until at some point in the day you say, “It’s pretty late, and I have not yet started working,” so neither list ends up done, and then the next day you wake up and all those same daily household things you did yesterday are right back on the list, as if you never did them, as well as the work things you didn’t spend a whole lot of time doing yesterday? How do you break this cycle?
Fortunately, there are a lot of tips and tricks out there on how to save time. Unfortunately, none of them really work. Some of them you’ve heard from a friend or relative who swears by them, bli neder, but you don’t think they save as much time as these people claim.
But I mean, doing things faster should work, right? Driving faster, for example! If you drive faster, you get your errands done faster. Or your commute! If only everyone else on the road had the same idea. But I mean in concept, right? It’s the equivalent of running versus walking! Running is at least twice as fast as walking! At least we think so. There’s no speedometer. Whereas driving has a speedometer, so we know: Driving faster is only twice as fast as driving normally if you’re going 120 miles per hour. There are actual numbers involved. If you’re driving somewhere that’s an hour away and the speed limit is 60, you will have to go 90 for a full minute, putting everyone in danger for 60 seconds, in order to shave just 30 seconds off your drive. That you will then spend looking for parking, or waiting for someone to make a left off the off-ramp. If you go 70 for a full minute, you save ten seconds.
Here’s an idea that a lot of people suggest: Meal prep. At the beginning of the week, you make six days of meals, and that way, every night you’ll be serving leftovers, which your kids will pick at, and you won’t have to make as much food in the long run. But even that is just shifting the time to a different day. I guess it makes sense, because you might have more time to cook on the weekend anyway. You’d be spending every Motzoei Shabbos making six meals, which is basically all the fun of cooking for a three-day Yom Tov, but every week.
A similar tip that everyone gives is that if you want to save time in the mornings, lay your clothes out the night before.
Okay, I don’t have time at night. If I had time at night, I’d go to sleep a little earlier, and then I’d have time to lay them out in the morning. Again, you’re not saving time; you’re just moving the time. Why not do the meal-prep thing and lay out clothes on Sunday for the entire week?
Well, I don’t know what the weather will be.
But I don’t know on Motzaei Shabbos what I’m going to be in the mood to eat on Thursday either!
Neither of these tips really saves you time, though, because in actuality, if you do things ahead of time, they take longer. Like how if you start cooking three hours before Shabbos, it will take you three hours, and if you start six hours before Shabbos, it will take you six hours. You might have to skip making something if you do three, but no one will notice except you, and Shabbos will be just as lovely. Shabbos doesn’t care. And likewise, laying out clothes the night before takes more time because first of all, the very act of laying out clothes is an extra step I don’t bother with if it’s the morning. I just take it out of the closet and put it on. And if you lay your clothes out the night before, you’ll notice a loose thread, and then you have to find a scissors, and throw out the thread, and so on, rather than just taking care of the thread on the train with your teeth like everyone else.
I guess some things do save time if you do them ahead. Like they say that instead of making potato kugel every week, you should make three kugels at once, every three weeks. It’s definitely easier. Then you just have to clean the overflow mess leaking out of your food processor, wipe the ingredients off your counter, and figure out how to hide the three pans cooling on your counter until you can put them in the freezer before your teenagers decide that you won’t miss one or two pans, because you really only need one for Shabbos. Not to mention the detective work you might have to do midway through the recipe when you need to figure out at what point you started forgetting to multiply the ingredients by three.
So maybe some things save time, but definitely not as much time as you picture. It’s always a delicate math equation to figure out if it’s actually saving time, and you will never do that equation, because that takes time you don’t have.
For example, I have a relative who says that if she wants to pop in to a simchah for a few minutes just to say mazel tov, then instead of taking time to get dressed, she just throws on a nice, long Shabbos coat over her weekday clothes and keeps it on the whole time. Especially if it’s an outdoor chuppah in the winter. So I presented this idea to my wife, purely for shalom bayis reasons, and my wife asked me, “What do you think takes me longer—putting on Shabbos clothes, or dealing with a sheitel and makeup and shoes and stockings?” Maybe if there was a coat that covered all of that. Maybe gowns take time, but the simchahs to which you’re wearing a gown are not the same simchahs that you’re spending five minutes at to say mazel tov.
This idea might work for men, though—just throw on a hat and a long enough coat. And maybe a tie that peeks out above the coat. And if you can manage to keep eye contact with the baal simchah for the five minutes that you’re there, no one will notice that you’re wearing weekday shoes. Whereas if women don’t wear the right shoes and they just maintain eye contact, their friends will be like, “Is it just me, or was she a different height than usual?”
So not every time saver is well thought out. Like for example, I could tell you that instead of spending an hour every night coaxing your kid through his homework, why don’t you do the homework while he sits there impatiently? It will only take five minutes! I mean, the teacher said at the beginning of the year, “All the homework that I give should only take five minutes,” and you have not found that to be the case. He means for an adult, maybe. Like for him. Or for you.
Another time saver that doesn’t really save time is going to the supermarket and not grabbing a cart or a basket. “It’s okay; I’ll just use my two hands and my chin.” But if you grab a cart and buy more, doesn’t that mean you have to go to the store fewer times in total, thus saving time? It’s like the kugel strategy! It’s quicker to buy twice as much on one trip than to make two trips, right?
“Yeah, but it won’t really save me a trip, because I’ll just eat twice as much in the same amount of time.”
Yeah, that’s what we said with kugels.
I do have some other tips. For example, one way to save time on taking out the garbage is to push it down with your foot. This way, you only have to bring out the garbage half the time. The downside is that there will be more leaks when you’re carrying it out, that you would then have to clean up. And also change your pants. But if you’re lucky, it already all leaked into the bottom of the garbage can, which you only clean before Pesach.
Another time-saving tip I have that a lot of people will argue with is to not take off your shoes the minute you get into the house. That way, no one has to wait for you to put them on when it’s time to leave. But even that has a downside, in that your floors are a little bit dirtier, not including the lack of a haphazard pile of shoes near the front door.
But it does save you time putting your shoes on when you want to push the garbage down.
“Nah, I just keep a pair next to the— Who keeps throwing out my shoes?!”
So basically, there is no tip that works across the board, and anyone who claims there is is just wasting your time. Case in point, I just wrote an article about time-saving tips that it turns out don’t work, and I’m still behind on my work, and I just wasted everyone’s time.
Do you know of any that actually work? Write in. Get all your other stuff done first, though.
Mordechai Schmutter is a weekly humor columnist for Hamodia, a monthly humor columnist, and has written six books, all published by Israel Book Shop. He also does freelance writing for hire. You can send any questions, comments, or ideas to This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.