Life Hacks For Adulting

I think it goes without saying that adulting is hard. That’s why I really enjoy all those life hacks you find on the internet these days. Anything that can make life go smoother is welcome advice, and I’m sure you can agree.

That’s why I decided to compile some of my best life hacks, gleaned mostly from my own life experiences, to pass onto you, my dear readers. I hope this helps.

Early mornings.

Do you have trouble waking up on time? Do you sleep through the alarm on your clock or phone? Nothing sucks more than an early morning work shift after a late night of drinking, partying, or in my case, bingeing Netflix. What’s the solution?

I suggest having babies. Nothing gets your ass out of bed faster better than a screaming infant with a loaded diaper. Don’t worry that they’ll eventually start sleeping through the night because toddlers who can climb out of their cribs also make great alarms. Three year olds don’t know it’s Saturday or Sunday and you don’t have work today. They just know that their eyes pop open at the same time every day, no matter how much later they stay up the night before, and it’s time for Cheerios and Blues Clues!

If you time it just right and have enough kids, you can guarantee yourself a foolproof alarm system for the next twenty years.

If you don’t like kids, I suggest a dog or cat and make sure you make early morning their usual feeding time. They will wake you up like clockwork, no matter the day of the week or whether it is Daylight Savings Time or not. Trust me on this!

Ok, I’m up but not necessarily awake.

Yeah. This one is pretty common. You’ve managed to stumble out of bed and possibly into a shower, but you’re dragging ass all the way to work. How do you wake up enough to actually function properly?

I know what all the other advice bloggers will tell you.

Get at least eight hours of rest per night!

Get up and work out in the morning. It’ll get your blood pumping!

Eat right and drink plenty of water and your body will naturally have more energy!

Start your day with a breakfast of smart foods to give yourself a caloric kick in the pants!

Um. Yeah. Sure.

Look, I’m not one of those advice bloggers. I’m just a woman with a family, a full time job, a side hustle, and not enough freakin’ hours in the day. I’m not going to sugarcoat this. I’m going to shoot straight.

You need caffeine. I’m not talking energy drink or pill type quantities of caffeine. That stuff is lethal, so if you want to end up in the E.R. with heart palpatations, you just keep drinking that cocktail of Monster Energy and stress.

I’m talking good old-fashioned java drunk in mass quantities like your grandpa drank before storming the beach at Normandy. Or worked 15 hours on the farm. Or started a company from the ground up with nothing but a 3 piece suit, a briefcase, and a dream.

I’m talking coffee so strong that one cup guarantees you won’t blink all day. 

If it was good enough for our elders, it’s good enough for us!

As a back up to this, I find that one good scare per morning will wake you up. Some good early morning scares you can give yourself include:

• driving at dawn in a place where deer are guaranteed to run in front of your car – hello, Bambi!
• setting off your workplace security alarm – nothing screams “good morning” quite like an eighty-five decibel siren!
• setting random fake reminders on your phone’s calendar – being reminded of a 9:00 a.m. “meeting” that you “forgot” that you were “leading” until you were reminded five minutes before the “meeting time” will really get the adrenaline pumping before you realize it was a fake reminder!
• a positive pregnancy test – just trust me on this one…

Just make sure you keep a clean pair of panties handy if you try The Scare Method™. 

Not that I would know anything about that.

I don’t hate laundry so much as I hate folding it and putting it away.

I hear ya, friend. I hate it too. I suggest the Laundry Basket Method™. Keep two laundry baskets at all time. When you take your dirty clothes off, put them in one basket. When it’s full, wash the clothes. Put the clean clothes in the other basket. Pull them out as you need them and then take them off and start the cycle all over again.

Of course, this leads to other issues like wrinkled clothes. 

* BONUS HACK *

When you pull your shirt out of the clean basket and it’s more wrinkled than a Sharpei puppy, throw it into the dryer with a damp towel and leave it running about twenty minutes. Voilà! Freshly “ironed” clothes that didn’t require you to unfold an ironing board. 

What about those pesky items like fitted sheets?

Well, an easy solution to this would be to strip your bed, wash the sheets, then put them straight back on the bed. This eliminates the need to actually fold a fitted sheet. For those who prefer to rotate sheet sets, though, here’s a step by step tutorial for folding a fitted sheet.

1. Drink a glass of wine. You’re gonna need it, Friend!
2. Hold the sheet in both hands long ways, so that one corner of the sheet is on each hand.
3. Fold in half. Try to make the corners meet as evenly as possible.
4. Do this for about five minutes and slowly realize it’ll never be even.
5. Fold in half again and try smoothing out the bunched up elastic corners.
6. Do this for about twenty minutes and realize the bunched up corners will never get smooth.
7. Drink another glass of wine and watch Real Housewives of Beverly Hills.
8. Come back to the sheet. Fold in half again. Now you have one big wad of sheet. 
9. Roll it up like a 300-count burrito.
10. Stuff it into the back of the linen closet.
11. Vow to just go to the strip-wash-put-back-on-the-bed Method™.

Apparently, last night when I was out with the guys/girls, I thought I was still twenty and in college. This morning I remembered I’m in my forties. Now I feel like Big Foot played soccer with my head and everything smells like a greasy pork chop served in a filthy ash tray.

Ok, I realize that most of my advice up until now has been VERY tongue-in-cheek, but this is the real deal. Here’s the hangover cure straight from Taco Larry (a REAL medical doctor):

1. Excedrin Migraine
2. Gatorade (with or without hair of dog)
3. Phenergan gel

Sorry, but Phenergan is only available by prescription, but a good substitute might be Emetrol, which I’ve used successfully to relieve nausea. Of course, if you have your own Taco Larry, who is awesome and allows you to text him on just such occasions, that’s the best of all worlds. 

I want to travel and do fun stuff but I’m terrible at saving money.

Again, as with the hangover cure above, I have some REAL advice and it’s actually pretty sound, but it isn’t mine. My friend, Katie, over at Fatty McCupcakes is the one who put these awesome tips together. She went on a fabulous six week European Vacation last summer on a school teacher’s salary, so you KNOW she had to do some serious budgeting. 

You can find her post here to read more. 

Adulting is hard.

Yes. Yes it is.

But we’re all in this together. So, let’s all put on our big girl/boy panties and get on with it.

Or build a pillow fort and hide for another day. Whatever works.

Angel Who Swears is not an advice blog. All opinions are solely that of a half-asleep, caffeine deprived middle-aged woman who fancies herself a blogger. Any resemblance to any adult, either living or dead or walking dead is strictly coincidental. Any advice given is purely for entertainment purposes, except Taco Larry’s Hangover Cure™ and Fatty McCupcakes 6 No Fail Travel Money Saving Tips For Complete Idiots™, so don’t send me hate mail or I will publish that shit and laugh at you. 

Stay weird, my friends. Normal is boring! That’s the best advice I ever gave/took. Fo’ real yo.