Today on Clear Your Clutter Inside & Out blog, we are talking about holiday apps to reduce stress and technology to make life easier during the holidays. Did you have the perfect gift idea for someone and forgot what it was or where you could buy it? Do you say every year you aren’t going to go over your holiday budget yet somehow it happens? Would you like help knowing when a price drops or a coupon is available? Learn tips for apps to make your holiday season a little brighter.
Gifts
- Keep track of what each person wants, how many gifts you’ve gotten them, how much you want to spend, and even if you’ve wrapped the gift or not with Santa’s Bag.
- Divvy up the dough you have to spend by whom you’re spending it on with The Christmas List. You can also arrange your list by store so that you don’t make multiple trips in person or fill online shopping carts (and pay shipping fees) more than once. If you’re sharing gift-giving duty, you can send your list via message or email.
- Christmas List Snowball shows a summary, including the user’s budget and actual money spent, how many people are still giftless, how many recipients are over budget, and who’s receiving the most expensive gift. Once purchased, each gift can be checked off as wrapped.
- ShopAdvisor tracks product prices and availability so you don’t have to: You get an alert when the price drops down to what you’re willing to pay. You can compare prices across retailers, and see what the average consumer ratings are.
- Shopular Coupons bookmark deals from your favorite retailers right on your phone. Thanks to geo-locating, this app pushes relevant deals to your smart phone as soon as you walk into a store. Coupons are updated daily.
Budget
- BillGuard has two goals: to make sure you completely understand your spending habits, and to protect your cards from fraud and unauthorized transactions. This app syncs your bank accounts and then brings up your total balance and the amount you spent this month.
- Pocket Expense focuses on tracking your spending, giving you a visual outlook on your spending before creating budgets.
- Fudget: This no-frills, list interface is best for folks who have a handle on their finances but want an easy space to keep organized. Good for tracking short-term budgets for the holidays, vacation or for tracking work expenses.
Meals
- Timer+ is a simple free timer app that can run multiple countdowns at the same time. That means you can have a timer for your turkey, stuffing, side dishes and pie running simultaneously to keep your cooking on track.
- This free wine app can help you out if you’re tasked with bringing a bottle to your Thanksgiving dinner or any other holiday event. Just scan the label of any wine you find at the store and Vivino gives you ratings and reviews, average price in your area, plus the country and area of origin.
- For Thanksgiving, the In the Kitchen app has a special page of Thanksgiving recipes, including turkey, mashed potatoes, cocktails, appetizers and desserts. Each recipe gives you user ratings, difficulty level, cooking times and number of servings. Those stats make it easy to browse for, say, an easy stuffing recipe that you can make in 40 minutes or a complicated turkey preparation.
Meditate
Relax Melodies: Sleep problems? Insomnia? Personalized white noise, sleep sounds, and meditation can help you fall asleep!
Buddhify increases your wellbeing by teaching you mindfulness-based meditation on the go.
No matter if you are going to join meditators, a beginner or practice meditation for a long time, Meditation Timer Pro can help you do it better. You can just focus on meditation without thinking about the time.
Party
- Pro Party Planner has all your planning needs in one place: shopping lists, budgets, seating charts, collaborate and delegate.
- Pitch In Free up time, and spend less time organizing! PitchIn is the quick and easy way to organize events and assign tasks to others.
- Pingg Pingg offers online invitation creation, event management, guest list creation and event reporting services.
Travel
- Travel List helps you create checklists for your travel.
- Pocket first aid and CPR and ICE apps are self-explanatory.
- TripCase: This app allows users to organize multiple flights, hotel reservations and plans in one place. Users can also follow along with each other’s itineraries, allowing families or friends to keep tabs on someone’s travel, without constant updates.
- BringFido: For pet-lovers, this app helps users travel the world with their furry friends, from mapping out parks where dogs are welcome to booking pet-friendly hotels.
All Around Apps
Evernote. Evernote is really easy to use and has a great search component.
Bear works on iPhone, iPad, and Mac, so you can write wherever inspiration strikes. Use todos to stay on task across every device. Link notes to each other to build a body of work. Use hashtags to organize for the way you think. All notes are stored in portable plain text.
Bear is perfect for everything from quick notes to in-depth essays. A focus mode helps you concentrate, and advanced markup options are an online writer’s best friend. Full in-line image support brings your writing to life.
Simple note: The user interface of Simplenote is so easy that everyone can get accustomed to it in a few seconds, although Simplenote supports text-based notes only. Its features include note sharing, synchronizing your notes with other devices running on a big variety of platforms — it offers synchronization through third-party software, such as nValt and Notational Velocity—, the ability to backup your notes, and lots more. It is from Automattic — the firm from which WordPress.com comes.
Google Keep has kept a minimal approach in terms of design and almost everyone can get familiar with Google Keep’s grid-based arrangement in seconds. Notable features include color codes for notes, list-based notes, the ability to share your note with others, reminders within notes — these reminders can be read by Google Now, OCR to grab text from images, automatically-transcribed voice notes, etc. Plus, if you have an Android Wear, it will show you notes from Google Keep.
What apps are you interested in trying? What app can help you remain mindful this holiday season? Are you traveling and needing some apps to make travel easier or would an all-around app help? What support do you need from your apps this holiday season?
Take actions from the clutter control blog on holiday apps to reduce stress:
- Decide where you need the most support with apps and technology. Budgeting, meditation, in the kitchen, meal planning, travel.
- Test drive an app that sounds like a good fit. If it isn’t delete it.
- Consider an all around app to help you in simplifying and not needing a bunch of apps
- Declutter your apps after the holidays. Delete what you aren’t using.
DIY Options to Declutter Your Life
Purchase Julie’s books on how to clear clutter from your life: https://reawakenyourbrilliance.com/shop/
Subscribe to Clear Your Clutter Inside & Out Podcast https://reawakenyourbrilliance.com/resources-concierge-services/podcasts/self-help-podcast/
Check out more of my decluttering tips and how to get organized on my YouTube channel. https://www.youtube.com/user/SeibertRadio?feature=watch