How do you save time on chores?

I’ve started wearing my dress shirts to work more than once without washing. It saves time on ironing.

I also bought a duster to dust a lot of furniture that I used to wet clean.

Chores :smack:

chores? what chores?

lower expectations and live simpler.

We have a robot vacuum. (We actually just replaced the Roomba with a Neato, which is going OK so far, it’s weirdly different.) The act of turning on the robot is a great kick-start to move stuff off the floor, things like cables, bigger bits of trash - the things that the robot might get tangled with or otherwise be obstructed by. It’s nice to have a clean floor.

My dogs clean the plates, it saves me having to scrape them.

I often use paper plates and cups. Don’t judge. :wink:

Also, I don’t know if it saves time, but it helps save my sanity. I try to do a “10-minute-tidy” in most rooms every day or two. Just race to fix the major issues in the room, then sweep/remove trash. It keeps the mess to a dull roar.

This. The bachelor’s solution.

What I’ve found, actually, is that procrastinating works. It turns out that if you just put off doing chores for as long as possible, as lot of them just go away. Sort of. For example, if you put off doing laundry, then you just have a larger load when you eventually do it, but over the long term you end up doing laundry less often. It’s more efficient that way.

Likewise taking out the trash. If you do this every other day, try instead taking out the trash once a week, and you’ll find it saves time and works just as well. If you take out the trash once a week, try once every other week. If you have wet trash (meat and vegetable trimmings, chicken bones, banana peels, etc.) put them in a plastic bag in the freezer until trash day. Save empty bread bags for the purpose.

Put off shopping expeditions for longer until you have more things you need to buy. Combine shopping trips and other errands. I try for once a week (or even less often), at which time I typically make three to eight stops at different places in one trip.

Finally, you can just decide that some chores don’t need to be done. Housecleaning? What housecleaning?

(ETA: As for wearing shirts two days: You can do better than this. Wear the same clothes at least a week at a time. Not only will this save you a lot of laundry and ironing time, but think of all the time, effort, and money you’ll save on all those social engagements you won’t be having!)

Grin! My best time-saver is that I have one pyrex cooking bowl. I microwave dinner in it, eat dinner directly out of it, and then wash it (and the spoon.) No need to wash a plate too.

Some discipline saves time. When I get home from the grocery store, I immediately stow everything away in the proper cabinets and closets. If not, the great mound of cans and boxes will sit on the kitchen counter pretty much forever. Some tasks must be addressed on the instant.

But, definitely, others can be postponed. The garbage pail isn’t “full” until things start falling out of it onto the floor. And windows don’t need washing if you keep the blinds closed!