Westerly Sun Column | Feeling the Fall Time Crunch? These Small Hacks Help

September is flying by, fall is hot on our heels, and those few minutes of daylight we’ve been losing each day are rapidly adding up. I understand on a rational level that there are still 24 hours to each day, but I FEEL like the days are suddenly half as long, and there is no time to accomplish anything. As a result, I’m on the lookout for any time-saving tips and tricks – “lifehacks”, if you will – to get a few of those lost minutes back.

Lifehack #1: The slow cooker. Soups are a staple fall food, not just because they’re so comforting when there’s a slight chill in the air, but because of how quick they can be to prepare. With a slow-cooker, you can get your soup started early in the morning and have it ready and waiting when you get out of work, without having to waste any of your precious daylight hours over the stove. There are some great books dedicated to slow-cookers and pressure-cookers, like “One Pot” by Christina Holmes, and “Martha Stewart’s Slow Cooker”, but you can also adapt recipes from other soup and stew-centric cookbooks, such as “Every Season is Soup Season” by Shelly Westerhausen. Just add a nice hunk of crusty bread, and you’ve got everything you need in no time flat.

Lifehack #2: Meal plan. Yes, another food-related “hack”, but hear me out. Many of us spend a huge portion of our daylight hours planning and preparing meals, and shopping for ingredients. If we’re looking for ways to save time, this is where we should be focusing! Our latest Cookbook Club book, “A New Way to Dinner” by Amanda Hesser, really opened my eyes to how simple (not to mention cost-effective) we can make dinners, with just a little forethought. Hesser offers meal plans and strategies to help you make the most out of base ingredients, and reuse many of them throughout the week for lunches, dinners, and even desserts, to cut down on both waste and cooking time.

Lifehack #3: Supplement with audiobooks. I still enjoy reading physical books, but when you can only dedicate a short window of time to reading each day, it feels like it takes forever to finish one. One the other hand, it’s amazing how quickly you can rip through them if you check out both the print (or eBook) and audio versions, and bounce between them. Our Libby and Hoopla apps are a great place to borrow audiobooks, which you can then listen to during your commute or while doing chores. Pair that with a bit of reading at the end of the night, and you’ll be done with your book in no time. The most difficult part, perhaps, is finding audiobooks that have great narrators, but we can always provide you with great recommendations at the library!

Strategies like these don’t take much effort, but each can help you get a few minutes of valuable time back each day. Next step: figure out what to do with those minutes!

by Cassie Skobrak, Adult Services Librarian