20 Tiny Things To Do When Your Life Feels Like A Mess

Sometimes your life isn’t actually falling apart. It just feels like it is.

We all know how this goes. Your bedroom—or the entire house—is getting way too messy, there are three things you know you need to reply to but it’s just not happening, then there’s the borderline dehydration because you can’t remember the last time you drank a full glass of water, there’s a huge pile of laundry waiting for you, and, of course, there’s your phone somehow sucking up another forty minutes every time it’s in your hands before you finally snap yourself out of it.

None of these things is necessarily a disaster on its own, but when all of those little things start piling on top of each other, suddenly everything feels harder than it should be.

And when you get to that point, the answer isn’t always a huge life reset.

In fact, sometimes trying to completely overhaul your life when you already feel this overwhelmed just gives you another impossible thing to do. So, the idea sits there for days, then weeks and even months before you get to it.

Instead of going through this once again, I’ll show you how to start ridiculously small so you can get the ball rolling today.

You just have to pick a few small things that will make the next hour, tonight, tomorrow morning, or even just the room you’re sitting in feel a little easier. Then, if you have it in you, do another. And, before you know it, you’ll slowly but surely start to feel like you have your life under control again.

Ready to start? Here are 20 tiny things to do when your life feels like a mess and you desperately need to feel like you have a handle on things again.

1. Throw Away 10 Pieces of Trash

You don’t clean your entire house. Just grab a grocery bag and find ten things that can immediately leave your space.

Things like the empty water bottle beside your bed, the junk mail sitting on the counter, or those old receipts in your purse, food wrappers, empty packaging, random scraps of paper, or anything else that is very obviously trash.

You’ll instantly feel so satisfied about doing a task that requires absolutely no decision-making. You aren’t organizing anything or trying to figure out where something belongs. You’re simply removing things that don’t need to be there.

And sometimes that tiny bit of visual breathing room is enough to make a messy room feel significantly less overwhelming.

2. Put Your Phone on Charge Somewhere You Can’t Reach It

Especially if you’ve reached the point where you’re overwhelmed, but somehow still scrolling.

Plug your phone in across the room—or better yet, in another room—and leave it there for 20 or 30 minutes or even an hour if you can.

This is not about turning your time into a screen-free wellness retreat. With this, you’re just trying to get enough separation to interrupt the cycle of picking up your phone every few minutes without even realizing you’re doing it, while all the things you actually need to do keep getting pushed aside.

Use that little pocket of time to maybe shower, clean something, make some food, sit outside, fold laundry, plan something important or literally do nothing.

I personally find that when I give myself those breaks from my phone (or laptop), I tend to get so much done! And in very little time too. It’s like I’m rushing to get things done to get back to my phone. It’s pretty pitiful to be honest, but it works.

Related: 25 Things To Do Instead Of Doomscrolling Before Bed

3. Fill Up a Big Bottle of Water

Drinking water is not going to fix your problems, but if you’ve spent the day running around, sitting at your computer, drinking tons of coffee, forgetting meals, or generally taking care of everything except yourself, there’s a decent chance you’ve barely had anything to drink.

Fill a bottle or large glass with cold water and put it somewhere you’ll actually see it.

You don’t even have to finish the whole thing immediately. The point is to make one basic need ridiculously easy to take care of for the next few hours.

4. Fix the Place Where You Sleep

If your entire bedroom is messy, ignore most of it for now and just fix your bed.

Pull the sheets straight, fluff the pillows, remove the clothes, laptop, bags, chargers, books, or whatever else has migrated onto it, and make it somewhere you’d actually want to crawl into later.

You can have a basket of unfolded laundry sitting in the corner and a cluttered dresser and still feel considerably better when the bed itself is clean and inviting.

5. Take the Things You Keep Walking Past With You

You know those things you have noticed approximately seventeen times but somehow keep leaving right where they are?

The mug on your nightstand. The shoes in the hallway. The hairbrush in the living room. The package sitting by the door. The clean towels that need to go back to the bathroom.

The next time you leave the room, take one or two of them with you and put it where it needs to be.

This sounds almost too insignificant to matter, but it is one of the easiest ways to slowly put a home back together without declaring that you are now spending the next three hours cleaning.

If you do this, you’re essentially making every trip a very tiny reset of sorts.

6. Write Down Everything You Keep Trying Not to Forget

Sometimes life feels out of control because you’ve unknowingly turned your brain into a storage system.

At any point in time there are quite a few things you need to do. For example, you may need to buy toothpaste. You might have to make an appointment. Someone needs a reply. There’s something due next Thursday. Or you meant to look up that bill. Or you need to re-up on some groceries. Or, you have this big idea that excites you and that you don’t want to forget.

You’re likely carrying this all with you.

So, instead of keeping this up, open a notebook or the notes app on your phone and dump every loose thought onto one page. Don’t organize it yet. Don’t turn it into a beautiful color-coded planner spread.

Just get it out of your head. You’ll quickly find that seeing fifteen things written down can actually feel much less overwhelming than having fifteen things randomly pop into your brain throughout the day.

7. Take a Nap If You’re Running on Empty

Sometimes the most productive thing you can do is to admit that you’re tired and do something about it.

There have definitely been days when I’ve looked around at everything I needed to do—the dishes, laundry, work, something I needed to cook—and kept telling myself I needed to get up and get my life together. Meanwhile, I was way too tired to actually doing any of it, so instead Is at there thinking about everything that needed to be done.

If you’re at that point, take the nap.

You don’t need to sleep the entire afternoon away. Just set an alarm for about 30 or 40 minutes, put your phone down, and actually let yourself rest instead of spending those same 30 minutes scrolling while thinking about all the things you should be doing.

The mess will still be there when you wake up, obviously. But you may have enough energy to deal with one or two things instead of dragging yourself through the rest of the day accomplishing nothing because you’re exhausted.

Sometimes rest is part of getting your life back together, too.

8. Pick the One Thing That Would Make Tomorrow Annoying

Once you’ve done that, you deal with that first.

Just that one thing. No need to make a huge plan to get your whole life together today, just deal with that one thing.

For me personally, my life feels like a total mess if I don’t have the ingredients I need to make breakfast on weekdays. So if I’m feeling out of sorts, I try to get that one thing out of the way as soon as possible. Another thing that always gets me is if I have not done my budget for a new month by the last day of a closing month. Boy, this can send me on a spiral because when it’s not done, I tend to start the month off on the wrong foot financially, and this throws the entire month off!

Your thing might be completely different.

Maybe you have no clean clothes for tomorrow. Maybe there’s nothing in the house you can take for lunch. Maybe your car needs gas and you know you won’t want to stop in the morning. Maybe you need something printed for work, there’s a permission slip you haven’t signed, or the kitchen is such a mess that making breakfast tomorrow is going to annoy you before the day has even properly started.

Whatever it is, that’s the thing you deal with first.

I find this question so much more useful than asking myself, “How do I get my whole life together?” because that’s such a huge question that I usually don’t even know where to start.

“What is going to make tomorrow harder if I leave it like this?” is much easier to answer.

And once you know the answer, you have your next task.

9. Clear One Surface Completely

Not the entire room. One surface.

That could be your bedside table, bathroom counter, kitchen island, coffee table, desk, or the top of your dresser.

Choose somewhere you look at frequently and clear it completely. Throw away the trash, put obvious things back where they belong, and move anything that needs more thought into a temporary pile or basket.

A completely clear surface can make a messy room look more under control, and it gives your eyes somewhere peaceful to land instead of seeing clutter everywhere.

10. Delete Five Things From Your Mental To-Do List

Notice I did not say complete, but delete.

Like me, I’m sure you have quite a few things on your imaginary to-do list that don’t actually need to happen.

Maybe you were going to reorganize a closet this weekend even though there’s absolutely nothing wrong with leaving it the way it is for another month. Maybe you planned to make some elaborate meal you saved on Pinterest when everyone in your house would be perfectly happy eating something that takes twenty minutes.

Maybe you’ve decided you need to deep-clean something, sort through the 4,000 photos on your phone, or start some home project that isn’t actually urgent.

If you have things like these on your to do list, give yourself permission to officially stop planning to do some of those things at least for now.

11. Wash the Dish You Keep Avoiding

Every kitchen seems to have one.

In my home, it’s usually a pan that needs soaking, or the blender. I hate washing these so I sometimes leave them there and hope they’ll magically clean themselves.

What ever your thing may be, wash it first.

It’s usually the thing making the entire kitchen feel worse than it actually is, and once it’s gone, dealing with the easier dishes suddenly doesn’t feel quite as irritating.

12. Put Together One Extremely Easy Meal

When everything already feels chaotic, this is probably not the evening to prove that you can cook something impressive from scratch. Instead, prepare something easy and filling.

I like to make simple things like eggs and toast or some yogurt with some granola or even leftovers if I have them. Even frozen meals are a great choice here.

One of the easiest ways to feel like you entire life needs a reset, is to stress about what to eat (or prep for the family) and or wait until you’re starving before you start making it.

Just get a simple meal out of the way quickly so you don’t feel like you’re dropping the ball on everything.

13. Put On Clean Clothes, Even If You’re Not Going Anywhere

If you’ve been working from home all day, cleaning, lying around, or simply having one of those days where you never quite got properly dressed, change your clothes.

Wear something like a clean T-shirt, fresh underwear, comfortable shorts, or whatever feels good.

You’ll feel a whole lot better by just doing this. But, you’ll feel even better if you shower, then put on your clean clothes.

14. Make a “Not Today” Basket

This is for the stuff that is cluttering your space but requires more decisions than you’re willing to make right now. It includes things like papers you need to sort through, random chargers, things you may need to find a home for, returns or even little items scattered around the house.

Collect them all and put them into one basket, box, or reusable bag, just for now as this is not a permanent organizational system, and you do eventually have to go through it.

But when everything already feels messy and you’re looking for small tasks you can complete quickly, containing clutter can be much more realistic than perfectly organizing it in the moment.

And let’s be honest, one basket of miscellaneous stuff feels very different from a bunch of miscellaneous items spread across three or five rooms.

15. Check Your Bank Account

As much as you may not want to when life already feels like you can’t handle it, this is one you should not skip. Because sometimes not knowing what’s going on with your money feels even worse than actually looking at the numbers.

I touched on this briefly before, but this one really gets to me personally. If I don’t know what’s really going on with my money at any given time, I start to feel like my life all over the place. Even if nothing particularly bad is happening, just not knowing is enough to make me feel unsettled.

So, if you’re like me, open your account and take a look at what’s going on there.

That’s all you have to do.

I personally like making a new budget every month and then checking in on it every week so I can see whether I’m staying on track—or at least as close to on track as I can manage. But you absolutely do not need to sit down and create an entire budget right now if you don’t have the energy for that.

For today, just make sure you know what’s there. Look at what has recently come out, what’s due to come out soon, whether you’ve spent more than you realized, whether there’s a bill you forgot about, or if anything unexpected has hit your account.

You don’t even have to fix everything you find today.

The point is to replace that vague, nagging feeling of “I don’t even know what’s going on with my money right now” with an actual number and a clearer picture of where you stand.

Sometimes that’s enough to make one part of your life feel considerably less out of control.

16. Do a Five-Minute Put Things Back Round

It’s easy for your life to feel like a mess if there are items that are out of place in your space.

You can work on this quickly if you set a timer for five minutes and move quickly to put them back. By the way, this is not a deep cleaning session. You’re simply putting things where they should be anyway.

For example, put shoes with shoes, cups in the kitchen, dirty clothes in the hamper, toiletries in the bathroom, food back in the pantry, chargers near the electronics they belong to, stationary in the office or designated space etc.

Those five focused minutes can make a surprisingly big difference, especially if your mess is mostly everyday stuff that has slowly migrated around the house.

17. Look at Your Calendar for the Next Seven Days

If your life feels like it’s lacking order, spend a few minutes to check your calendar for upcoming appointments, birthdays, meetings, payments, deadlines, errands, school events, plans, or anything else that would be unpleasant to suddenly remember at the last minute.

Then ask yourself whether anything requires preparation.

Do you need an outfit washed? A gift ordered? A document sent? Groceries purchased? Transportation arranged?

Once you take care of these, things will start to feel a lot less chaotic. And, even if you can only do one or two things here, it’ll help you tremendously.

18. Set Out One Thing You’ll Need Tomorrow

Think of one thing you need to do or some place you need to be tomorrow and prepare one thing that makes this easier. Just the one thing.

It can simply be something like picking workout clothes, putting your keys in your bag, putting the paperwork you need near the door, packing yourself a lunch or even charging your headphones.

Doing this will take one responsibility off your mind, and it’ll make tomorrow morning just a little bit easier.

19. Open a Window or Step Outside for Five Minutes

If you’ve spent most of the day indoors, you should open the curtains, or a window if the weather allows. You could even stand on the porch, or walk to the mailbox, sit outside with your drink or take one lap around the building.

Anything that allows you to physically leave the environment you’ve been staring at for the last several hours.

This could help clear your mind at the very least or help you feel like you just got a fresh start to the day.

20. Finish One Tiny Thing You’ve Been Avoiding

One of the biggest things that can make your life feel like a mess is having a bunch of unfinished things that you keep avoiding.

I know you may have more than one, but for now, choose one thing that will take less than ten minutes but has been irritating you for days and get it done.

Usually this is something along the lines of sending a text, making an appointment, placing that return in your car, adding the final touches to some project etc.

The task itself is most likely very small, but it can tie things up nicely and help you get rid of the exhaustion you get from having to think about it over and over again without doing it.

Once you complete that one lingering little task, you’ll get some closure and you’ll feel a small step closer to feeling like you’re getting it together.

21. Decide What Enough Looks Like for Today

When life feels out of control, it’s a great idea to set some boundaries for yourself by giving yourself the permission to say that what you’ve done today is enough. Rather than stressing about all the things that you could still do or still need to do.

Maybe enough for today means that you check up on your money situation so far into the month, sent out that email you’d been avoiding and set your clothes out for tomorrow.

Maybe it means you showered, did a brain dump and checked your calendar for the next week.

Or maybe it means that you spent a few minutes putting stuff back where they belong, fixing your bed and completely clearing one space.

Or maybe you had the time and the mental capacity so you did all the things listed here.

Regardless of what you take on today, even if your house isn’t spotless, your inbox isn’t empty, your finances are not perfectly organized, and you generally did not become a completely different person overnight, just doing some of these will make it so that things are a little easier than they were an hour ago and that’s progress.

And I think that’s the part that’s easy to overlook when everything feels like a mess.

After all, starting small can feel almost pointless when you know there is so much that needs to be done. You want to keep going until everything feels fixed. But that’s also how a life reset can turn into another overwhelming project.

So decide what enough looks like for today and once you do that, let yourself be done for today.

You Don’t Need to Fix Everything at Once

When life feels like a mess, there is usually a very strong temptation to try to fix everything—sometimes all at once.

Suddenly you’re making these huge plans for yourself. You’re going to start waking up at the crack of dawn, clean the whole house, work out every day, stop spending money, stop scrolling, cook every meal from scratch, drink a gallon of water every day, organize every drawer, answer every email, and finally deal with every little thing you’ve been putting off.

Basically, you plan to reinvent your whole life in a day.

The problem is that you’re usually making this enormous plan at the exact moment when you already feel overwhelmed. And that’s why I prefer starting ridiculously small.

Small things like throwing away ten pieces of trash today. Fill your water bottle. Clear your nightstand. Check your calendar. Put tomorrow’s clothes somewhere you can find them. Finally answer that one message you’ve been thinking about for four days.

Then stop if you need to.

Tomorrow, pick up a few more of those little things that keep popping into your head because you know they need to be dealt with.

Then do a few more the next day. And do this again and again.

Because while doing three tiny things today might not give you some dramatic overnight transformation, those little things start adding up surprisingly quickly.

And, more importantly, every small problem you take care of is one less thing taking up space in your home, your schedule, or your head.

You don’t need to have your whole life together by tonight.

You just need to leave things a little easier than you found them today.