Thanks for the great responses.
Shopping List: We use the Bring! app (
https://getbring.com/#!/app) which I highly recommend as it syncs between phones and orders the shopping list by aisle. Online grocery orders will save time for many people, but we eat a lot of fresh food so tend to do bi-weekly trips to the nearest Lidl which saves a fortune over the local Tesco. Even if we do an online shop or 'click and collect' we inevitably have to nip into the shop to collect items that were missed. The other great thing about our local Lidl is that it is quick - there aren't 20 choices of items like jam (just a premium, regular and basic option) and you don't have to constantly game the '2 for 1', x% extra free, 'buy 2 get 1 free' options that Tesco uses to befuddle people. The only delay is a slight queue for the checkout so, ironically, doing a big shop doesn't take much longer than doing a small one.
General shopping: I don't mean to start a debate but online shopping by Amazon/ebay is good on time-cost compared to going into town.
Garden planting: quite right @bungeejumper, easy planting this season for me in my garden and allotment - just onions, potatoes and asparagus this time (plus the usual herbs). Whizzing around with the battery strimmer, hedge trimmer etc is easy and, by coincidence, I did buy that Bosch handheld cordless trimmer you linked. You are right that it gives the neat garden look without much effort!
House maintenance: I'm annoyed that my neighbour/friend with the three-piece ladder has selfishly moved away. I'm looking for an alternative but don't really want to store a large ladder. One option is the magnetic window cleaners for upstairs (e.g.
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Tyroler-Bright ... 00F8FEGMK/) but the reviews are mixed.
Vacuuming. @vrdiver, I was going to make the same point about robovacs. We have a basic Eufy one which does the floors while we do the school run. We also have the Dyson stick vacuum for quick fixes, including the stairs. @bungeejumper - Quentin Crisps quote about dirt isn't a bad one, sometimes we've stretched the deep cleaning to every few weeks and saved a lot of time. Four years is pushing it though!
Cooking. This is an area where I would love to save more time. Great points on the batch cooking, slow cookers and meals plans which we often fail to be discplined enough. Plus the dangers of running out of food/ideas and doing expensive quick fixes. @vrdriver I didn't know about the gut bacteria benefits of frozen food!
Kids gifts. Another where we get screwed is on last-minute gifts for kids parties where my wife dashes into a shop to get something overpriced at the last minute. We now keep an amazon wishlist and of gifts and the Keepa plug-in (
https://keepa.com/#!) alerts me all my pending purchases hit the target discount price.
Service providers. It's a time overhead to constantly shop around every year for utility providers (energy, broadband, insurance etc). Moreover, I'm doing it for my elderly mother's home as well. Services like comparethemarket, MSE Energy comparison etc, now save renewal details and do the market trawl. Onedox (
https://www.onedox.com/) is aggregating all the bills from utility providers saving me time keeping an eye on everything. It slightly takes away the pain of a market that forces you to shop around each year rather than rewarding loyalty.
Loyalty. In contrast to the above, I'm interested to hear where people have gone the other way and decided to settle for loyalty with a provider to save time. I do most of my hotel bookings through hotels.com (while cross-checking against the market) which gives me a free night for every 10 purchases and now, with gold status I get better rates and free room upgrades/breakfasts etc (Premier Inns are good at other times). With my business, I do regular hires through Europcar (charged back to clients) and have very preferential rates that give free weekends and hire discounts. These two providers give me low rates, benefits and tend to save time on market trawls. Do you folks use any preferred providers for different services?
Outsourcing: I appreciate others will have different time-costs balances, so outsourcing gardening, cleaning, grocery shopping, etc works for them. If you outsource any other services, like travel planning etc then I'm keen to know.
@Itsallaguess absolutely right on the cost/frequency question. I aggregate all our spending using moneyhub (
https://www.moneyhub.com/home) which has been great for seeing where the money is going (without spending hours in spreadsheets). From there I do a Pareto analysis on frequency/cost and go down the list to see where savings are possible.
We also need to optimise time-cost. I'm interested to hear other ideas where people save time!
N.