Summer means that it’s time to prioritise your activities so you can spend more time doing the things you love to do, like going to the beach. These following seven tips could free up over 30 minutes per day.

Beat the traffic

Use Google Maps on a smartphone or computer to help you plan which roads to take. Choose the ‘traffic’ option and it will overlay traffic congestion on the map. The roads appear green, orange, red or burgundy with green meaning free flowing through to red meaning congested. Use Google Maps on your computer, or download the Google Maps application to your smartphone. By looking at the traffic patterns you might even find a better route that becomes your preferred route.

Have your emails read to you

Rather than logging onto your computer while at home you could have your phone read your emails to you while you drive or walk. Speaking Email is an application for smartphones which works with all major types of email account (Gmail, Hotmail, Yahoo and others), and it has simple controls to let you archive read mail.

Spend less time in the kitchen

You can spend more time doing what you love if you have to spend less time cooking. Ready meals from the supermarket are improving in quality, or if you want to go for a more gourmet option a company such as WOOP (World on our Plate) will deliver semi-prepared meals to your door, created in the same way a chef would in a restaurant; you just have to do the final few minutes of assembly, saving you around half an hour per meal.

Have your shopping delivered

If you still like to cook, but don’t want to waste time at the supermarket, Countdown will deliver your groceries to your door in certain locations or can have them ready for you to collect rather than you having to traipse through the aisles. Or you can choose from a number of other companies that offer vegetable boxes delivered, such as Ooooby.

Use a grab bag

Rather than having to pack what you need every time you go out, create a bag that contains commonly used items for fun trips – sun screen, hats, and so on.

Do fewer chores

This video from BritLab talks about how often you should wash your clothes. It gives a scientific overview of whether you need to do the laundry. You can even use two laundry baskets to pre-sort clothes.

Save time on very simple tasks, for example in the dishwasher cutlery rack group knives in one corner and forks in another corner and this will make it much quicker to grab them all at the same time.

Hack our household

The Household Hacker YouTube channel contains around 60 videos of quick tips and simple life hacks to make your life easier and reduce time, such as this video that shows you how to chop vegetables much more quickly using a pizza slice rather than a knife.