Transforming Your Celiac Disease Lifestyle with Smarter Solutions Ep. 174

The mental load of living with Celiac Disease can be downright exhausting. But it doesn’t have to wear you down. Where possible, I always recommend lessening the mental burden by simplifying life.

On today’s episode I talk about the technology lifesavers that I use in my life and with my family. These simple strategies are easy to implement and can make life so much easier to cope.

Tune in to find out how you can integrate these practical tools into your own life for a stress-free, organized life.

Find out how Ultimate Celiac System can support your Celiac journey here
 https://belindawhelantraining.com/ultimate-celiac-system

Wish you could get gluten free meals on the table fast that the whole family will love? Check out Meal Plans Made Easy
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Music Credit bensound.com 

Chapters

• 0:00 Simplify Life With Keyless Entry
• 4:53 Organize Life With Phone Systems

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:24

Now, just this past week, I had something very useful in my life die on me and it made me realize how I have made simple steps in my life so much easier and how this takes away from my bandwidth and my mindset of having to think about all these extra things, because so many people that I talk to tell me that living with celiac disease is constantly bombarding them. They're constantly having to think about where they're going to eat, what they're going to do when they travel, what they do if they're going out. Friends, you know how they're going to get food, how they're going to stay safe, and I totally get that, because I'm living that exact thing as well Every single day. Food is on my mind and it does take its toll. I'm not going to lie. It does take its toll, and this is why it's important to take away some other burdens, some other things that you shouldn't have to be worrying about and shouldn't have to be constantly thinking about as well. So these simple tips that I want to share with you today is by utilizing technology, and using technology to your advantage, to make your life simpler, easier, and just a few more things not to think about. So let's jump into it.

Speaker 1: 1:47

So last week I was going to school to drop my children off and I went to lock the front door and I could not lock my front door. Now, this might sound a little bit ridiculous, but we have a keyless entry system where we type in a password and the door automatically locks and automatically unlocks. And it is brilliant because we don't have to take keys anywhere with us, except for our car key. And if we're going down the beach which we do a lot we just walk down the beach. We don't have to take any keys with us. We don't have to remind our teenager to take keys with her when she's going to school or going to friends. She can come home whenever and get in the front door. You know, we get home from school, we'll pick up and the kids rush to the front door. They can let themselves in. They don't have to wait for me to be fumbling with keys and things like that. So yeah, last week we went to walk out the door. I've gone to lock the door by pressing the button and basically it would not work and I was mortified. I was like, oh my God, what am I going to do? This is how we get in and out our door, and so I rummaged around and found the backup key, was able to lock the door, stressed out, got to school a little bit late and all the rest of it. Got home, rang my husband, who was, of course, away with work, and we just decided that we would have a look at it, see how we go. When he got home, and unfortunately the motor had died in this keyless entry system, so that's fine, we decided to replace it. So we ordered a new one, which he has just installed today, hallelujah.

Speaker 1: 3:25

And I have to admit, the past week of not having this keyless entry system oh man, it made me really appreciate how much it simplifies my life, and that's pretty much what prompted me to record this episode for you. So I found that even just that simple task of oh my God, I forgot the key, you're going to run back inside, grab the house key, lock the house up before jumping in the car, or even just rummaging my handbag when I get home to find the key and unlock the door, like just such a simple thing, like if you do this you probably don't even think twice about it, but when it's taken away from you, you realize how simple it is to use keyless entry, so that might be something that you want to look at. It literally costs less than a couple of hundred dollars and it is a game changer. Like I said, you know anyone can use it. You can give people different passwords and things to enter your house. So my mom has our entry password for our old one. We need to set her up on our new system. And our new system is even easier. I don't even have to type a password in. It's my thumbprint, so even easier again. So I'm so, so grateful to have that system in my life. It's literally a game changer. So that's where I love technology to. You know, take away some of that extra bandwidth from my brain. Now.

Speaker 1: 4:54

The next one is utilizing things on my phone with my family. So we use a system where we can all access the family calendar and that way, when I put a you know appointment or you know an event that we're going to within our calendar on our phones, my husband and my daughter can see it as well. So if they go to book something in, they can look on there and they can see that we've already got something in. So just recently I input my husband's football presentation into our calendar. He's got that coming up in a couple of months and when I put it in I could automatically see that we already had another event on, which was disappointing because now we have to juggle both of those. But it was good because it helped me be aware that both of these events are coming up and how to pre-plan for those events. So that's really cool and it just takes away from. You know, one person knows what's going on for them, but the other person isn't correlating and corresponding rather to figure out what's going on in each other's lives.

Speaker 1: 5:56

So I find that having that way of seeing each other's calendars is so handy and just helps me remember things, because back before I had celiac disease, I was always a list writer. I would always a list writer, I would always write things down. It's always been something that I've done, but I remembered things much easier. I was much better at remembering things. Whether that was because I didn't have celiac disease, I don't know, or whether it's because I didn't have as much going on in my life I didn't have children, I didn't have this autoimmune disease to constantly be thinking about food and my life wasn't as busy. So that could have played a big part in it. So if you find that you forget things very easily by keeping everything in your calendar can make life so much simpler and easier to refer to.

Speaker 1: 6:48

So we use iPhones. I'm sure on Androids you could set this up as well. But basically it's just setting up a family calendar and you can you know, you can color code it, you can make it as simple as you want and you can access each other's calendars and see what everyone's doing. There are options for keeping things like off your husband's calendar If they don't need to see it, things like you know if you go in the gym or whatever, and that's not really relevant to their day-to-day life. But you can share everything. We just have it that everyone can see everything is just easier for us. So that's one that works so so well for our family.

Speaker 1: 7:26

The next one is sharing notes. So we have set up a note on our phone and it's literally all of our groceries. So we have this massive long running list and whenever we need something we just put a check mark next to that item on the shopping list and let's just say my husband runs out of something in the kitchen. He'll put it on the shopping list. Next time I go to the shops, I can check my shopping list and it's on there. It's not like I've got to remember to grab a piece of paper off the fridge or he's forgotten to write it down. It's automatically been put into that notes section and I can access it. Automatically been put into that notes section and I can access it. And that is a game changer for me, because I was always always forgetting to take the shopping list to the supermarket with me.

Speaker 1: 8:10

So that could be something that you could utilize, depending on how old your children are, when they run out of items in the kitchen or if there's things that they need, they can even add it to the shopping list as well, which can make it super helpful for you and your partner when you're going grocery shopping. So that's a really I guess it's an easy one to set up, and it's just one of those things that has grown over time. So the more we've built up on our list, more items have been added to it, and we don't need to delete them and rewrite them. We literally just put a tick mark next to it and then, when we don't need it, we remove that tick mark as we purchased it. I hope that makes sense. So, yeah, so that's been fabulous for us. We also use our notes part of our phone to put down gift ideas. So when we are preparing for, say, birthdays or Christmas, we have a running list that my husband and I can see and we can see what ideas we've got and if we think of something we can add to it, and that works really well as well. So that could be something that you might want to look at.

Speaker 1: 9:14

Moving forward, and if you're like me, where you always have a to-do list for your partner, you could even set up a to-do list. So, my, you could even set up a to-do list. So my husband has a bit of a love-hate relationship with my to-do list because I'm always giving him jobs to do because he's such a handyman, but he'll always say write it down, write it down, and then when I can get to it, I'll get to it. So I find that having a to-do list for him works really well too. You could do that for your kids, you could do that for your partner. But yeah, I just find that that is a super one to have in there as well. So if I think of something that you know, maybe has broken around the house or something needs fixing and replaced, I can put that on the to-do list and when you know he says, what do you, what do you need me to do, he can just go check out the to-do list. So that's a good one as well.

Speaker 1: 9:56

All right, the next one is bill payments. So back in the day prior to having children, we would pretty much get our bills and we'd just pay them. We just had money there and we would just pay the bill and that was it, whereas once we got kids and we had more bills coming in and things just changed. Like everything has changed since having kids. I don't know if you can kind of relate to that, but when you have kids there's, you know, there's school fees and there's sporting fees and there's all of these extra payments and I just find it really hard to keep on top of if I'm paying things as I go along. So what we do is we set up automatic payments. So we sit down and we go okay, we've got this bill which is around about this much per year. We divide it by 12 and every month we have a payment go to that bill, so that when the bill comes, it's pretty much paid for and we don't even have to think about it. So I love that system. That's been a game changer for us for keeping our payments on track and just another thing not to think about. So you might be able to set that up with a lot of your bills. We do that with pretty much everything mortgage, school payments, utilities, phone bills, internet everything that you pretty much have to pay regularly. We have it set up on a transfer system where we're transferring money every single month so that it keeps that in track. So that could be something to look at as well.

Speaker 1: 11:26

All right, and the last one is to set up subscriptions or auto orders on items that you take on a monthly basis. So for us, we take a multivitamin and a whole heap of other supplements every single month and we have them sent to us on a monthly basis, so we don't have to, you know, get to the end of the month and go, oh, we forgot to order our vitamins, or you know we've run out, and then we have to wait and order them. We just have them come on a 28 day cycle. So each of the products that we use comes in a 28 day allotment. Is that how I'd explain it? That's probably the easiest way. So it comes in a package with enough for 28 days. So we have ours delivered on a 28 day cycle, set and forget, don't have to think about it. If we need to add things or change things up every now and again, we can simply do that. But at least this way, every single month, we have our supplements arrive on our front door and it's just, you know, one of those moments where you just go thank God, I didn't have to think about that.

Speaker 1: 12:29

So have a look at things that you're consuming on a monthly basis. Can you have them delivered to you? Can you have, like, a subscription model or an auto order model? A lot of companies order a discount for you doing this. We get 10% off for doing this with our company that we purchase ours from, and we just find that it really works so well for lowering that mental stress and that mental load. So these are some simple tips that you could perhaps add into your life. You may want to add in one or two of them. You might think these ideas are all amazing and you're going to change up these in your life, but I hope this has inspired you to look at some areas in your life where you can lower that mental strain and that bandwidth and make your life easier with celiac disease. So thanks so much for tuning in and I hope that this has inspired you and I look forward to talking with you again next week on the show. Have a great week, take care. Bye.