If you’re someone who believes in the phrase ‘a place for everything and everything in its place’, then this article is for you. We’ve been trawling through the internet, looking for web-based companies that can bring some semblance of order to the messiness of a life in modern London. Read on and we’ll help you to get every aspect of your day-to-day neatly sorted.
See also…
- 8 signs you need to declutter (and how to take immediate action)
- 5 tricks to make your London flat feel HUGE
- Moving house in London? 5 lifehack services that’ll sort you right out
- How to buy the art you fall in love with
- London self storage with a difference: all you have to do is pack!
For the neat freak online
According to Silentnight, people in the UK spend more time every morning checking emails than eating breakfast – certainly something we can attest too (we’re overworked and hungry!) However, life is a little easier since we’ve been using Unroll.Me, the free service that scans your inbox and filters what you get everyday into three groups: keep in inbox, unsubscribe (automatically unsubscribing you from overzealous emailing lists), or ‘roll up’. The latter groups together regular updates that you don’t necessarily need to see instantly and sends you them as a single daily update. Inbox-neatening, time-saving perfection.
We’ve got online accounts and their passwords coming out of our ears, which is why we find Dashlane useful. Essentially, this puts all of your passwords into one, neat, easy-to-manage place. Once installed, all you have to do is turn it on and it’ll sign you into absolutely anything. It works on just about every device, too, including the latest smartwatches. The only downside is that it can sometimes be too eager, signing you into things whether you want it to or not! (We’re sure there must be a way to make it less keen… we’ll let you know if we find it.)
What kind of Londoner has the time to be fiddling about across multiple apps? Not the way-too-neat kind! This already-legendary app works with ‘recipes’, all of which are divided into ifs and dos. ‘If recipes’ let you organise things to happen in multiple apps without much work on your part. For example, if I send a picture message on Facebook, then this app saves it into my photo library. ‘Do recipes’ let you make your own buttons to easily upload photos, create calendar events, or even change the temperature in your house. What a time to be alive! The future is here and the world is literally at your fingertips.
For the social neat freak
Skitch (made by Evernote) is a great one for when you want to ask someone a question about something right in front of you. Simply take a picture, mark it up, and send it over to your pals. ‘Which soda do I need from the shop?’ ‘Here’s the group meeting place in a busy festival!’ ‘Follow this weird alley to get to my front door…’ These are the kinds of things that Skitch exists for, so download and get snapping!
Getting a bunch of strangers together? Get Doodle-ing! You can upload photos and blurbs about everybody to get the group talking. Add events and notifications to a calendar so people can stay in the loop and you can go about your day-to-day business. Not sure exactly what to do? You can even take a group poll. Supremely organised, here we come!
Are you the organiser amongst your friends? Take out all the hassle with Rundavoo. Just name the place, date, and time! This app will send all the information to your crew. It also syncs with apps like Yelp, Tripadvisor, and Foursquare, so you can check out reviews and even make bookings. Go ahead – be the night out god you were born to be!
For the neat freak at home
House sharing simplified, this London-made app tracks and displays your bills in a neat and easy-to-understand way. Goodbye awkward conversations about money! There’s even a timeline feature so all of your financial conversations can be stored in their own easy to access spot on your phone. Life as an adult… nailing it.
Once you’ve cleaned up your digital life, it’s time to make that flat sparkle. Hassle is another of our London faves – a great, easy-to-use cleaning service, homegrown right here in the capital. Everything can be booked online for the low price of £10/hour. Payments are all taken from your card so you won’t be worrying about running to the cash point during your busy day.
Before you order that cleaner, why not think about getting some of those precious treasures out of the way? With this London-based self-storage company, it’s not goodbye – it’s see you later! Great for things that you might not need now but could do with when you’re in slightly bigger surroundings. It’s so easy, it’s criminal! You just sign up online, wait for your boxes to arrive, take you time to pack them up, and then call the guys back again to take it all away. Goodbye summer sandal collection, see you next year! Check you out: taking over the world like only a neat freak can.
For the incredibly organised house hunter on the move. Never miss a great flat to another greedy Londoner again (or at least, try not to!) With a feed of all the latest properties in your palm, you can stay in the know at all times. You can even book viewing directly through the app. This is a mover’s must!
For the neat freak in need of a hand
This is a hard one to come to terms with, as it was invented so that you can see and track all your bad habits… eeek! Fortunately the same is true for all of your good habits, too. It works on the same principles as fitness companies like Fitbit, recognising that people love to see upturn on a good graph. Encourage yourself to be better, checking your glorious progress on a daily basis. Putting your habits on your phone really does force you to face the facts. Trying to learn a new instrument? Want to start running? HabitBull’s your downloadable man (and it was made right here in London, too, so… yay!)
A calendar on every device imaginable? Yes please! An easy way to have your schedule on your phone, tablet, smartwatch, computer, or all of them. Organise your life by colour, date, and month. Add locations to your events to allow you to easily click for a map when it’s time to go. You can even add icons so everything will be in its perfect digital place.
For the business-minded neat freak
Another London lovely: meet Receipt Bank. This app takes your receipts, photographed from your phone camera, and scans them for important information – presenting all the data in spreadsheets for your accountant to deal with them. A great tool to have, and one that works even better when you marry it to an online accountant such as My Accountant Friend (yet another London tech startup making the world a more organised place!)
Take back your time! This is perfect for you if you have to make time sheets at work (anyone else get annoyed by the amount of time you have to put into a time sheet to account for the time it takes to make time sheets? Grrr!) A stopwatch in your pocket that allows you to keep track of multiple projects at once, although you’ll still have to somehow account for the multiple tea breaks that your freedom from time sheets will afford you. We’re confused…
Are you part of a collective of neat freaks? If so, this app was made for you and your gang. Share to-do lists with all your friends, family or co-workers. Wunderlist will help you keep things in order, whether you have a group project at work or you’re trying to plan a surprise birthday party. And it comes with all the bells and whistles! You can add comments, share your lists, and program reminders. Beware though – excuses for laziness are not accepted here.
For the cultured neat freak
Book worms rejoice! The book you just can’t put down will always be just a few clicks away… uh-oh! You can create bookshelves, managing and arranging your books as you wish. The library of the future is here and it is oh-so organised. Love to share? Connect with Facebook and tell all of your friends about that jaw dropping murder mystery page-turner. Just don’t give away the ending…
Songdrop
Neat freak music lovers look no further! London-based Songdrop offers you a way to tie together all of those random apps that stream music nowadays. No longer do you have to jump from Soundcloud to Bandcamp to Youtube – Songdrop grabs all of your favourite tracks and pulls them into one place, ready for you to sequence, mix and playlist them to your musical heart’s delight.
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