Apps I Use To Make My Life Easier

Over the years, as I’ve made more and more lifestyle changes, I’ve accumulated a whole folder of apps on my phone with the intention of trying to make my life a little easier. Making lifestyle changes can be really hard, and it’s pretty incredible how just one good app can really make all the difference. This list has the ones I use on a pretty regular basis, plus a couple I use to buy products for our home.  I hope this helps you find a hidden gem or two!

If you have any apps you love that aren’t on this list, please send them my way! I love discovering new ones

Calm: This app has two main features. It has several mediation options and essentially a noise machine option. I haven’t been able to do meditations (something I am working on!) but I LOVE this app for the white noise options while trying to fall asleep. There are a bunch of different settings that pretty much have any noise you could want to listen too. My favorite is the thunderstorm; it sounds real and it’s just the right amount of rain and rumbling to help me drift off to sleep. 

Find Me GF: This app is awesome if you are eating gluten free, regardless of the reason for doing so. You can look up what restaurants around you are gluten free friendly, or look up a specific restaurant to see if it will work for you. There are ratings, some menus, and lots of reviews where people share suggestions and experiences that help you get a good idea of just how accommodating a restaurant really is. This really helps take away some of the stress around trying to find a new restaurant, and gives me a good idea of what I can expect before we go anywhere.

Good RX: This one is pretty popular, there are commercials for it everywhere- but I do think it can be very helpful. Before I started using this app I really struggled trying to find the cheapest way to fulfill my prescriptions. I was never sure if I was getting the best deal, or even sure where to look to get the best deal. It isn’t always feasible to get your prescriptions from a bunch of different places to save money (although you do what you gotta do) but this app, at the very least, lets you make informed decisions about something that largely feels like it is out of your control.

Pura: I love Pura. I’ve mentioned them before in my post about scented things in our homes, and this is the company app everything can be ran through. The app lets you control all the different devices in your home, the scent strength and scent schedules associated with each one. It also has the online store built in so you can order new scents, manage your subscriptions and keep on top of everything from one place.

Grove: This is the other home product-related app I mentioned. I also really love Grove. I try to use cleaner cleaning products in our home, and while I know I could use vinegar and baking soda, I prefer these. They have good scent rotations, loads of different home products, fantastic VIP gifts and perks when you sign up to be a VIP (It is a pretty good deal if you are going to get their products regularly) and lots of clean, non-toxic options. Like everything, we all have to make our own choices, and this is no different. They have lots of products to choose from so you can probably find something that fits your own requirements. You can also order straight from the app and easily manage your subscriptions and orders. It really makes staying on top of our home cleaning products much easier.

EWG Healthy Living: EWG Skin Deep is the O.G. beauty product screening database. I used them so much when first starting out, looking up every ingredient and product trying to learn what things to be concerned about and what things were okay. This app is very similar, but not identical to Skin Deep (on the EWG website). This app allows you to look things up via typing in or scanning a product, and it gives you the breakdown of ingredients, ratings and rationale in the same way as Skin Deep. The main difference is this app doesn’t let you look up individual ingredients, if there is a specific ingredient you want to know about, you will still have to go online the actual Skin Deep database and look it up that way. This app does not have the biggest/best database of products, however, they are the gold standard for product ratings and it can still be very helpful for more mainstream brands. They give you individual ingredient ratings, scientific research and international context for each ingredient, and an overall product rating.

Think Dirty: I’ve had this app as long as I have been trying to use clean, non-toxic products. The database as gotten much bigger, but it also has made some changes in the last couple years I’m not the biggest fan of. Don’t get me wrong, I still use it all the time. It’s just that the search results are just a little more cluttered than they used because there are some subscription-only ratings now too. I’m hoping that will get fixed soon, but it is still useful. This app allows you to type in products or scan them in the store. They have many more of the smaller brands than the EWG app does, and have their own rating scale too. They rank each individual ingredient, tell you why it has that rating, and gives you the overall rating for the product so you can make the most informed decision.

Yuka: This is a newer app I’ve found and I really like it. It is so smooth and easy to use, you just scan any product with a barcode and it gives the rating right away. It has a score out of 100 and a descriptive rating to match. It also gives you a breakdown of ingredients in each product and is definitely an updated take on the product screening. It turns out you can also scan food products with this database which I thought was a pretty cool feature.  

Fig: My friend actually introduced me to this app and I think it is such a wonderful idea for those of us struggling with food restrictions/allergies. You make an account and input all the ingredients you are needing to avoid, and the app does the rest. Then, when you are in the store, you scan a product and the app pulls up the ingredient labels, highlighting anything in there that relates to your specific allergies. This makes shopping and reading labels so much easier, and really helps identify potentially sneaky ingredients. If you struggle in the grocery store, or with random products you come across and don’t typically buy, this makes a big difference. Just scan the barcode and the app will do the rest for you so you can be confident with what you’re putting in your body.