Organizing every aspect of your life can be a steep hill to climb, but with the right tools, you can overcome this hurdle. There’s no better tool for the job than the smartphone you carry everywhere, and the right apps.
Best of all, you don’t need to spend a penny to get a helping hand when creating lists, working out, or balancing the budget. Here are the best free third-party apps for iPhone that are staples in my organization app folder.
1
Anylist for Creating Lists for Everything
We all need an app to keep lists in order and get our bearings. Anylist is a list-creation app dedicated to creating and organizing a variety of lists, with a focus on grocery shopping. Although I use Anylist predominantly for tracking groceries and shopping lists, you can use the app to make virtually any list you want.
I’ve also created packing and travel lists for my vacations, and occasionally, the “Restaurants I Need to Try” lists when I come across some good recommendations.
The neat thing about Anylist is that you can organize multiple lists using labeled folders, which makes it easier to sort lists by purpose. If you use Anylist to take stock of your weekly grocery run like I do, you can also use the built-in meal planner and recipe tools that let you add recipe collections and plan them on your calendar.
You can also scan items to add them directly to your list, and add notes under each item in your grocery list. I prefer Anylist over the many list apps out there because it’s so simple to use, has a good organization system, and acts as a two-in-one app for grocery and meal planning.
2
Zinnia to Digitally Plan Your Life
If you want more journaling options beyond what you can find in your iPhone’s Journal app, there’s one app that I’ve found to be a better alternative thanks to its inclusion of different formats and options. Zinnia is a digital journaling app with multiple journal templates, collections, and formats that you can personalize according to your needs. You can pick your own journaling style and create custom journals (including daily planners, to-do lists, and monthly templates).
I’ve found Zinnia to be handy for journaling on both my iPhone and Mac, especially when I want to create more detailed weekly or monthly planners. What I like about Zinnia is that you can build a digital journal from scratch, with color and design options (including dot grid pages which you would see on Freeform) that make the whole process very personalized. For unlimited access to templates, you can upgrade to Zinnia Premium ($9.99/month or $39.99/year).
3
Days to Count Down to Important Events
Countdowns don’t have to be drab, boring, or restricted to your Calendar app. Days, an event countdown app, can make the process fun and personalized. I downloaded this app to keep track of birthdays, but I have since started using it for more including events and holidays.
You can create an event countdown for anything you want, but what makes this app better than a simple calendar is that you can add elements like pictures, labels, and categories and choose how you want the countdown to look. You can also share events and invite friends to view joint events together.
The best way to use Days is to add it as a widget to your iPhone home screen. I do this to remind myself of upcoming events (and count down to them) every time I use my phone. If you already have events marked in your Calendar app, Days lets you sync them easily.
4
Soon to Create a Wishlist for Everything
I love to create wish lists for everything I do, be it watching movies, listening to podcasts, or traveling. That’s why I was excited to come across an app like Soon, which lets you create custom wish lists for a variety of purposes.
I’ve used the app to keep a comprehensive watch list of movies and TV shows across the streaming platforms I use, but recently, starting a reading challenge meant I had to create a reading list, too. You can create selections (hand-picked, curated list of “nuggets” that you choose from across your lists) and invite collaborators.
Since you can also follow other pages, such as Buzzfeed, you can get good media recommendations to add to your lists. You can also explore Soon’s curated “best of” lists to grow yours. Soon is versatile in its wish lists, with a large database of media, places, and locations, making it easier to create lists from scratch. This is a good app to keep your wish lists for every purpose organized in one place, which I find to be complimentary to, say, creating a watch list on Netflix.
5
Sweepy to Clean Your Space
A clean space can be key to increasing productivity because decluttering is not only limited to your devices or apps. Sweepy takes the laziness out of your chores for the week by being your cleaning assistant. As someone who gets easily overwhelmed when cleaning my space, Sweepy has been a lifesaver with its competitive concept.
The more regularly I clean, the longer my streak on Sweepy gets. Plus, with every task you complete, you earn coins which let you buy items for your virtual, Sweepy rooms. I also find the achievements and challenges you can participate in as you extend your cleaning streak to be more motivating than just writing chores down.
This gamification is something that a lot of cleaning/decluttering apps miss out on, which is why cleaning with Sweepy doesn’t feel like I’m concentrating on the chores, but rather feels like I’m completing a quest to earn rewards.
To start off, you can set your cleaning goals (including custom and preset tasks, frequency of cleaning, and current cleanliness state) for any room of your choice. Sweepy sends you daily reminders to keep track of your progress. With a premium subscription, you can also generate a daily schedule in your calendar, and add a member to your virtual house for shared chores.
6
Hevy to Track Your Workouts
Keeping track of your workouts can be a repetitive, sometimes overwhelming process. And the more complex your workout routine, the more you might have to note down in terms of sets, reps, and progressive overload. Hevy, a workout tracker, is my go-to app when it comes to keeping an organized virtual diary of my daily workouts.
Since I stick to the same workout routine every week, I find Hevy’s ability to create a routine super convenient to use in place of my Notes app. This lets me record my progress in one place, and see how many reps, sets, and exercises I complete, and how much weight I lift. During my workouts, I also use Hevy’s rest timer to track my breaks between sets, and the “Empty Workout” option to time my sessions and make a quick-access workout tracker.
You can connect Hevy to your Apple Health app and sync details such as your steps and calories burned. You can also follow other people on Hevy and see what their workouts look like, which can be helpful if you are starting on your fitness journey and need some inspiration on structuring your workouts.
Hevy’s exhaustive list of exercises helps build a highly personalized workout routine, be it for lifting, CrossFit, or HIIT. Combined with other fitness apps for your iPhone, Hevy can help you create a well-rounded fitness routine.
7
Supercook to Find Recipes With What You Have
Figuring out what to cook (especially at the tail end of your grocery haul for the week) can be an exhausting process. Supercook is a handy app that acts like a pocket recipe book, but with a twist: it only generates recipes with ingredients that you have on hand.
While I’ve used tools like ChatGPT and Instagram’s Meta AI bot to generate recipes with ingredients in my fridge, the reason I stick to Supercook is that once you generate a recipe, you can save it to your virtual cookbook for future reference. This, combined with its shopping list and sorting system for your saved recipes (criteria include meal type, key ingredients, and cuisines), makes it a great recipe app to turn to for convenience and ideas.
Since I’m someone who cooks daily, using Supercook has saved me a lot of time. I can take stock of what I have in my fridge while simultaneously creating a shopping list for my next grocery run. I also frequently use the audio feature to tell the app what ingredients I have, although Supercook’s comprehensive virtual pantry makes it easy to find the names of ingredients that might be difficult to remember.
8
Cashew to Keep a Budget Check
Finally, organizing your budget is also something that requires a lot of attention, regardless of whether you are a big spender looking to cut out unnecessary purchases, or simply want to have an idea of your monthly budget. Cashew is my favorite budgeting app to make my monthly allocations and see my spending trends. Beyond its sleek and simple interface, Cashew’s budget breakdowns give very interesting insights into your spending habits.
Recording your expenses and income is easy, with categories such as grocery, travel, beauty, and custom ones making it easy to organize (and later, analyze) your budget. You can also set transactions to be upcoming, subscriptions, repetitive, or lent/borrowed for easier categorization.
I use Cashew’s budget logging to attach my bills—usually groceries—as photos to have an accurate idea of my spending and maintain e-copies of important expenses. Since Cashew also displays a summary of your spending and shows your spending habits every month and week, it’s easier to curb bad spending habits and decisions that might affect your set monthly budget.
Hopefully these apps can help you organize your life and make progress where it counts. Starting with the basics, including your iPhone’s pre-installed apps such as Calendar and Notes, can help you figure out when you need to go hunting for a third-party app to fill in the gaps in Apple’s offerings.
