This week’s best time saving tips for busy moms include avoiding cooking time-wasters, strategies for a morning routine, cleaning your bathroom in 15 minutes or less, and more:
Cooking Time-Wasters You Should Toss in the Garbage Bowl
We do plenty of stupid things in the kitchen, including things that seem smart or helpful, but really just waste our time and make cooking and cleaning up more annoying than it needs to be. Here’s a list of kitchen time-wasters you should stop doing right now.
11 strategies for a morning routine (when you can NOT wake up before the kids)
I think the most common issue moms share is sleep deprivation. Personally, before having children, I assumed severe lack of sleep was limited to the early infant months. Little did I know just how long the broken sleep goes for while raising kids.
I began to explore different ways that I could bring in intentional calm, clarity, and joy to my mornings as a means to help my day follow suit. Here are 11 ideas you can begin to play around with during your morning hours that can be done with or without kids underfoot.
Clean Your Bathrooms in 15 Minutes (or Less)
I enjoy the process of cleaning and keeping a home, but bathrooms are my least favorite rooms to tackle. To keep the process a little bit easier, I clean them every Monday and tidy up the counters and toilets as needed through the week. I don’t have more than 15 minutes a week to spend cleaning bathrooms, so I’ve devised a method that I’d like to share with you: it’s simple, ‘green’, and it really works.
Time Management for Busy Moms [Tips from Moms of 13 kids, 9 kids, and 6 kids]
People ask busy mothers this all the time. Time management is an important yet elusive goal. Everyone wants to know “the secret.” I’ve been blessed to know some very holy and efficient mothers. Let me introduce a couple to you and then we’ll talk strategy.
…My mother had thirteen children, yet always found time to read to us, spend time with us and do special projects with us.
…efficient mom…former college professor turned stay-at-home, home-schooling mom (for sixteen years at last count).
Finding the Time
“I don’t have any time!”
Often, I find my brain screaming these words when I become overwhelmed by all of the plates I’m juggling.
Personally, I feel like my life is a constant juggling act in an attempt to find and achieve the elusive balance that all working moms seek. Some days, I fail miserably. Other days, I feel like I’m rocking this WAHM gig and that I totally have everything under control. In those moments of doubt, I typically try my best to really look at my life and adjust the areas that are causing me grief or anxiety. Obviously, I can’t eliminate all stressors — but I can make changes that help. And when I really examine my life, I usually realize that most of my “busy-ness” is my own creation. Realistically, the time I’m seeking is probably there – it’s just a matter of finding it by examining the time that I have each week and making sure that I’m utilizing it to the best of my ability.
Summertime, and a Working Mom’s Living is … Complicated
So I was completely prepared to qvetch about how hard it is to balance the work and the play at this time of year. But then a friend mentioned something that I had never really thought about.
She said that even though it is hard to be a working mom and deal with the seemingly endless swim team and camp schedules, summer is also a wonderful time, because it’s the time she gets to say “yes” instead of “no.” She can say yes to sleepovers, just because. She can say yes to staying at the pool until it closes. She can say yes to long nights in the backyard chasing fireflies, and then watching a movie on the spur of the moment. And she can say yes to just being still and quiet for a day, having fun doing nothing.
How do you keep it all together? Share your tips in the comments.
Photo Source: Flickr curiouskiwi
Posted by: Raki Wright
