For most of my adult life, I have either worked full-time or at home as a full-time stay-at-home mother. But as our business has developed and grown, I have had to adjust my day-to-day workload. I now consider myself a stay-at-home working mom. The transition into this has definitely been a learning curve of figuring out what I can take on myself and what I need to delegate to my partner and/or children. It has taken some practice, but we are always getting better. A motto around our house is “progress, not perfection.” I will try to do a little bit better today than I did yesterday. With that model, when a day inevitably comes when someone is sick, or I just don’t have 100% to give, at least it doesn’t all devolve into chaos … usually.
1) Work. I work from home, and I have a 2-year-old at home. As you can imagine, finding blocks of time for uninterrupted work can be challenging. Fortunately, I am also self-employed, and I make my schedule. The most important thing about working from home for me is prioritizing what needs to be done and when. For example, some things need undivided attention; those happen during the baby’s naps. When the baby sleeps, it’s work time, period. I don’t get distracted by laundry or dishes. But some things require less attention. I can do social media posts at any time, like while the kids are playing or doing their reading or piano practice. The main takeaway here is to really capitalize on the uninterrupted work time and not waste it doing things that don’t need that much concentration.
2)Kids School Stuff. Permission forms, school fees, band instrument rentals, spirit days, and hot lunch days, it seems like there is always something. I am sure I don’t have to tell you twice. These are important to our kids, and we love being a part of them. Basically, I just do it now. I am not great at checking my emails and am famous for missing emails with important information, but when I get an email or a paper from school, I don’t put it down or close it until I have dealt with it. If I did, it would most definitely get immediately forgotten about, and the next thing you know, we are scrambling for it. No, thank you, I hate that feeling.
3) School Lunches. New to this school year, two of my children (11 and 8) are making their own lunches. Truth be told, I enjoyed making my kids lunches, but with the addition of a third child, who is now 2, who gets out of bed on his own and has started potty training, having one less thing to do on school mornings has made our morning routine a little smoother. Usually, we try to get the lunches made the night before, sometimes right after school with the rest of the chores and sometimes after dinner. Although the kids would rather I make them, they enjoy their lunch a bit better when they have some ownership of it, more of the lunch gets eaten, and they are learning a life skill of what a balanced lunch looks like. And what are we even doing if we aren’t striving to raise capable and independent human beings?
4) Meal Plan. I HATE meal planning, but I “eat the frog,” as they say, and I do it because 5-7 decisions made right now prevents the decision fatigue of making one decision every day at the end of a day full of decisions, plus it saves money. There are so many meal-planning strategies out there, and I can’t even count how many I have tried and have failed. I encourage you to find something that works for you. For me, it looks like this: 1) Look at last week’s meal plan. Is there anything we didn’t eat that we still have the groceries for? 2) Write down 5-7 meal ideas on a sheet of paper 3) Beside those ideas, write the groceries needed for each 4) Most importantly! Stick that list on the fridge so you don’t forget what meals you bought groceries for.
Here is why this method works for me. It is not too rigid; planning specific meals on specific days just doesn’t jive with me. This way, I look at the list and decide what I want to make on any given day. Sometimes, I just don’t have the effort to put into some meals, and I pick something easier from the list or save the easy thing for a busy night. Having the list out also gives me the reminder to take meat out of the freezer the night before, which can be a huge struggle to remember for me.
5) Groceries. I highly encourage the use of grocery pick-up services. It saves so much time, and this is how. After the meal plan, review the list and add those things to the cart online. I also make a quick list of breakfast and lunch food that we need and add that to the grocery list. Choose a pickup time; this is usually in the morning for me because then it doesn’t get in the way of the rest of my day. This process takes me an hour between meal planning and grocery ordering — versus at least an hour of grocery shopping, with a toddler, in person.
6) Laundry. I don’t have a laundry day. Instead, I do laundry almost every day. Just a little bit, wash and dry a load, fold and put away a load. Is the laundry ever all done at one time? No, but this ensures that laundry rarely becomes urgent. Everyone always, or almost always, has something clean to wear to work or school. I don’t usually run into a situation where I have to do the laundry immediately, so there are clean clothes for tomorrow, and if there is a day that gets busy and a load of laundry doesn’t get done, it does not throw a whole schedule off.
7) To-Do List. Sometimes, to-do lists feel never-ending, so I embrace them. I put stuff on the list that needs to get done but is not urgent. Urgent things get scheduled or put on the calendar. To-do list jobs include taking the cans to the recycle depot, cleaning up the carport, mowing the lawn, and vacuuming the “indoor/outdoor” space. This list serves two purposes for us: 1) some of the things on the list the kids are capable of doing but are not part of their regular chores, and they have the opportunity to earn money by doing them. 2) It is easy to pick one job on a weekend or an afternoon and just finish that one thing when there is time.
Well, there you have it. What challenges do you encounter, and how do you conquer them? Lets chat.
December 6th, 2024