It can be hard to stay on top of everything as a stay-at-home mom, even if you’re organized and good at managing your time. This can be especially true when you’re dealing with things like the kids’ school or extracurricular activities and your own home responsibilities, which can seem endless! However, there are ways to remain productive and stay on top of your home life without feeling like you never have time to relax. Here are 10 tips for staying on top of your home life as a stay-at-home mom so that you can have the best of both worlds!
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1) Take care of yourself
One surefire way to feel like you’re accomplishing something as a stay-at-home mom is to take care of yourself. Often, parents focus more on their children’s needs than their own, but don’t forget about your own! Make it your goal to spend time each day doing something for yourself—whether that means taking a long walk, indulging in some tea or coffee at Starbucks, reading an engaging book or meditating. When you make these self-care activities part of your routine, they won’t feel like such a chore and will help keep stress levels low. You might even find yourself feeling grateful toward those little ones who provide so much joy…and work!
2) Take time out every day
Make time to get out of your house every day. Leaving will give you perspective and remind you that there’s more to life than just cleaning, cooking, and taking care of kids. Find ways to get out every day—whether it’s an hour walking around a park or some errands in town. The important thing is that you take time to breathe and stay grounded in reality.
3) Create systems around the house
One major way that stay-at-home moms (and dads) keep busy is by maintaining order and organization around their home. Even though kids are away at school all day, parents still must clean up after them and ensure that everyone in the family has everything they need. This can be overwhelming, which is why it’s important to create systems around your house to help you stay organized and get things done quickly and easily.
Try out the FlyLady Cleaning System you can get started easily with my 2 page month a glance printable – Click here to purchase it in my shop
4) Keep it simple, keep it fun
Many moms get frustrated when they’re at home with little ones because there’s too much to do and not enough time to do it. To stay productive (and sane), you need to keep your routine focused and simple. If you try to take on too much at once, you’ll be overwhelmed before you even start. Instead, focus your efforts in one area at a time, one day at a time. Just by simplifying things—and making sure you enjoy what you’re doing—you’ll quickly see that staying on top of everything doesn’t have to be hard work. It can be easy work! No matter how chaotic life gets, try making things fun: sing while folding laundry or make up silly songs while scrubbing pots and pans.
5) Prioritize what you do throughout the day
Make one master to-do list and put it in a place where you’ll see it often. Then, prioritize your tasks based on what needs to get done today and what can wait until tomorrow. Assign specific times of day or days of week to particular chores; make sure you don’t schedule too many things at once so nothing falls through the cracks. It’s also important to remember that doing laundry, dishes, and other household work isn’t just about keeping your house clean—it’s also about spending time with your kids (and yourself!).
6) Work on long-term goals daily
A lot of women find that staying productive when they’re at home is tough. It seems like you only get to accomplish a few small tasks and then it’s time to pick up your kid, deal with dinner, do laundry—the list goes on. A good way to combat these feelings is to prioritize your long-term goals daily. Set aside 30 minutes to an hour (depending on what your schedule allows) each day working toward long-term goals that matter most to you.
7) Learn something new every day
If you have small children at home, it can be easy to find yourself in a rut—your day is consumed with taking care of their needs and running around town doing errands. It can seem like there’s not much time to learn something new every day. But if you take just five minutes to read about a topic that interests you or practice an instrument, it can make all the difference when it comes to breaking out of your routine. You might even end up learning something useful that helps your kids!
8) Fill your life with other people
Sure, you spend a lot of time with your kids (you’re a stay-at-home mom, after all), but don’t make your house or apartment your home base. Instead, work hard to fill your life with family and friends who don’t have kids—especially at first. Though you may feel like staying in and taking care of everyone else is what you should be doing, it’s actually good for you (and your marriage) to get out regularly.
9) Listen to inspirational music before you start each day
There’s nothing like pumping yourself up to start your day—and it doesn’t have to be an hour-long treadmill session. Some people find that listening to an uplifting song first thing in the morning helps them get into work mode, even if they won’t actually be working for hours. Try listening to music that pumps you up before you tackle your daily tasks.
10) Don’t try too hard to be perfect!
At any given time, there are at least 10 things my family needs to do: pick up my boys from school, go to taekwondo, take my daughter to dance class, workout, buy groceries, finish laundry and dinner and write thank you notes. It’s easy to get overwhelmed by all I need to get done, but it’s important to remember that being a productive stay-at-home mom doesn’t mean always having everything together. My day rarely goes exactly according to plan, so I try not to be too hard on myself when something unexpected comes up (which happens frequently). Trying too hard can lead to stress or inefficiency–neither is productive!
If you’d like a simple checklist with the entire month’s worth of cleaning tasks from all the zones, weekly tasks, and daily routines, I have a 2-page printable that you can download from my shop below. This is great for starting a daily routine and keeping you on track. It’s also editable so you can adjust or delete any of the tasks or zones that don’t work with your household. After editing, this printable can be imported into your PDF annotation app to use digitally, or printed out and laminated to use every month. Click here to purchase it in my shop and start seeing the rewards of your organized home. You can also find this on my Etsy Shop Here: https://etsy.me/3ESw6oR
