Being a stay-at-home mom is not as easy as it seems. Just when you think you have all the time in the world to finish all household chores and finally start on that passion project, you get nothing done at the end of the day.
The thing is, being productive while being a stay-at-home mom is completely possible. By boosting your productivity, it’s easy to tick off all your tasks and still have free time for your favorite hobbies. Check out these doable ways stay-at-home moms can make the most out of their days.
Wake Up Early
There’s a ton of things you can do when you wake up earlier in the morning. Getting up even just 30 minutes earlier than your usual waking time can make a difference.
Moms can use this extra time to prepare themselves for the day ahead. Take a shower, read a book, have a hot cuppa, put on some makeup. Doing any activity that they love without interruption makes a great start for a hectic day.
Set Deadlines
Setting deadlines isn’t only for working moms. Stay-at-home moms can make use of scheduling tasks too. They can put together a simple to-do list of their daily chores. Or they can use effective productivity techniques to help them scratch off tasks more efficiently.
One dilemma moms deal with ever so often is Parkinson’s law: “Work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion.” This means that if you give yourselves one week to declutter the kids’ clothes when it can only be done within two hours, the task will be more complex. You end up feeling more stressed about it.
To counter Parkinson’s law, stay-at-home moms can use the Pomodoro technique.This promotes working—and resting—in blocks of time. Work on a certain task for 25 minutes straight, and then take a 5-minute break. Work on three more Pomodoro episodes, then start resting for 15 to 20 minutes.
Do Meal Preps
Cooking breakfast, lunch, and dinner can take up a huge chunk of your time each day. For stay-at-home moms, meal preps are the key.
Set a day in the week to prepare meals for the week. Place them in grab-and-go containers that everyone can take out and reheat in no time. This is a smart technique for stay-at-home moms who take care of a working spouse and busy school kids.
Aside from being on a lookout for healthy meal-prep recipes, it helps for moms to schedule a weekly menu for the entire family. This helps them set a budget for groceries and spare them time spent on conceptualizing meal ideas every day.
Organize Your Things
It’s hard for moms to keep the house clean and organized when there are kids ravaging it by the minute. But when they develop an organization system that works for them, it’ll be a lot easier to keep things under control.
Stay-at-home moms can start decluttering or getting rid of unnecessary stuff in the home by areas. Divide the task into rooms, and decide which is the first priority, second, and so on. Once they start in a certain area, moms can organize their things according to what they will keep, discard, or sell.
It’s best to keep the things you use daily or will use in the next few weeks. You can get rid of those that aren’t useful anymore. Then, sell those that are still in good condition but are no longer needed.
When selling things online, moms need to look for a trusted platform that’ll promote their products to a wider audience. Otherwise, putting a lot of work into posting items will be pointless.
Embrace the Chaos
It can be frustrating to clean up the house one minute and find it a complete mess the next. When kids play, they leave chaos in their tracks, and sometimes, that’s okay. By leaving kids on their own to play, you’re sparking their imagination, which fosters many important qualities in a child.
On the one hand, moms get the free time to focus on other important tasks. After all, it’s more efficient to work on tidying up the house at a certain time than to do so every single minute.
Stay Productive, Mamas
Moms have a lot on their plate, but they only need the right techniques and motivation to get through it all. They should give these tips a try, and soon, they’ll get the hang of being efficient and productive stay-at-home superstars.
This is a collaborative post.