As a mom, it can be difficult to balance all of your responsibilities and enjoy quality time with your family each day. With all you have going on, the boundaries of one day can blur into the next — and before you know it, another week, month or year is over.
Ways to Simplify Your Life
Fortunately, you can make your life easier by streamlining your routines and employing some strategies. Keep reading to find out ways to simplify your life and enjoy more family time.
Image Source: Flickr
1. Get Up Earlier Than Everyone Else
You may not be able to do this all of the time, but making an effort to get up at least an hour earlier than the rest of your household can help simplify your life. In the early hours of morning quiet, you can have time to focus on planning out your day.
Then, when your children wake up, you’ll already be primed and ready for the day.
2. Streamline Your To-Do List
Although it’s likely easy to fill your daily to to-do list with countless tasks, that doesn’t mean you should. Instead, write everything down that you would like to accomplish for the day. Then, cross off the things that can wait until another time. You’ll may find that some tasks you thought were essential aren’t
3. Don’t Feel Bad About Saying No
Even if you’re the kind of person that never likes to say no, start doing it. You don’t have to be the neighborhood chauffeur, attend a weekly playdate, bake cookies or babysit your friends’ children every time you are asked. Make a rule: If doing the task will cut into your family time, consider saying no.
4. Streamline Your Wardrobe
The fewer choices you have in your closet, the less time you will spend choosing. Take the time to go through each piece of clothing in your wardrobe and decide if it’s something you like to wear.
If you haven’t worn it in a while or it’s not one of your favorite pieces, store it in a box or tub. Once you fill the box, store it somewhere like the attic. If a couple of months go by and you don’t miss the items in the box, donate them.
5. Make Errands as Easy as Possible
Instead of taking the time to wheel a cart up and down the aisles of a grocery store, consider using a curbside service. For example, you can shop and pay for things you need on Walmart’s grocery app and choose a pickup time. Then, all you have to do is drive to the designated pickup area, and an associate will bring the order to your car.
6. Make Dinner Planning Simple
If you struggle with evening mealtime, try choosing a week’s worth of easy-to-prepare family favorites and repeat them on a weekly basis.
Meals you can throw in a crock-pot or place on sheet pan can be healthy and save you tons of time in preparation. For example, on Monday have turkey chili in the crockpot. On Tuesday, cook salmon and veggies on a sheet pan in the oven and so on.
7. Declutter Other Areas of Your Home
Once you’ve streamlined your wardrobe, you can also work on streamlining and decluttering in other areas as well. You may even want to sell some of the items you no longer want.
Livable, a storage company in Portland, has this suggestion: “When you’re trying to figure out which items you’ll want to sell, we recommend taking this time to make a few other important piles: Keep/Store, Sell, Donate and Toss.”
8. Make a Daily and Weekly Commitment to Your Family
Even if you feel like your life is moving at lightning speed, commit to carving out at least 20 minutes or so each day to spend time with your family. Maybe it’s family dinner time around the table, or maybe it’s bedtime stories before going to sleep.
Also, make a date each week to do something fun together as a family. Consider a family movie or game night. Or plan an afternoon at a local park. It doesn’t really matter what you do, as long as you’re spending time together.
By consciously choosing to simplify your life and taking steps to do so, you’ll likely discover you have more time to devote toward your family. Although you’ll have to set aside some time to implement some of the strategies on the list, the time you’ll potentially gain will more than make up for it.