There are a lot of things to keep up with as a mum – our homes, school, after-school activities and appointments etc – just to name a few!
It can get very chaotic and overwhelming quite quickly.
Here are 5 things that you can do to help keep the overwhelm at bay and make mum life a bit more organised.
Family Calendar
I don’t know about you, but our children have much better social lives than we do.
Trying to keep up with who is going to be where and when can feel a bit daunting.
One way we can keep things organised and know exactly what is going on is to have a family calendar.
We have a paper calendar, but if digital is more your thing you can easily do this with a shared calendar like Google calendar.
It’s not only things like birthdays or appointments we track on our calendar, we also have things like:
- After school activities
- Sports
- Music lessons
- PE in school
- School events
- Family events
- Friends over/going to a friends house
- Work days/hours
- Period tracking
Whatever you need to remember or be aware of, write it on the calendar.
Calendars with sections for each member of the family are helpful because it keeps everything a bit tidier and makes it easy to see at a glance who has what when.
It also allows for easy planning for the week, if you have an appointment at school run time, it allows you to make a plan ready for that.
If you are not someone who usually keeps a calendar, it might take a bit of getting use to remembering to write down dates, but it will save you a lot of brain space once you get the hang of it!
It’s going to be a lot easier to feel organised and less overwhelmed when you know what is going on!
Meal plan
There is no worse feeling than it being food time but having no idea what to cook and there is nothing defrosted.
Not only does meal planning make life a little less stressful, it also helps us to eat a bit healthier and to save a bit of money too.
Meal planning doesn’t need to be a huge complicated process – I usually sit down with a cuppa for twenty minutes on a Sunday usually when everyone is doing their own thing, and just look at what is coming up this week, have a quick look at what food we already have here and choose a new recipe or two to make for the week.
Then I usually write out our grocery list at the same time and do our Tesco order for the week.
The reason for checking what is coming up in the week is that if on a Tuesday there is a hospital appointment I am going to be late back from, and there are after school clubs etc – cooking a fancy recipe from scratch on that Tuesday just isn’t going to work.
Planning an easier just ‘chuck it in the oven’ kinda meal or putting something in the slow cooker in the morning is going to make way more sense on that busy evening.
Having a rotating meal plan calendar can help, where you have two months worth of meals planned out that you just rotate.
Perhaps having themed meals for each day will help make planning a bit more fun.
The type of theme is up to you – you could go by meat – Meatfree Monday, Tuesday chicken, Wednesday fish etc.
Or you could go by an actual theme – italian, asian etc.
Or you could do it another way – pasta, slow cooker, one tray, sunday dinner etc
Find a way of meal planning that works for you and just do it like that.
It doesn’t matter if it’s not the prettiest way or the ‘best’ way – done is always better than perfect.
If you are the type of person who hates planning by day – some people feel that they can’t meal plan for each day because what they are going to cook depends on their mood – I would suggest still meal planning – for example plan 6 meals and then on the day choose out of those six.
You will still save money and you will still feel less overwhelmed – but you will feel a bit more ‘freedom’ with it.
I am going to be writing a few posts soon about meal planning so watch this space if it’s something you want to know more about!
Have a home routine
Routines are really helpful.
When things get overwhelming or busy, having a routine helps us feel like we are still moving forward and in the right direction.
Then when things calm down, it’s nice to feel like we aren’t completely behind with life because we have been just quietly going along with our routine (even if it’s just the minimum), in the background.
You can have routines for all different areas of your life, I find that having a morning routine, an evening routine and a cleaning routine the most helpful.
It feels like a little bit of calm in all the chaos.
Prioritise self-care
We all knew this one was coming!
Taking care of ourselves is so important and even more so when things get busy.
Little things like getting to bed a bit earlier, or making sure we are remembering to eat and adding in some extra fruit and vegetables into our diet all add up fast.
It is really difficult to be the mum you want to be when you are running on empty.
Doing things to take better care of ourselves is really important in preventing us from burning out.
Self-care doesn’t need to be an entire thing – this post will help give you some ideas when you don’t have much time.
If you are in a season of life just being a bit busy and overwhelming – this post may help.
Make a todo list
If the amount of things that you have going around in your head that you need to do is overwhelming – you need to start with a brain dump.
Even if you don’t feel overwhelmed with your todo list – I’d start with a brain dump.
If you haven’t heard of a brain dump before, you can read more about it by clicking the link, or a quick summary is that it is where you grab a sheet of paper (or your notes app) and just write down absolutely everything you need to do, look into, think about etc.
Getting it out of your mind gives you more brain space and helps make things feel a little bit less overwhelming and a bit more under control.
Once your brain dump is done, it’s time to make a plan and get on top of your to do list.
Have a look at your calendar, what days does it make sense to get things done.
If you are planning on staying home all day Monday to hopefully clean the house, that’s a good day to add in that ‘cleaning the oven’ task that’s been on your todo list for a bit too long!
Don’t make your todo list 100 items long, no matter how small the tasks are or whether you are in all day – it just leaves you feeling frustrated and like you are not able to get anything done.
And you should be celebrating what you have done.
So keep it small and keep it simple.
Remember you aren’t just doing the things on your todo list, there is a lot of other things behind the scenes that gets done, like emptying the dishwasher and making food and laundry and picking up the same things over and over.
Those things are tasks – but they never make it on to the todo list.
You are doing more than you realise you are doing.
The best thing you can do is to make a list of 3 non-negotiables.
Those 3 tasks are the most important tasks (MIT) that you have got to do that day, then once they are done you can move on to another task on your list.
The todo list will never be completely done, so that’s why having a realistic todo list helps – it stops us trying to do absolutely everything and then feeling like we are failing when we can’t.
I hope this helps you to get an idea on what things you can try to start bringing in to your life to make life feel a bit more organised and a lot less overwhelming.
Keep an eye out for some future posts on all of these areas and if there is anything specific that you would like to see more of, let me know!
Beth x
