Busy Mom's Guide: 50 Ways to Do Everything Better and Faster
By the BabyCenter editorial staff
Moms everywhere seem to share the same problem: There's not enough time to get everything done, let alone do it well and quickly. Meanwhile, we're tripping over piles of toys and can't find anything in our closet because we never have time to organize it.
Our families are counting on us, too, which means more pressure to whip through all our duties, from grocery shopping to scrubbing bathtubs. "Moms are always on call," says Susan Newman, mother of five and author of “The Book of No: 250 Ways to Say It — and Mean It — and Stop People-Pleasing Forever.”
"You're on call with your cell phone. You're on call with e-mail. You're on call 24 hours a day. You're on call when the baby wakes up in the middle of the night."
When we add our regular on-call status to our already long to-do list, we're left exhausted, wishing we had more time just to be with our families instead of running errands.
Sarah Merten says meal planning used to be her biggest "time suck."
We were spending a lot of time at the grocery store and a lot of money because we weren't planning ahead," says the 32-year-old Portland, Oregon, mom of two boys. Last year she swapped her late-afternoon ritual of last-minute dinners and almost daily trips to the store for an organized system of meal planning on an electronic spreadsheet. Now she saves more than $100 a month on groceries by shopping once or twice a week, avoiding impulse buys, and, when she's in the produce aisles, choosing only in-season fruits and vegetables.
Mapping your menu on the computer may not appeal to everyone. But when it comes to shrinking the time it takes to do regular chores (and still do a bang-up job), anyone can appreciate having a few great tricks up her sleeve. Here are 50 ways to save time by doing things faster, so you can spend more time doing the things you really enjoy with your family.
1. Assemble your children's outfits when you put clothes away in their drawers. Then you can quickly grab a full outfit without having to waste time scouring the drawers for a matching shirt and pair of pants.
2. When you see a great toy on sale, buy several and sock them away for your child to give to friends at birthday parties throughout the year.
3. Give your grade-schooler a "homework box" with pencils, an eraser, a stapler, a calculator, and a ruler. Ask her to bring it to the table whenever it's time to do homework.
4. Forget about addressing your party invitations by hand. Go to the United States Postal Service website to create party invitations that can be shipped to addresses you upload to the site. Or, have your own photo printed onto a postcard invitation at Snapfish and they'll stamp the cards and mail them for you.
5. Stock your produce drawer or a lower shelf in your refrigerator with snacks like carrot sticks and apple slices that your kids can grab without your help. Set up a similar area in your pantry with baggies full of dried fruit or graham crackers.
6. Skip ironing and get wrinkles out of a shirt or pair of trousers by putting them in the dryer for 15 minutes with a damp hand towel.
7. Stop wasting time looking for things you use often, like scissors, reading glasses, or baby wipes. Stock up and keep duplicates in the rooms where you spend the most time.
8. Designate 30 minutes after dinner for cleaning — and get everyone involved in folding laundry, doing dishes, and clearing away clutter.
9. Store sets of sheets and pillowcases inside unfolded pillowcases to make bed changes fast and easy and minimize clutter in your linen closet.
10. Program the phone numbers for your favorite take-out restaurants into your cell phone so you can call to pick up dinner on the way home and avoid paying for delivery.
11. Create a file for coupons for your favorite restaurants and file them with take-out menus. Put the coupons that expire soonest at the front of the pack.
12. Set up a box for bills that need to be paid and stock it with stamps and envelopes.
13. Organize your favorite articles, parenting information, and recipes so you can find them more quickly. Place pages from online sites, magazines, and newspapers in page protectors and stash them in a three-ring binder.
14. Store your child's outgrown clothes in large plastic bins and affix labels such as "0 to 3 months", "6 to 9 months", "9 to 12 months", and so on. Once your child has grown out of a size, you can easily store the clothes, loan them to a friend, or take them to a consignment shop.
15. Set the table the night before and put items like bowls, utensils, cereal, fruit, toaster, and bread out to avoid a morning rush.
16. Shop for holiday and birthday gifts year-round. Whenever you see a great gift for someone you love, buy it and set it aside for giving later.
17. Start a monthly meal exchange program with five friends and neighbors. Once a month, cook enough for two dinners. Stash one in the freezer and take the other to meet up with the group and swap healthy, freezer-ready main dishes. Then go home with four other meals, and put them in the freezer alongside the extra one you made for your family. Suddenly you're stocked up with a variety of easy, homemade dinners.
18. Limit personal e-mail and computer time to twice a day.
19. Do all of your errands one day a week, working off a list and taking the most efficient route.
20. Hire a babysitter for a couple of hours on the weekend so you can tackle household duties and errands without kids in tow.
21. Chop all your vegetables, fruits, and herbs for the week's meals at one time so everything will be ready for cooking.
22. Add important appointments and activities to a master calendar in your e-mail in-box and set up reminders for up to one week ahead. This calendar can be shared with family members via e-mail. (Google Calendar, a free Web-based system, even sends reminders to cell phones.)
23. Sort belongings into clear, labeled bins that can be stacked and stowed so your child can easily find things like DVDs and toys without your help. Use brightly colored labels and picture labels for toddlers and preschoolers who can't read.
24. Stop by the post office before 3 p.m. on weekdays, when the long lines usually begin to form, so you can get in and out more efficiently.
25. Keep disinfecting and glass wipes in the bathroom for quick cleanups around toilets, sinks, and mirrors. You could even do a speedy wipe-down while you bathe the kids.
26. Keep a phone book in your car to avoid unnecessary calls to 411 and to quickly look up addresses.
27. Set up two folders related to your child's schoolwork — one for school notices and the other for schoolwork you want to keep. Just in case you forgot how to do long division…and that calculator from the homework box goes missing
28. Skip folding laundry and instead hang up all clothing except for socks, underwear, linens, and towels.Take that one step further and simply buy bins or baskets for said items and you don’t even have to open a drawer!
29. Grocery shop on the weekends or, if you don't want to waste precious weekend time, go to the store after the kids are in bed. You'll whiz through the store with much less frustration because you're not also feeling the pressure to get dinner on the table and everyone into bed on time.
30. Choose meats or other proteins that can be used for several meals during a week. A store-bought rotisserie chicken can be shredded and used for several dishes, like chicken enchiladas, homemade chicken soup, and chicken salad. Slow-cooked pork tenderloin can double as barbecued pork sandwiches with just a bottle of barbecue sauce. Cooked beans can go in salad, tacos, and vegetable soup.
31. Open mail with the trash can nearby so junk mail and catalogs can be thrown out immediately. Even better, sign up with a free service for reducing junk mail like the National Do Not Mail list.
32. Keep cardboard boxes labeled "donate," "trash," or "consign" in the garage or storage closet to routinely rid your house of unused items and clutter.
33. Save time and money on routine shopping trips by buying items like toothbrushes, toothpaste, shampoo, light bulbs, and batteries in twos when they're on sale.
34. Keep an overnight bag in your car with an extra outfit for each child, including diapers or underwear, nonperishable snacks, and toiletries. In the event of an emergency, messy meal, or whirlwind overnight trip, you're set
35. Stock a binder or folder with a list of emergency contacts and household instructions for things like watering plants, pet care, and mail collection so you won't have to write everything out each time for a house sitter or babysitter.
36. Designate a cabinet in your kitchen for medicine so you'll have easy access to everything from pain reliever to bandages when and where you need them. Make sure it's secured with a child-safe lock.
37. Sort medicine into small, labeled storage bins — one bin for children's medications, one for adult cough and cold remedies, one for first-aid supplies, and so on, and keep them in the locked cabinet.
38. Tape the dosage instructions for common medications like children's acetaminophen to the inside of your medicine cabinet.
39. Splurge on a super fast-drying hair dryer and cut hair-drying time in half. Or just go in for the Br!tney special. Shave it all off and invest in wigs. Different ‘do everyday and you don’t have to worry about permanent damage, at least not to your hair, as for the kids, there’s no telling.
40. Keep a pack of thank-you cards in the glove box of your car or in your daily planner so you can write notes while sitting in the car or waiting for a doctor to see you. Dear Doc, Thanks for that extra-special colonoscopy today. It was an experience I will never forget. BFF ~Jody.
41. Turn your hangers backward at the beginning of every season. Anything left hanging on a hanger that's still turned backward at the end of the season hasn't been worn — give it away! That’s kind of a nifty idea, but leaves no allowance for crazy people like me who won’t wear something for a season but might pick it up again a year later.
42. E-mail your thank-you notes instead of sending a card. AMEN
43. Schedule your child's doctor's appointments for first thing in the morning when you're less likely to have a long wait. And when you and your child are both still half asleep. Then the shots are a surprise, and the kids are less likely to put up a fight.
44. Get rid of one bag of clothes, toys, and books for every bag that comes into the house. It means less stuff to clean up. Um right. That’s nice in theory, but inevitably the moment you extricate the “unwanted” item you find a use for it and wish you hadn’t gotten rid of it. Just keep what you have until it falls apart.
45. Write down or print out all-important phone numbers — for people like your child's doctor, the next-door neighbor, your veterinarian, and so on — and place the list in an inexpensive picture frame that you keep in your master bedroom or the kitchen. This way, you won't need to write out contact information for a sitter or grandparent — just point out the list, and they'll know who to call in case of emergency. Have you ever heard of a dry erase marker? Use the side of the fridge! Or even a mirror.
46. Fill a basket with socks and keep it near the front door so kids can quickly grab a pair. Put the shoes they wear most often next to the basket. How ‘bout just save yourself some more time and take it one step further, dirty laundry hamper right next to that. Saves you & your kids some extra wear and tear on the clothes.
47. Order diapers and wipes online — no more lugging big boxes home from the store.That’s right! Now you pay someone else thrice the amount to drop it at your doorstep. Don’t forget that this also means there are no such things as emergencies or running out of diapers. Spare me! This falls under the same category as the grocery shopping, plan ahead and run it along with all the other errands.
48. Label shelves in the linen closet so family members know where items like beach towels and guest room sheets belong. B/c it hasn’t been done the same way for 20+ years or since the day they were born…
49. Keep an assortment of greeting cards on hand, filed by occasion. You'll save time on trips to the store, and you can quickly take care of an unexpected birthday or send off a heartfelt condolence. Email, that’s the way to go buddy. I know it seems impersonal, but you know what, it saves both time and money; which, let’s face it if you need these time savers is an issue, so simply skip the handwritten notes, then you don’t have to go around looking like a moron because you couldn’t spell
50. Forget sorting laundry. Wash everything in cold water. Yeah right. Your whites will never be white again.
Now you're armed with a fistful of tips. Still don't know where to start? First you need to decide which duties require your immediate attention and which you can do later.
Forget about that! It takes too much time. Just start at the top of the list and if it can be skipped cross it off. See how good it feels to actually get something done around here???
Make a list of weekly commitments and write down how much time each one takes, recommends Stacey Crew of Charleston, South Carolina, author of The Get Organized Guide for New Moms.
Don't forget to include everything from scrubbing toilets to volunteering in your child's classroom to reading blogs. Once a list has been compiled, you'll be able to see what has to be done and what you can skip
If you're on the fence (don’t worry your kids will push you off faster than you can
Don't forget to involve your kids in chores, too, Crew suggests. (Are you kidding? This is what we’ve learned all along from leadership positions. Delegation baby, that’s what it’s all about. Teach those kiddies some work ethics the likes of which haven’t been seen since the 1800s!) You may feel like you need to do it all, but you don't. Oh yeah and don’t worry if it doesn’t get done quite right at least it can be crossed off the list until next week’s
"Kids want to learn," says Crew, a mom of two girls. "They want to help." Help yourself to some cleaner and the scrub brush dear, they are under the sink. Too bad they are nixing home ec classes, your kids would have straight A’s for all the “extra credit” they would be doing. Two Birds. One Stone. Nice job. You win again.
At the end of the day, Newman says, it's more important to spend time with your family or on your own than to fixate on finishing chores That’s because by the end of the day the kids should have finished scouring the house "This dump better shine like the top of the Chrysl3r Bu!ld!ng or your backside will." Put away your cell phone, log off
Hope you get more use out of these than I do!
3 comments:
Too many rules makes life seem overwhelming.
So overwhelming that I'm violating the twice a day computer time rule. :)
Rules Schmules! Violate on!
I didn't like that time saver either.
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