Ways to Simplify Life as a Working Mom
As working moms, we do a lot. Working a full time job and then coming home to work another full time job is hard. Most days I am exhausted to the point of wanting to come home and just go straight to bed.
I was on the brink of a breakdown before I learned how to simplify life a bit. Knowing what I know now is what inspired me to start writing. I have this overwhelming need to share what I know and help other moms simplify life as I did.
Tips to simplify life as a working mom
Here is a quick list of tips I’ve learned over the past few years that have changed my life. If you have any questions at all, please reach out to me! I would love nothing more than to help you relieve some burden.
1. Declutter Your Home
Friends, this is by far the most important thing you can do to simplify life as a whole, from every aspect. It was amazing what decluttering did for my every day life.
Decluttering made the biggest impact for me. No only does a clutter free home bring me a sense of peace, it makes cleaning simple. I didn’t have proper places for the things we used regularly because of the things I had stored away that we weren’t using.
I didn’t even realize how much the clutter was affecting my life until it was gone. Now, I declutter constantly. I had a cup break the other day and I thought, “YES, I can throw it away.” That’s a huge mind shift from where I was even six months ago.
2. Organize Your Home
This is the second most important thing, in my opinion. After decluttering the house, I needed a way to organize everything. However, before you can organize, you’ve got to figure out a system that works for you.
Organizing isn’t a one size fits all style. Everyone has different needs when it comes to how your home should be set up.
Instead of trying to change a lifetime of habits and failing over and over, try organizing to fit your needs. When you get everything organized you’ll realize how much time you save because you aren’t spending so much time putting things back or looking for something.
Organizing should make things easy to put away. But it has to be set up for your needs.
3. Find a Good Cleaning Routine
Third on my list is a good cleaning routine. This is so important. When I get home from work the last thing I want to do is start cleaning the house. Always having to clean up the same messes day in and day out is exhausting.
Before having an organized home and a good cleaning routine, I was always behind on a chores. I was spending all my free time cleaning up. I felt alone and disrespected by my family because I was putting in so much time cleaning while they weren’t doing the same.
These kinds of feelings lead to resentment and that’s a hard feeling to deal with. After understanding why I always feel like I have to clean and keep things tidy, thanks to a bold psychiatrist, I was able to get a better grip on things and my feelings.
By implementing a good cleaning routine, a lot of the feelings I had seemed to diminish. I now know what needs to be done and when. Things don’t get behind anymore because I’m in the routine of doing them regularly. I no longer spend my weekends cleaning the house all day, instead, I am able to spend time with family and be lazy if I want. It’s been life changing for me.
Want a Freebie? Use my free morning and evening cleaning routine printable as a guide to get you started on your journey to a more peaceful home.
Want one you can fill in yourself? Here you go.
4. Do Your Laundry Daily
The biggest cleaning task that I’ve learned needs to have a daily routine is laundry. When I tell you laundry was ruining my life, I’m not even kidding.
I would spend so much time on our clothes. It was a huge time sucker for me. And I hated doing it.
I feel like since I started doing the laundry every single day, I’ve gotten hours and hours of time back. When I wake up on my days off, I no longer have to rush to get the clothes started because I knew it was going to be an all day affair. Instead, I fix my coffee and sit in peace and quiet while my family sleeps.
This topped with a decent cleaning routine keeps me from spending all my spare time cleaning. I know that sounds crazy since I clean every day now, but doing 15 minutes of chores in the morning and 15 minutes of chores in the evening has significantly helped to simplify life and reduce my stress level.
5. Make Cleaning Easier
I know we are always looking for tips to make cleaning a bit easier. Even now that I’ve got things pretty well handled, I still find myself looking for ways to simplify it.
I have figured out a few things here and there, though, and the impact it has had is huge.
While everyone cleans differently and has different priorities when it comes to cleaning, I feel like we can all agree that we just want to make cleaning a simple and fast task.
One of the things I’ve changed that was a huge help was to reduce the amount of cleaning product I was using. Doing that saved me so much time because I can take that spray bottle of Odoban and go room to room with it. I use it for everything, even laundry. I’m no longer digging through cleaning products to find the right one and using 500 different rags.
I simply grab one thing and go.
6. Make things easier for you
This was a hard adjustment for me because I dedicate all of my time to helping other people. Whether it is my patients, my daughter or my spouse, I am always making sure to take care of them. So much so, that I forgot that I needed to care for myself.
You can’t care for your family to your best ability without first taking care of yourself. Learn how to make things easier on yourself. This is sometimes accepting that your priorities may be different from someone else’s. And that’s okay.
A sure fire way to simply life on your own is to accept that some things need to be done a certain way in order for you to be happy with it. That’s sometimes cleaning, organizing, cooking… Even if someone else in the house does it for me, which I am so grateful for, I still feel the need to go back and do it the way I believe is “proper”.
So instead of expecting everyone to do things my way, I found ways to make the things I do easier.
Simplify life in a way that works for you
You don’t have to make things easier on everyone else. They are responsible for figuring out how to simply life in their own way. Just as you are now. Being a working mom isn’t as bad when things work in a way that you can mentally handle. My life is much better now that I’ve gotten things straightened out.
If you’ve got tips on how to simply life as a working mom, send me a message or comment below. I would love to hear from you.
