Yesterday my sweet Celestine, 6 years old, had a playdate with her new best friend Carissa. I love it so much when I can have a glimpse of what’s going on in my kids’ own personal life: seeing Celestine make silly jokes with Carissa made me laugh and made me so proud of my sweet little princess… And meanwhile, you know what? I made a new friend too! Carissa’s mother was there and we talked about, can you guess…yes, about organization! Carissa’s mother is a working mom, feeling stressed out by the lack of time to take care of the basic needs of her family…
Moms, I think we all can relate 🙂
So here are a couple of ideas I came across in my attempt to give a little help. Nothing new under the sun, but I’m sure we can all take advantage of these simple steps:
Step 1: Plan, plan, plan…
Either a simple paper planner or a trustworthy calendar app on your phone will do the trick. My personal favorite would be a minimalist weekly planner from your local stationary shop, or if you’re not a paper-girl, the recently re-designed Google calendar app (pretty!)
Step 2: have a weekly schedule for basic household chores (Laundry, Cleaning, Groceries, Errands to run)
With Carissa’s mom, we talked about her trying a system such as Groceries on Friday after work, Folding clothes on early Saturday morning, Errands on Saturday afternoon. In dedicating certain chores to certain days of the week, you’ll have a sort of « blueprint » of your week. This system allows planning everything else all around: social life, appointments, quality time with your loved ones.
Step 3: You sure need to rest, I mean, FOR REAL.
And I don’t mean the usual 2-hour-long couch-collapsing & favorite-show-binge-watching when the kids are finally asleep on Sat evening. I mean REAL rest: taking a walk outside, sitting down near your child and playing Lego together. Grabbing a book and hiding comfortably in your reading nook. Opening your wedding photo album with your hubby. And feel the difference in your shoulders after just a short while!!
What about you? What tips and tricks would you be willing to share with a working mom friend?
Happy Organizing!
Elise
This is the second post in a series of 5, where I share time-management strategies & time-saving tactics for moms. To keep everything nice and tidy, here’s the link to the other posts in the series:
