Do you ever feel like you don’t have enough time, energy, or brainpower to handle your life?
We juggle a lot as parents! Work, family, social activities and sports, plus the day-to-day life admin and running of the household. It’s not easy and it can be exhausting.
If you’ve been feeling like a hamster running and running on the wheel that never stops, its time to lighten the load.
These three ideas will help you bring a little more balance to your busy week!
Set theme days for weeknight dinners.
Keep it super simple:
- Monday: Pasta
- Tuesday: Mexican food
- Wednesday: Meat, potatoes, and veg
- Thursday: Sheet pan / traybake dinner
- Friday: Pizza
You can add a little variety within the themes each week, for example, Tuesdays could be tacos, enchiladas, burritos, or nachos. Now you have a whole month of Tuesday night dinners planned 
Set an evening routine and a time to start it.
Once everyone gets familiar with an evening routine, it all flows much more smoothly. Fewer snack requests right before dinner. Less arguing about putting devices away. No more micro managing whether everyone has a shower that day.
Keep your routine simple, 5 steps or less with buffer time built in so no one has to rush.
For example:
- 6pm quick tidy up
- 6.30pm dinner
- 8pm devices away and time for showers
- 9pm reading in bed
- 9.30pm lights out
Everyone’s family is different so your times and actions will be different too. When my kids were toddlers, our evening routine was more like:
- 5.30pm dinner
- 6.30pm tv off and bath time
- 7.30pm story time then lights out
You can do whatever works best for your family, its the familiarity and consistency of the routine that makes it smoother and easier over time.
One load of washing a day.
If you do one load of washing a day, it doesn’t get a chance to pile up and you never stress about not getting to the towels or bedsheets.
Even in wet weather, you can get clever with hanging space inside (Bunnings have some great clothes horse options) and make a little routine out of getting your washing done:
- Put a load on in the morning
- Hang it in the afternoon
- Bring in yesterday’s dry washing at the same time and put it away immediately
Did you notice what each of these 3 ideas has in common?
Each one is a simple routine, a rhythm, a pattern to add to your day or week.
Routines are so helpful because they become second nature very quickly and make the job feel less mentally taxing.
I hope you found these tips helpful! If you're ready for next steps, check out my free workshop 3 Quick things to do today to get organised.
x Marissa
