Happy Little Moments
8 Time Management Tips for the Busy Mom
I love talking about time-management tips for moms. Let’s be real—once you become a mom, being productive and efficient isn’t just a nice-to-have, it’s a must. Balancing work, kids, cleaning, cooking, and all the schedules is challenging, so it’s no surprise that moms often become super organized and efficient. Sometimes I wonder how women don’t run the entire world, because most moms I know can run circles around the men in their lives. But that’s a topic for another day…
So, how can we boost our productivity as parents? Between work commitments, taking care of the kids, keeping the house tidy, and maintaining routines, it’s easy to feel overwhelmed. One strategy that’s been a game-changer for me is time-batching.
What is Time-Batching?
Time-Batching is a productivity tool that involves grouping similar tasks together and dedicating blocks of time in your schedule to complete each group of tasks without interruption. This technique is transferrable to your job, as well as managing your household.
In fact, I’m currently time-batching, writing this blog. The kids are entertained, so I’m cranking out as much writing as I can in the window that I have. I do time-batching for social media, conducting phone interviews, doing chores around the house, and editing content.
How can You Implement Time-Batching into your Household?
While I’m a big advocate of taking any 5 or 10 minutes you have here and there to tidy, time-batching is the way to knock out the really big tasks. You can use time-batching for any number of household chores, and it works like magic in terms of productivity. For example, you can time-batch all of your meal planning and prep work to make your week run more smoothly. There are any number of errands you can time-batch together. You can even use it to get all the bills paid and paperwork filed on a regular basis.
So let’s dive into how you can apply all of this to your own household!
8 Time Management Tips for Busy Moms
1. Meal Planning and Prep
- Batch Grocery Shopping. Spend time creating a grocery list that includes all the groceries your family regularly buys weekly. Then, create a weekly meal plan from about 15-20 recipes that you rotate. Designate a day for grocery shopping and create a list based on your meal plan to avoid multiple trips.
- Meal Prep Sunday: Dedicate some time on the weekend to prepare ingredients or cook meals for the week. If you have a busy week ahead, you can chop the veggies, thaw and marinate meats, or assemble meals that can be quickly cooked later. Once per month, batch-cook and freeze meals such as casseroles or sauces that will help you make meals more quickly during the week.
- Use Grocery Delivery or Pickups: I save a ton of time and money by ordering my groceries online and picking them up later that day. I usually spend less money when I don’t wander the aisles at the grocery store, plus it saves a lot of time. I’m all about saving time! If you can afford it, save even more time and have your groceries delivered to your door.
2. Laundry Routine
- Laundry Day: Pick one or two days each week that will be laundry days. When you begin doing laundry for the week, make sure to allot enough time that day to wash, dry, fold, and put away clothes in one day. Try folding all the laundry for the day in one go while you binge your favorite Netflix show or listen to a favorite podcast while you fold. The laundry never stops, but if you take the time to organize, fold, and put it away for the week, everything will feel more organized and the week will go much more smoothly.
3. Cleaning and Tidying Up
- Tidy Up Every Night: Take 10-15 minutes every night before bed to tidy up the main areas of the house. If possible, include your family in these quick clean-ups. It will go much more quickly if everyone helps out.
- Create Zones in Your House for Cleaning: Focus on just one zone (like bathrooms, bedrooms, or the kitchen) each day so you don’t have to clean the whole house over one day. This will break up the household chores so you don’t feel overwhelmed all the time – you already know when you’ll deal with deep cleaning of each room each week because you scheduled it.
- Hire Help: Being a small business owner, I’m a huge advocate of delegating when possible. If you have the resources to hire someone to help with the cleaning even once per month or every other week, do it! You’ll have more time with your family if you can dedicate some of your money toward hiring someone else to clean your home.
4. Decluttering and Organizing
- Weekly Declutter Session: Designate some time each week to declutter your space. Choose one room at a time and work to declutter regularly. This will go a long way to keeping the clutter down in your home. The less you have to maintain, the more time you have to dedicate to your family.
- Organization Resets: Once a week, take a look at your high traffic areas. This would be your entryway or the kitchen counter. Declutter and reorganize – make sure everything has a place in your home. Putting things away becomes much easier if the decision about where something belongs is already made.
5. Bills and Paperwork
- Deal with Paperwork: Take time each week to pay the bills, mail, throw away, or file any paperwork. Having a designated time each week to deal with your paper clutter will go a long way to keeping your space tidier.
- Digitize When You Can. Take one day per month to digitize files that you need to keep but don’t need in hard copy form. This will cut down significantly on the amount of paper you need to keep, which makes decluttering later take less time. Win-win.
6. Errands
- Errand Day: Time batch your errands. Choose one evening or one weekend afternoon to tackle your errand running. If there’s shopping to do or decluttered items to drop off at a charity, it’s most efficient to get it all done in one go. Pro Tip: take your child with you so you can spend some one-on-one time together!
7. Mealtime Cleanup
- Dishwashing Routine: Every night, load your dishwasher and run it overnight. First thing in the morning, unload your dishwasher. Systemizing your dishwashing routine will help you and your kids be able to put dishes away throughout the day, instead of the sink becoming full of dishes each day.
- Kitchen Clean-Up Time: After dinner, clean up the entire kitchen immediately. Have the children help you. Clear the table, wipe down counters and tables, sweep and mop. That way everything is reset for the next day, and you’ll feel much better about your home when you go to bed.
8. Self-Care and Relaxation
- Weekly Self-Care Block: Don’t forget about you! Try to batch schedule some time for just you each week. These self-care activities don’t have to be grand gestures. You can read, take a relaxing bath, or enjoy a hobby for an uninterrupted block that is scheduled.
As parents, we all know how easy it is to get interrupted and distracted while trying to tackle our to-do lists. That’s where time-batching can make a real difference—it helps create a tidier, more peaceful home, and everyone in the family benefits. But remember, life happens! Not every week will go perfectly, and that’s totally okay. Time-batching is meant to empower you, not make you feel guilty if some chores don’t get done.
Let’s be honest, none of us can keep up with everything all the time. By planning your week with time-batching, you boost your chances of keeping things clean, organized, and running smoothly. It’s a simple yet effective way to manage your household with less stress and more peace.
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