Balancing a full-time job, parenting, and managing a household can seem overwhelming, but it doesn’t have to be that way.
Household management can feel like a job on its own, which is why many people turn to services that handle cleaning, organizing, cooking, and errands. While there’s often a societal expectation to manage everything independently, it’s perfectly okay to seek help. Whether you have a partner or not, the mental and physical load of household management can be heavy, but there are effective ways to lighten it.
Outsourcing tasks like cleaning and errands to professionals can make a huge difference. Remember, you don’t have to do it all by yourself. If you’re feeling the strain, consider these helpful tips to make household management easier and more manageable.
1. Embrace the To-Do list.
One of the things that you’re going to discover very early on is if you try and think of all the tasks you’re going to have to do, you’re going to put yourself into a position of procrastination where you doom scroll on your phone and don’t do anything. If the load feels too much, your brain is going to shut down and refuse to look at the problem. So don’t do that. Just make a simple brain dump or to-do list.
By moving your thoughts through your pen and onto a pad of paper, you’ll be able to see the To-Do list in front of you and visually tick off each of those completed tasks. Not only will you get that thrill of completion and feel like you can pat yourself on the back, as a result, you’ll be able to get all those tasks out of your head, ridding yourself of mental clutter.
2. Outsource your cleaning, if you can.
If you have the budget to have a cleaning service come to your home once a week to get those nitty gritty jobs deep cleaned for you, then use that budget. A cleaning service is going to be one of the best things that you can invest in for yourself when it comes to home improvement.
People often hear ‘home improvements’ and consider upgrading with a new kitchen or turning a basement into living space. But honestly, cleaning can be the best home improvement around. You can keep on top of those smaller daily tasks to keep your spaces clean and tidy, but cleaners can come in and do the bits that you just don’t want to do.
3. Hang a calendar.
Household management is so much easier if you can see what you have scheduled ahead. If you know the days the cleaner is coming, or when the AC repair guy is coming, or your kids orthodontist appointment is happening, you’re going to feel more in control. Household management isn’t only about staying on top of the laundry and keeping a tidy house (though those are both important components). It requires good time management, too.
Having a calendar as well as a to-do list can help you manage your time well. Again, writing it down frees your mind of mental clutter. All you have to do is look at your list and your calendar and execute your plan.
4. Pick a day to meal plan.
Whatever day of the week you choose to go and do your grocery shopping is the day that you should be writing a list of meal plans for the week ahead. You can take inventory of your freezer and your pantry spaces and create meals out of the food and things that you already have. From there, you can write your shopping list based on the things that you you don’t have.
Doing an inventory first can really save you money (and time) at the grocery store. Once you’ve had a meal plan in place, you’ll know exactly what you’re doing for the week ahead.
5. Don’t forget to meal prep.
One of the biggest trends right now on social media is slow cooker dump bags. This is where you would plan your meals for the week and if they include slow cooker meals, you’d put all of the ingredients for that slow cooker meal into one large bag. From there, you then dump everything from that bag into the slow cooker on the day that you choose to use it and boom, you’re good to go.
Doing all of this meal prep on one day per week is going to really help you to keep on top of the other tasks because you’ve dedicated one day to getting meals ready. That means you’re not trying to spend your evenings chopping onions and shredding cheese—instead, you can dump your meal in a crockpot or casserole dish, and that’s it.