If you’re a parent your undoubtedly busy. School, work, wash, food cooking, homework and more. Even if you have been parenting for a while you can always use tips and resources to help manage your time and assist with keeping up with your parenting duties.
General Time Management
Time management skills become fairly critical to ensuring you keep some sanity and organization. You can find a great list of time management resources to check out. A lot of times we have more time available we can squeeze out of our schedules than we can realize.
An effective time management plan can make all the difference in the world. It can take some time to figure out what all goes into your day and week and keep it on track but it can be well worth the time investment.
Grocery Shopping
Shopping even in the age of the internet can be a challenge. In some ways its even more complicated with so many options. For those grocery shopping trips you have to make the store directly be organized and plan ahead. Also in your planning make sure you plan in advance a few weeks or more so that if your schedule gets a bit behind your pantry doesn’t.
Daily Activities
Activities can be challenging to fit into any business schedule. Whether it be your own activities outside of work and home duties such as fitness and other hobbies or even everyday tasks like helping with homework and school activities. It can be hard to even think about time for bonding and fun with the kiddos. Come up with a list of ideas you can quickly fit into your routine that will allow you to connect outside of the busyness.
Working at Home
More than likely your working at home in some form or fashion even if you head into an office every day. Work at home can quickly start to infringe on our time and eat away precious minutes and hours from our schedule. Be sure to play our home office productivity to make sure your maximizing your work time and minimizing impact on your personal schedule.
Organize Your Stuff
One of our biggest challenges can be just keeping up with our stuff. Whether it be closets full of stuff, garages stacked high or just general clutter it can be difficult. There are many many amazing tools to organize the important things we need on the go, organize our cars and much more.
Taking an audit of your home, car, personal items and figuring out an organization plan can really have an impact on your available time, efficiency and productivity. Again it takes am investment to get to the next level but that investment can be well worth it.
Lean On Your Family, Friends and Kids
Friends, family and even our kids can help with small things (and sometimes big things) to help get things done. You don’t necessarily have to inconvenience a friend, it maybe something as simple as ride sharing for the kids or picking up something when they are already going to be out.
Family you likely ask a bit more of – perhaps its a crazy week and that extra meal or watching the kids for an hour while those odds and ends tasks get done. That little bit of help can make all the difference in keeping your head above water.
Depending on the age of your kids they might be able to pitch and help as well beyond the usual chores. Have a kid of driving age? Have them run that quick errand to the store and pay them an extra dollar or two. Younger kids can help with extra cleaning duties an an unusually busy week. It might take a little cajoling but hopefully not too much!
Likewise you can offer the same to your friends and family to get help when you can as well. That “we are in it together” mentality can really make a difference and lend support.
Control Your Devices
We are bombarded with options to use devices around us. Smart phones being the most obvious ones. We can check email, text, watch videos, distract with games and its always with us. Set a routine to check it maybe once an hour or even just 2 or 3 times a day. Limiting the distraction to something more controlled can have a big impact. The same goes for tablets.
But there are more devices encroaching on our daily lives such as Amazon’s Alexa, Google Home, and Apple HomePod with just a few words we can interact with it and just as easily distract with it. And more traditional devices such as TVs and Radios can do the same.
Shutting out the electronic noise can really have an impact on distraction and helping to keep focus on the more important tasks for the day.
Conclusion
They key is to take control one step at a time. Put a plan together and organize your “getting organized” tasks. Once you take those first steps and start seeing the impact you will be ready for more!