Practical self-care hacks that’s not about having a shower.
When you are a toddler, mom is everything.
When you are a teenager, mom is annoying.
Now that you are older, you’ve probably realized…mom was right.
In modern vocabulary, “Mom” is not a noun, but a verb. The face of “momming” has changed dramatically over the past decades. It’s not only accepted but expected of women to financially contribute to the household, and while dad’s around the world are stepping up, (millennial dad’s in particular are spending about 3 times more time with their kids than previous generations) moms still bear the brunt of the parenting duties.
You can’t pour from an empty cup.
We are not here to tell you how you should “lean out” and take care of yourself and have a shower and drink that cup of coffee or go for a walk/massage/movie. “self care” is a buzz word, with very little real world applications fore the rushed mom of today.
What we can do, is help you adjust your space so that home becomes your mothership – your alley in your day-to-day “momming”.
Eliminate the tiny frustrations.
If you are the chief cook and bottle washer in your home, the one who cooks, shops, packs lunches and keeps count of socks, clean shirts, and school projects, you will know that the mental load can be overwhelming.
We have found a couple of affordable household products that can greatly improve the flow of your daily chores and help you save a little bit of time while you do it.
The basket system
This is a favourite of supermom influencers all over the internet. Buy a few medium to large (depending on your chaos appetite) open baskets or deep trays. One for each family member, or room in the house. Keep them on the stairs, in the pantry, by the back door – wherever your housemates will walk past at least once a day. Whenever you find something lying around in the rest of the house that doesn’t belong there, it will be as easy as chucking it in the right basket and then, a couple of times a week you can order each person to take their basket to their room, sort out its contents and then load it up with things that shouldn’t be in their rooms and bring it back to the front of the house.
This gets shoes back in cupboards and dishes back to the kitchen…it will take some time to get them into the habit, but having this routine is a valuable lesson in home organization that even the youngest kids should be thought.
Washbags
As with the baskets, this is all about grouping things together and cutting through chaos. Every room might already have a laundry hamper, but what about a washbags for the little things? Teach your kids to throw laundry into the hamper but hang a small washable bag over the edge and get them to drop their socks and undies into this one. This keeps socks paired up and undies separated so that no one tries to squeeze into their little brothers’ underpants on a rushed Tuesday morning.
*Take my word for it – in a pinch these bags can even go in the tumble dryer, without having to be opened and then deposited back in the kid’s room, clean, dry and most importantly, with matching socks.
Electronic shopping list
This one helps if you have older kids who help themselves to snacks and food. Get a doodle pad/electronic notepad with a magnet strip and stick it to your fridge. Then, (again an important skill to teach your kids that will save you a lot of headaches when it comes to shopping) get the kids to write up anything that they might have finished off during the week. Milk, juice, biscuits, fruit – whatever it is. If you share the burden of the shopping list you can save yourself those few extra minutes.
All the chargers.
With the standardisation of charger cords and plugs, life has become much easier…but now all of your housemates can most likely charge their electronics using your bedside charger.
One of the hallmarks of being a grownup is starting the day with a fully charged phone, so your bedside charger should be sacred. This doesn’t mean that aging devices and general use doesn’t merit a bit of charge during the day, but a sure fire way to give yourself a headache is for your charger to be missing when you need it most. SO yes – lets be frugal, lets be thrifty…but buy the bulk pack of fast chargers. Have one in the kitchen. The study, the living room, the family room. Wherever you might spend some time during the day. The joy of a cell phone battery above 70% for the duration of the day is immeasurable and it will leave you feeling prepared, in control and organized.
We don’t have a solution to the constant snack getting and nose wiping of motherhood, but we think these little household hacks will at least tide you over as this season of chaos passes. One day, your home will be clean, your coffee will be your own and your afternoons will be about knitting and gardening instead of rugby and extra maths classes…
