If you’re a Stay At Home Mom (or a working-outside-the-home-mom) who has felt frazzled, overwhelmed or exhausted, this post is for you. I am breaking down some key strategies in how to be an organized stay at home mom (aka home CEO) as I’ve seen it work for myself and for others.
Ultimately, being organized and feeling like you’ve got your shiz together isn’t the result of following five, ten or however many simple rules. I wish! BUT having some general guidelines and structure around how you will take care of all the responsibilities without losing your mind will move you from defeated and frazzled to confident and calm.
Here I’m sharing 13 specific practices to implement for becoming a more organized stay-at-home-mom.
Household chores
- Have the bare bones of a daily schedule planned out and include when you’ll get daily chores done.
The more you can plan to get the same chores done at the same time each day, the more that will become a habit, not something you have to remember to do.
For example, I unload the dishwasher most mornings right after waking up. I once heard someone say they race their coffee pot to see if they can unload the dishes before the coffee is brewed. I’ve always remembered that and now it’s one of our home rhythms that we load and start the dishwasher each night, then unload it each morning.
Same thing about chores that only need to happen once or twice a week. Pick a central location you can refer to often (like a calendar or the refrigerator) and write the days of the week, followed by the chore that needs to happen that day. Emptying trashcans, cleaning bathroom, washing sheets, etc.
Don’t make weekly chores something you have to keep track of in your head, but write them down and then stick to your schedule as best you can.
Calendar
- Have ONE system for how and where you keep your calendar and commitments.
For example, what works for me is to have a family paper calendar on the wall at home + my phone calendar. My spouse and I share a Google calendar to which I add things when it’s something both of us need to be aware of.
Use voice commands to remind yourself to add an appointment to the home calendar if it comes up while you’re out. Put it straight into your phone but then quickly say to Siri, “At 8 pm, remind me to add doctor’s appointment to the home calendar.”
You can also use your calendar to write down birthdays or anniversaries- things for which you might want to buy a gift or send a card. A thoughtful friend doesn’t have to have all their friends’ birthdays memorized; a calendar reminder works wonders!
Meals
- Meal plan for the week
Meal planning is nothing new. In fact, it can get real old when you do it consistently every week for years on end. BUT I do firmly believe that it’s how an organized mom feeds her family with the least amount of brainpower, budget and time commitment.
Pick one day (often a weekend day or Monday works well) to sketch out the next 5-7 days and think through your family’s schedule. Which nights do you need a meal at home, which nights do you have commitments, etc.
Then pick your meals. One of my favorite tips here is to limit your options. If you’re scouring the whole internet for recipes, you’re likely to feel overwhelmed. Choose just ONE food blog or 1-2 cookbooks at your house and make yourself pick recipes from there.
Write your grocery list as you pick meals. And then schedule when you’re going to the grocery store. Write it on your calendar. As soon as you get home from the store, you may consider freezing meats for use later in the week. Then, if your schedule changes you don’t let things go bad. You just need to remember to thaw the meat in time for cooking. Ask Siri to remind you!
House Pick-Up
- Have a catch-all basket in your main space and use it to put things that eventually need to go back to another room.
Laundry basket or soft sided toy bin work great. I used to feel frustrated that the house was never fully cleaned up. There’s always toys, clothes, books and random items strewn about. What works better than taking each individual item back to its home each time you notie it is to keep a central basket and fill it up with all the random items that need putting away. Then ONCE a day or every few days you do one 15 minute put-away of all the items.
Laundry
- Pick a laundry system and stick to it. It really doesn’t matter which routine you use, but you need to make it a family rhythm. Otherwise, laundry will surely pile up, people won’t have clothes they need on certain days, and chaos ensues. Here are a few options:
-One load a day every day. Start it first thing in the morning, move to the dryer first chance you get, and have it folded and put away by bedtime (or plan to fold while you watch a bit of TV at the end of the night).
-2 days a week that are laundry days and plan to do a bunch of loads, start to put away, on those two days only. The rest of the week, you’re off the hook.
-Keep each person’s clothes separate. Wash and dry all of one person’s clothes at a time. Makes folding and putting them away so much easier. You can do this in combination of either of the first two options. If you have kids close in age, this makes it so much easier to know which clothes belong to which kid without having to check tags for sizes! PS If you’re worried about mixing darks and lights, don’t! I’ve never separated that way and also never had an issue. You can use Tide color catcher for newer items that might bleed. And you can wash on cold, if you want to be extra careful!
Projects
- Keep a running list of projects or things you want to accomplish. SEPARATE from your “must do today” list.
Have you ever let your to-do list become a mash-up of everything from “paint accent wall in nursery” to “return overdue library books”? If you’re mixing and matching time-sensitive items with longer-term, less urgent projects, you’re likely to feel…
-frustrated you’re not accomplishing everything on the list
-worried you’re going to forget something important
-like your responsibilities are never ending
I like that my paper planner has a Must Do Today section with room for three items. Then it also has a section called “other to-dos”. I write down bigger project ideas or goals in my monthly section or in a note on my phone. This way, I don’t forget them but I also don’t feel an unwarranted sense of urgency about getting them done asap.
Hobbies & Fun
- Things you want to do- especially fun things like art, reading, hobbies, exercise- need a space on your calendar just like a doctor’s appointment.
You’ll feel less guilty choosing something for yourself when you’ve already put it on the calendar and decided this is worthy of your time. You’ll be a better mom for it. It can be hard to make this time and to sit down and actually do it. Use tip #10 and set a timer. I find that when a task (whether it’s a chore or a treat) has defined time parameters, I’m much more likely to actually do it.
Prevent Morning Chaos
- Determine what makes your morning stressful and see if you can do something to prevent it.
So many families say that mornings are the most chaotic time of day for them trying to get everyone out the door. If there are any small things you can do the night before to make the morning smoother, it’s so worth it.
At the end of a long day, you may not feel like prepping kid lunches or clearing the sink of dishes, but if you make it your family rhythm and start to feel the benefit, I think the positive feedback loop will keep you doing it. Here are some ideas:
-Prep breakfast ahead of time (or just decide what’s for breakfast ahead of time)
-Picking out your or your kid’s clothes the night before
-Prep your coffee machine to be ready to go
-Go to bed earlier
-Make a written checklist of what to remember the next morning (things you need to take with you out the door) so you don’t have to do the mental labor of remembering them.
Have a Written Plan
- Write out a step by step plan for stressful parts of the day
For example, if its always a mad house when you get home from a morning play-date and the kids need to be fed, napped, cleaned up, etc. before you get out of the car upon arriving home, write a step by step plan for what needs to happen. Stick to your plan and feel less crazy. Sometimes, the overwhelm creeps in when you’re doing the most mundane of tasks- like making lunch and unpacking your diaper bag from an outing. Having a written to-do list to refer to helps keep you moving forward one tiny task at a time. It also means you don’t have to remember everything that needs to happen, you just have to do it.
USE A TIMER
- Use a timer- one less thing you have to keep in your brain.
Whether it’s the timer on your pasta cooking, the last 10 minutes before getting out the door for school pick up, the one hour you allotted yourself to get a task done or the 30 minutes you’re taking for a TV break, a timer means you don’t have to constantly check your phone for the time. You set it and forget it, then give all your attention to the moment. Additionally, time blocking helps you be more productive. An all-around helpful method.
Meal Prep
- Prep dinner during downtime.
Believe me, moms of nap-age kids, I know what you want to do when your kids finally go to sleep for afternoon naps and it’s NOT immediately get to work on dinner prep.
I think it’s great to take some time for YOU when your kids are napping. Whether you grab your own nap, do something creative/fun, scroll Instagram, or watch some TV, you deserve that. But consider this: if the time of day you usually prep dinner is chaos, with kids screaming at your feet, your partner isn’t home from work yet, and it’s generally miserable, then prepping dinner earlier in the day could be an all-around more pleasurable experience for all.
I genuinely enjoy cooking. A lot. But I don’t enjoy cooking with kids at my feet asking me for things, crying for my attention, needing me to help with homework, etc. I will enjoy the dinner prep process immensely more if I do it during the day in a quiet household. So I recommend trying to at least do a little dinner prep while the kids are elsewhere. Life will be smoother later.
You can still do 30 minutes of ‘you time’ followed by 15-30 minutes of meal prep. Use the timer! Hopefully your kids are giving you at least an hour’s worth of nap time!
Delegate
- Figure out what tasks your kids can start taking over if you only took the time to teach them.
Start delegating to kids as soon as they’re old enough to help. I find that I often don’t give my kids enough credit for what they’re capable of doing. It’s good for you and it’s good for them to learn those responsibilities. If you, one day, want your kids to be contributing members of Your Family Household, LLC then you’ll need to start incorporating them eventually. The earlier the better.
Additionally, have an honest conversation with your partner about what responsibilities, chores, or daily tasks they can do and ask them to take those things on. Chances are, they’d like to help you, especially if they know you’re feeling overwhelmed or exhausted. Talk with them about specific ways they can sustainably help you not just today, but regularly for the long-run.
Family Meetings
- Regular check-ins with yourself and with your spouse to assess your goals, what is working well and what needs to change.
I think a quarterly meeting works great for this, and a short weekly meeting is a great way to get on the same page with your partner at the start of each week. Again, the household-as-a-business analogy works great here. You expect successful business leadership to regularly meet and discuss the upcoming calendar, the business’s goals or the general trajectory of the company.
You and your partner should be doing the same for your family. If you have goals, name them! Then break it down into smaller chunks of what you can accomplish each day/week/month until that larger goal is met.
If you see a way you could be working together better, say it! The only way things will change is if you talk about them.
Decide on your family values. Here is Brene Brown’s list of Core Values that you can use to reference. This is a conversation that helps you align your goals, choose your priorities, and decide what you’ll have to say ‘no’ to.
If you’re a solo parent or solo head-of-household, this still applies. Thinking big picture about your life, commitments, responsibilities, hobbies, values and goals will help you feel confident, accomplished and peaceful even when life is unpredictable, difficult or busy. Take yourself out for coffee one day and do some reflecting and planning.
What next?
This was a ton of info, and may feel too overwhelming to start implementing all at once. Since the goal of this post is to help you feel like a less overwhelmed and a more organized stay-at-home-mom, here’s a game plan:
Pick just ONE item from this list to start working on. Tweak it until it meets your family’s needs and work on it consistently until it becomes a habit of your family routine. Then, come back to this post and pick one new item to work on. Rinse and repeat until you’re feeling like a smoother, more focused and well-oiled family CEO machine.
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