Time Saving Tips for a Busy Mom
Mom’s can find a balance between the demands of motherhood and taking care of themselves. Finding alone time, especially for a mom, is essential in just staying sane in a crazy environment. The question is: What can a mom do to help save time between the cooking, cleaning, running errands, working, and just being a mom? How can a mom save time in these areas, thus freeing up some much-needed time for herself? The answer is quite surprising. It takes a lot of planning and some organizational skills; this is how a busy mom can free up extra time for herself.
The kitchen is one area that most busy moms find themselves in nightly, cooking a healthy meal for her family. Eating as a family is important, but there are ways to cut back the amount of time spent in the kitchen cooking. Each week, plan ahead and write down a nightly menu of meals that will be served the entire week. Something as simple as having a plan and sticking to it, can free up extra time it may take each night when just trying to decide what to make for dinner.
Once a menu is determined, plan a day, such as Sunday, where any food from the menu that can be pre-cooked and frozen until used can be made. For example, if your menu has two meals with hamburger in the recipe, then on Sunday fry up several pounds of hamburger and freeze after cooking. The day you need to use the hamburger defrost and viola! You have just saved a large amount of time by simply pre-cooking your meats and freezing them in advance.
Another busy mom tip is to cook once, serve twice. If your Tuesday menu calls for grilled chicken breasts that night, why not cook up some extra chicken breasts for the taco salads you will be serving on Thursday night? This way you have food that you have cooked once, but will serve twice. This little tip can save a busy mom much time in the kitchen, perhaps even freeing up a little extra time for herself at the end of the day.
Busy moms often have a hard time finding time to clean the house after running after the kids all day. Cleaning also isn’t a chore that many moms find exciting. There are many other things most moms would rather be doing than cleaning her entire house day after day. Cleaning is time consuming. What if a mom could keep her house clean and save time to boot? Think of all the things a busy mom could do if she didn’t have to spend half the day cleaning the house. The possibilities are endless.
A good way to keep the amount of cleaning to a minimum is to pick up as the day goes on. If a busy mom can make a point to a pick up clutter as she sees it, or have the kids put toys away throughout the day, she will be surprised at how much that cuts down for what needs to be cleaned by days end. If you dirty a dish in the kitchen, clean it immediately and load it in the dishwasher. This cleaning as you do or go can help save an enormous amount of time at the end of the day.
If you are wishing to do some more heavy-duty cleaning everyday, try just cleaning one room a day, instead of tackling all of them. Set a timer for a pre-determined amount of time, no more than 20 minutes, and clean that room from top to bottom. Dust it, vacuum, pick items up and place them in their proper spots, and scrub what needs to be scrubbed. When the timer goes off, you are done. The next day, start the process over, this time in another room. By the end of the week, you will have cleaned your entire house, one room at a time. This, combined with the clean as you go rule, will leave your house much cleaner than imagined. It will also free up some extra time at the end of the day for time to do something for you!
There is no doubt about it; moms are more busy these days than ever. There are simple things to do in everyday life that can free up more time for other things. By very easily implementing these tips into her busy day, any mom will find more time for other, more important things!
