Adulting · Cleaning · Family · Parenting

Tips for Busy Moms: No House Helps

Moms have a lot on their plates, probably more than men have in their briefcases. How do you manage a home without going insane? Good organization is critical. If you are a busy mom feeling overwhelmed, take a minute to read through these tips. They will make your life easier.

Meals

Nothing is more exhausting than daily cooking. What immense efforts were made for a meal that was then quickly swallowed! But offering healthy food to your family is well worth the time. Use these tips.

Frozen foods: Stock up on frozen foods. They are picked at full maturity, stored at the best time of freshness, and they will save you precious time: no need to peel them! 

Meal planning: Plan your menus for the five evenings of the week. Indeed, it is not preparing a meal that takes the most time. It is choosing what to cook! Last-minute decisions about meals are not just time-consuming; they can be stressful.

Cook on weekends: During the weekend, spend half a day cooking. Prepare as many dishes as possible for the week, which you will store in the refrigerator or freezer. When you get from work in the evening, all you have to do is reheat them and add the final touch (a fresh sauce, parsley, etc.).

Shopping

Make a shopping list: Make a shopping list of the products you need regularly. You will hang it on the refrigerator. Whenever you / the nanny / your husband find that something is missing, update it. When it’s time to go shopping, refer to it. It will save you from unending trips to the store during the week.

Use home delivery: Take advantage of the stores’ delivery services. As long as you group your purchases, the amount of the bill will surely entitle you to free delivery.

Shop online: Shopping online can be a bit more expensive. Butyou save the cost of the car trip, and you save yourself a lot of effort. A shopping cart for four people weighs at least 30 kg. Think about the strain on your back when you load and unload!

Cleaning

Pace yourself: It’s not about cleaning everything thoroughly every day but about keeping your home consistently tidy and clean. Clean that uncluttered kitchen table, dirty sink, a stained floor as soon as you notice that they need cleaning.

Use the right products: Most of us are don’t have the time to clean. So finding a cleaning product that speeds up the work can significantly save your time and effort. The right tile cleaner, for instance, should be tough on stains and gentle on the tile surface.

Get every tool you need: Gather all the equipment you need in a plastic bin that you can carry with you. This will eliminate the need to leave one room to pick up a brush or soap in another or from wondering where you may have put the mop.

Be strategic: When you tackle the cleaning of a room, proceed methodically. Update your knowledge on how to clean grout. Learn about the products and techniques that work best. When cleaning, start at a corner of the room and dust while going around until you return to the starting point. Then clean what is in the middle of the room.

Laundry

Get a laundry basket: Install a basket of dirty laundry in each bedroom or on each floor to encourage everyone to throw away their belongings. This will prevent you from stalking dirty socks under the bed and picking up T-shirts behind the toy box. Keep a separate basket for more delicate items, or those with specific care requirements. You can take a look at resources like The Laundress for tips on caring for velvet and other hand-wash fabrics. 

Documents

Talk to the children: Teach your children and your partner to empty the pockets of their clothes before putting them in the dirty basket. Nothing is more painful than the white paper handkerchief that we find crumbled on all the clothes or the purple bus ticket, leaving its mark on the ivory blouse!

Sort your receipts and papers, including pay slips, bank statements, reservations—separate bills from correspondence.

Among the documents to be processed, immediately deal with those which require an urgent response or which do not require more than five minutes (a check to write, a slip to fill out). Andgather the others in a file. You will deal with them later.

Good luck!

Adulting

Services-To-Hire That Every Working Mum Should Know About

Services-To-Hire That Every Working Mum Should Know About

There is hardly any doubt that working mums often feel overwhelmed with daily life. While it can be challenging to stay on top of a chaotic day, especially as a working mum. When you do not have a male counterpart to help you out around the house, there are a few hirable services that will help to make your life easier, and free up some time on your busy schedule:

Continue reading “Services-To-Hire That Every Working Mum Should Know About”
Family · Health · Holidays · Home

Suburban Noise

Most of the time, I like living in a town. Although I get bouts of anxiety that mean I stay indoors more, I’m a people person at heart and I love being near things. Husband would, if money were no object, probably love to buy a few hundred acres somewhere, or even an island, and live happily away from the general population, but even when we talk about our plans for emigration, I still envisage myself living at least near a town.

Just recently, however, the overwhelming noise of suburbia has really started to weigh heavily on me. I think it’s a combination of not having been on holiday for a few years and next door having an extension built, but I feel like I’m always at the mercy of someone else’s noise.

Our neighbours are great, but they do love using their garden from the crack of dawn. They have a young son who has a lot of energy, so I can’t blame them for wanting him to be as active as possible, but 7am seems a little too early when you live in a highly populated area, to me. For the last few months, there’s been noise as soon as I wake up (or, more appropriately, waking me up) and it doesn’t stop until I go to bed again. Even needing to have a fan on at night because of the heat is making me feel bristly because of the noise.

Last week, on a whim, Husband and I went for a drive with Sausage, my MIL and Husband’s cousin. We drove out to a little place called Creeksea, a tiny town on the banks of the River Crouch; we weren’t there for long as the weather had started to look rather fierce, but we stayed long enough to wander along the banks, looking at the boats. On the drive there and back, I noticed how nice it was to be able to look across the landscape and not have your view obscured by row after row of houses, it was mostly just agricultural land or small tributaries of the river.

River Crouch

I felt kind of refreshed when we got home that day, like being away from suburbia had given me a chance to breathe, given my eardrums a rest, even if it was just for a few minutes. It’s Sausage’s birthday tomorrow, so we’ve got a busy few days ahead of us, but once it’s all over I think we might drive out to the country and give ourselves space to breathe again. Space to just be, without anything else seeping in.