Do you spend the day wondering from one distraction to the next? You get to the end of the day only to look back and wonder what exactly you DID all day?  I feel like us mom’s so easily get distracted by each and every little need we are presented with.  I am not saying this is a bad thing in any way but it makes it very hard to get things done in a day.  Today I want to share ten things I do each day that help me get more done.

Ten Tricks for Getting more done each day

1. Make a schedule for your days and week and stick to it.

   This may seem tedious or maybe even common sense to you but having a schedule really makes you stop and think about what needs to be done.  If you have your kids take a bath or shower at the same time every day…then not only you, but they will remember that it is time to get that task done. Another thing I do at the same time every day is laundry and my daily cleaning.  This way I get right to it and do not miss doing the task.  A schedule is so handy and it is also VERY good for your younger kids who are not in school yet, they LOVE to help.

• Make a meal plan and grocery list for the week.

  Planning your meals is a lot of work. I can promise you that taking the time will be such a blessing when you encounter meal times each day.  They come 3-5 times a day and if you are not prepared it can be very daunting.  I print off multiple copies of this meal planning spreadsheet and put them on a clipboard.  The day before I go to the store I pull it out and get to work.  I use the spreadsheet to plan out each day’s food. As I am writing things down I also add them to my grocery list. You can easily get two things done at once and not be lost wandering in the store with no plan. I promise you it will save you money too!

• Have a meal cycle

  I have a meal cycle for breakfast and lunches.  Each day of the week we eat something different for breakfast and lunch but each week I do the same things.  This makes the meal planning and grocery shopping task much easier.  My family still gets a wide variety of options too but it makes planning on my part so much easier.  You can read more about it in this blog post.

• Use a laundry Schedule

  You can read more about this in my post about the laundry cycle that saved my life.  I know that a rigid laundry routine may not be the answer for everyone but no matter what, most of us do one load of laundry a day.  OR maybe we should do one a day!   Choose a time of day to make this happen.  I (or whoever’s laundry day it is) bring laundry down first thing in the morning and get that load going before breakfast. This is so wonderful because before I even get my kids off to school it is done.  I can switch it and then I can just leave it.  This helps so much with avoiding that “left it in the washer too long” yuck smell!

• Clean one room a day

  Let’s face it…does anyone’s house ever stay clean?  I mean I used to spend hours and hours cleaning. Then my kids would come home from school and you would not even be able to tell.  This caused me to go to the extreme opposite and not want to clean at all.  I mean who wants to clean when nobody notices and YOU cannot even enjoy it for ONE day. I always keep my house cleaned up no matter what, that is the OCD in me.  It is always picked up but actually CLEANED…THAT was not happening as often as it should.  I decided this needed to stop and instead of spending hours and hours one day, I now just clean one room a day.  Some days I have something going on so I do only basic cleaning but most days I go deep… by that I mean magic eraser on the walls, cleaning out window tracks, moving things to vacuum, and wiping baseboards.  Doing just one room a day is much less stressful and I take the time to REALLY do a good job.  It also only takes 30-60 minutes which I can easily handle.

• Do not touch anything twice

  I had a wise neighbor once whose mom taught her that you never touch anything twice.  By that, she meant if you have something in your hand that needs to go upstairs, you do not set it on the stairs you take it up and put it away.  Alas, you are not touching it twice! If you take off your clothes to change, you do not leave them in a pile on the floor to be cleaned up later. You hang them back up or put them in the wash. This may not seem like a big deal but it makes a HUGE difference at the end of the day.  When you are tired and want to head to bed it is not fun to go back and fix things you left undone earlier.

• Clean up messes as you see them

  As I am sitting in the bathroom having a few seconds of peace and quiet (yeah right), I see a drip going down the wall from the towel bar and light switch…all the way to the molding.  Instead of leaving that for the next cleaning time, I take two seconds to clean it up as soon as I see it. I try to do this with anything I see during the day.  A pile of trash in the car, why leave it? It will only multiply. Marks on the wall from someone moving a toy too close, get that magic eraser out and remove that. A cobweb in the corner of the kitchen, get the Norwex wand out (love that thing) and get it out of there. This also goes great with dishes in the sink…do not leave them there to pile up and become intimidating.  Load them up as they are dirtied.  No one wants to spend an hour cleaning up the sink at the end of the day. Or ever worse wake up to a sink full of dirty dishes!

• Enlist your kids to help

  Kids, especially younger ones, LOVE to please and help their moms.  Get them to help.  Let’s face it no matter how much money they make in life they are still going to have to do laundry, clean and make food.  Why not teach them young.  My son who is three can empty the dishwasher.  He may not be able to reach the higher cabinets but he unloads it and leaves things right under the cabinet they need to go in.  I did not teach him this.  He wanted to help one day and I wanted to see how he would do and without me helping he knew where almost every little thing went.  They are always watching us so they know.  They also love anything with a motor or buttons so show them how to start and switch the laundry.  Have them vacuum up the mess they made during snack time.  Show them how to load the dishwasher or wash the dishes.  Most importantly make sure they pick up after themselves.  Their future spouse will thank you later!

• Make ONE option

  I know many of you will think this is impossible but I am telling you that you can train your kids. By this I mean make ONE option for food.  ONE breakfast, ONE lunch, ONE snack, ONE dinner. If they do not want it then allow them to choose to not eat.  I am very sure they will not choose that option EVER (or not more than once anyway).  I do try to choose things I know my kids like but my kids are also not picky at all because they have not been given options at mealtime.

• Get Rid of things you don’t use

  This may seem obvious also but look around. I bet you will find at least 5 things you could get rid of and if you’re really honest that 5 can probably turn into 20+.  I’m part of pretty amazing facebook garage sale site and it’s so easy to snap a photo and add a price to sell things.  Some mornings during my daily cleaning I snap photos and sell things and they are picked up and paid for before the end of the day.  If that doesn’t work then I try eBay if it’s something worth anything or make a goodwill (donation) stop.  Why keep cleaning up and moving the things we don’t even use!

 

Ten Tricks for getting more done

Now, these things to get more done may make you sit back and think about your days. When we don’t have a schedule and don’t make a plan it feels awful at the end of the day to think you didn’t get anything done.  When I have a plan and follow it most of my daily tasks are done before lunch and that feels SO good!  Then when my kid’s naps and I get a minute to sit down it feels even more enjoyable!  You can do it.  Keep it up Mamas!

The morning hustle…it happens to us all whether we have ten kids or no kids.  Whether we are married or single.  No matter what our stage is in life, the morning routine can be downright hard.  Our mornings almost always involve tears which is just an awful way to start out the day.  I hate this time of day and because of that, I have thrown this time to the super mom inside me to conquer it.  Although I think we have come a LONG way…there are still tears many mornings!  Here five ways that I changed our mornings for the better.

5 Ways to make your Mornings Easier!

1. Nobody gets up until mom is ready

The alarm hasn’t even gone off yet but someone is tapping you on the shoulder asking if it’s time to get up yet. This is no way to start the day.  Not that you do not love those little faces but it’s hard to face the day when you aren’t prepared. Getting up and ready before my kids need me makes me ready to conquer the day.  I can easily ward off those fighting tones if I don’t feel like I just got hit by the morning truck.

When my kids were younger we used to have an alarm clock in their room and they couldn’t come out until it went off (except if they need to go potty). We do not have alarm clocks for them anymore but they still know to stay in their rooms until I come to get them.  This helps so much to know the schedule and the time they will be needing me.  It also helps them know the boundaries.

When we had our first three children (three years in a row nonetheless) I was in a morning panic each morning.  Sometimes my oldest would be up at 5 AM, then the next day it would be 8 AM…I just couldn’t keep up and I was failing at life because I wasn’t prepared.  I put an alarm clock in her room and set it for a reasonable time and we never had another issue.  It was reassuring to her also.

2. Weekly Breakfast Choices

We have six children so this is very easy for us to do but if you have less (or more) maybe you have them choose two days or you choose some.  We have created a weekly breakfast schedule. I had each child choose what they wanted to have for breakfast one day. Each week we have the same thing on their day.  They can change it anytime before grocery day if they want.  I help them make good choices for what they should choose… by this I mean pop tarts and toaster strudel are not options.  We can have those things on specials days but they are not something we eat weekly.  Each child has to choose one breakfast for the week and they feel special when it’s their day.

This helps so much not only for our morning routine but also for grocery planning.  I do not have these things memorized and sometimes we have leftovers that can work for breakfast.  With that being said it does change sometimes but for the most part, we stick to the plan.  It is such a blessing to know each morning what breakfast will be and that it will also be a healthy and hearty meal for them to go off to school with.

Breakfast options that we love include

• Eggs (can be eggs and sausage, omelets, scrambled eggs, egg sandwich, eggs in a tortilla shell)
• Oatmeal (try to spice it up make apple oatmeal, banana oatmeal, cinnamon sugar oatmeal)
• French Toast
• Pancakes
• Cereal (we do this once a week on Monday because I also have to get off to work)
• Cinnamon rolls
• Toast or bagels

3. Weekly Lunch Choices

Right along with breakfast choices my kids also each get one day to choose their lunch.  I ask them to choose the main course, a fruit, a vegetable, and a treat.  Again we choose these and they are set each week unless they decide they want to change something in their meal.  I try to have each person choose different things so that although we are eating the same thing each week it’s different each day.

Another thing I do while making lunches is I do not only make them for my school-age kids.  I make everyone’s lunches.  This way when we are scrambling from the gym to preschool drop off, I already have a lunch plan.  It works so well for me to prep three more things and only have ONE mess to clean up after.

Here are our current meal choices:

• Monday: peanut butter and jelly sandwich, yogurt, carrots, and goldfish
• Tuesday: Lunchable (I only allow these once a week), jello, peppers, rice Krispie, and chips
• Wednesday: ham and cheese bun, oranges, tomatoes, cookie
• Thursday: peanut butter and jelly roll up (on a tortilla shell), applesauce, celery and peanut butter, and a donut (some things have to be fun right)
• Friday: Friday is often hot lunch day at our school but we still plan to have chicken nuggets, grapes, cucumbers, and whatever treats are leftover from the week.

What do you think?  You think you can guide your kids to make great choices for lunch?  I also have a bin for each day in my pantry so it’s very easy to pack up.  For the vegetables, I spend one day a week cutting them and prepping them into a fridge drawer so that they are all ready to go.

4. Daily Devotions

I make lunches quickly when we first sit down to eat because my kids sit at our island to eat.  It’s very nice to chat with them while they are getting settled for breakfast.  I am making lunch and they are starting to eat.  I do find that we still end up with fighting.  To solve this I started reading to my kids.  It helps them to eat because they want to be quiet and listen and it keeps them from fighting.  I use this time to read a little devotional for kids that they can relate to.  It’s amazing how reading these short little snippets really can impact their morning.  We can connect and think about the short message that comes across and usually it guides us into the next phase of the morning very well.

5. Out the door

It’s that time…pick it up, pack it up, mop it up, sweep it up.  As my husband says! The last rush to get out the door.  I give my kids a good 10 minutes to get their bags and things ready before we need to rush out. It’s amazing that even with this long amount of time I’m still saying hurry hurry hurry.  Put your shoes on, did you brush your hair, get your coat…oh man it never ends.  I do try to remain calm because we have some extra time. Before we know it it’s off to the bus.

ok… so maybe it’s 6. The bus Lineup WAR

The last morning battle that I have found needing a solution is the bus lineup war.  You know it…they fly to the bus stop and then when the bus comes they all push and shove to be the first one on.  Well after feeling worried for my kid’s safety because they are waiting on a busy street, and being completely embarrassed as they fight to get on their CHRISTIAN school bus. I felt this was an important matter to address.

I know many of you probably have more than your kids at the bus stop so I know we as kids used to line our bags up and that was the order to get on.  This also worked great but for me, I wanted to get more out of my kids.  I wanted to find something to help our mornings and what better than a good way to get them to quickly eat their breakfast.  For us whoever is done with their breakfast first is the first one to get on the bus…second is second, and so on.

Five (or 6 who’s  counting) Tips for your morning mess

It can be such a mess that’s for sure and even with these tips, I can assure you our mornings do not go perfectly.  The best part for me is just feeling the comfort of structure and knowing what to expect for most of it so when the craziness hits I can be ready for it!

Looking for other great Super mom tips

Thanks for joining me today.  I’m just a mom that everyone is always asking “how do you do it all”, I don’t think I do anything special so I wanted to share what I do with everyone I can.  If you are looking for other solutions check out my freezer meal theory, clothing theory, and laundry theory.  You can also find lots of options for recipes and Jar salads.  Thanks for being a part of my day!