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86: 3 Simple Solutions to Do Everything With Love – Meant to Bloom
You deserve to let this be easy. Mom-life can be hard, but we don’t have to let the everyday tasks of it be the hard part. The house keeping and schedule coordinating aren’t meant to be the daily battles. Being a good mom isn’t about the perfect house or knowing where everyone’s soccer uniforms are, it’s about showing up and supporting your family by creating a home atmosphere where everyone can relax and enjoy time with one another. Most of us lose sight of that on the regular. It’s okay, we’re gonna get realigned today and I’m going to give you some great tips and tricks for keeping in alignment with what’s really important to you.
Today is the day you’re going to start getting comfortable with releasing stress over the home care tasks that you can’t always get to. You’re going to get grounded in your purpose and priorities and start living life the way you know you’re meant to. Today you will let it be easy, you will let go of what you can’t control, and you will rest as needed. Welcome to “easy mode” motherhood, my friend.
Links Mentioned
- Allie Casazza – Declutter Like a Mother
- My Quick Declutter Guide
- Episode 23 with Danica Mills – How To Simply Healthy Eating for the Whole Family
- Easy Meal Planning Blog Post
- The Ultimate Meal Planning Guide
- Freebie: Happy Mom Mindset Mini Guide
You deserve to have life on Easy Mode.
You have a huge, important, impactful purpose, friend. Don’t let the disillusion that everything should be hard in order for you to be worthy or good enough keep you from pursuing that purpose.
Why are you making things so hard? Why can’t you just let it all be easy and simple? Are you actually a masochist? Do you believe that you don’t deserve ease and peace and excitement and joy in your life?
Mom-life can be hard, yeah, but the day to day home care tasks and responsibilities aren’t supposed to be the hard part. The hard part of motherhood is supposed to be watching your babies grow up, watching the struggle to learn something new, not knowing how to help them through a heartbreak, your kid telling you they hate you for the first time, your kid getting diagnosed with an illness you know little about – that’s what’s supposed to be hard – not dishes, laundry or meal times. It’s better to get that perspective now and enjoy things as easy while they still are, because God-forbid, you don’t know what tomorrow holds.
Here’s the step by step guide to putting mom-life on easy mode.
- Define your bare minimum.
What are those few tasks that have to be done every single day in your home? Typically we’re looking at laundry, dishes, and meals. Everything else can be forgotten for a day without everyone’s life falling apart. Basically, if you’re bed ridden and sick – what are those few things you’re going to ask your husband (or mom or whoever is helping you out) to do that day?
- Decide what you actually like to do and what you’d rather delegate.
If there are things on this list that you absolutely hate doing, find any way you can to get someone else to do it – for me that was deep cleaning – like scrubbing stuff and wiping down the things that passively get dirty (tops of cabinets, windows, cobwebs, etc). I don’t think about them and become very blind to them too.
Get a kid to start doing it, swap a chore with your husband – maybe he can clean the toilets and you can take the trash out from now on, or hire it out if you’ve got the means – this actually may be cheaper or more impactful than you think. Try it before you decide it’s not for you.
- Declutter the rest.
What’s left on your must do list? Now we make that even easier. Are you left with dishes or laundry or meals? Because I’m gonna chat here about that, and take what you need from this and apply it to what you’re working with.
Less stuff means less time cleaning and caring for the stuff.
Dishes – If dishes are killing you, you’ve probably got too many of them. I’ve currently reached a point where we have miraculously and mysteriously ended up with more dishes than we need in a day. If you have more daily dishes than your family uses in a day – ditch the extras (or store them out of sight if you use them occasionally with guests).
A general rule of thumb is that humans will take the path of least resistance – if you have extra dishes, members of your home will use those extra dishes and create more dishes for YOU to wash. If each member has exactly enough dishes, they will be forced to wash the extras themselves or simply have no dishes to use.
I suggest having one of each type of dish per household member (great tip from Allie Casazza’s Declutter Like a Mother), but definitely don’t hang onto more than fit in your dishwasher.
Create a routine around your dishes – when do you unload, when do you load? Is this working for you? One thing that works for me is unload in the morning, load throughout the day, final load at bedtime and run it while we sleep. Repeat daily.
Laundry – this is usually more of a disciple thing with making sure to follow through with what you’re planning to do. For me at least.
I wash and dry one load per day and tend to fold and put away twice a week. I have a full system for how I do each step and it works very well for me. The only current hiccup in my perfect plan is that I keep the baskets of clean laundry in my bedroom while they are waiting to be folded and that ain’t jiving with me anymore – I need that space kept clear and calm and free of to -do list tasks. I have the idea in my head that once I get my laundry room done remodeling that it will solve the problem.
If you’ve got this bad habit of going too long without washing, there’s one simple trick that will help this – declutter your underwear drawer. If you only have enough pairs to get you from one wash to the next, you’ll be very motivated to wash laundry more often.
If you’re currently behind on laundry now is a great time to go make space in your closet – clearly the clothes left behind are second string items or out of season and can be stored out of sight for the time. The trick isn’t necessarily to own as few clothes as possible, it’s to get the clothes that don’t fit, don’t feel good, and never get chosen out of your way so your favorite pieces of clothes have closet space to breathe.
Meal time – Start by decluttering your recipes. Too many choices can lead to decision anxiety and make the decision more difficult. Create a family menu of about 20-30 of everyone’s favorites to eat and you’re favorite to cook. Use this to create a weekly meal plan every Sunday night or Monday morning or whenever works best for you to sit down for 15 minutes and do it before you head to the grocery store.
Then only buy the foods you need for the week – this helps your budget and keeps pantry space from being overrun by extras you never seem to use. A full pantry and fridge are a great blessing, but when you can’t see everything you have, or plan to use everything you’re buying, you run the risk of having to throw away a lot of food – that’s an extra chore in itself, but dealing with the guilt of spending money to throw it away and world hungry somehow becomes your fault at that moment… You don’t need that, you don’t have time for that. You’re doing important stuff.
Life doesn’t have to be hard. Easy is a choice, and it’s time for you to join me and start enjoying your whole life, not just tiny moments. Choose easy. Choose big purpose. Choose not to be distracted by the mundane things that don’t need as much time and energy as you’re giving them. This part of life is supposed to be easy. Day to day tasks aren’t meant to be the hard part mama.
Brittni Clarkson 