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Hi everyone
I work 4 days a week. I have a pretty full on job mentally and it is pretty consuming.
I am really struggling managing everything at the moment. As Alana gets more mobile it is really hard to do anything unless she is asleep which isn’t very often.
How do you do it. What are your time saving tips (that don’t cost money…I’d love a cleaner but need to pay my mortgage!), how do you stay sane (I feel like I’m going insane
).Boy do I remember that “just getting mobile” stage with Kaden! I work full time also. And while I am on mat. leave now (which ends in less than 2 weeks) I sure do know how hard it can get.
As for the clean house
, I totally had to change the way I thought about cleaning. Instead of waiting for Kaden to sleep to start on a room, I started thinking of how I could incorporate him. Once he was walking pretty good, I ended up getting him one of those fake vaccum cleaners and he would go behind me as I used a real one. I would have him “help” me with the laundry by handing me peices to throw in the washer or dryer. It started amazing me how much they just want to help.As for cooking, this is always a struggle in our house. A dear friend of mine just shared with me her secret :
http://www.savingdinner.com/mega_menu_mailer/mega_menu_maile r_2.html
Basically, she spends a saturday cooking (just a couple of hours) and freezing meals that last a month I think. I have not done this yet, but it’s worth looking into!
There are also many other things she has such as crock meals, etc, which I do a lot of anyway.These are just some suggestions.
I am not working thank goodness, but I will have to go back at some point and considering how type A I am, I can only imagine how things will be when I go back. Thankfully my parents agreed to pay for us to have cleaning people come in 2x/month, which has been wonderful, but what I did before then, was pick one room each day and just make sure that I got it really clean, of course you are cleaning everyday, but it kept me sane. Also with laundry, I do a load every day so that it doesn’t overwhelm me. And with cooking as I am a dietitian and have told many people this for weight loss to prevent eating junk b/c of lack of time, take one weekend day and do your cooking for a week and freeze it in containers so that when you get home from work you can just pop it in the oven and go. That of course means more casseroles and pasta, but other things freeze well too. I hope this helps. I dread having to go back to work full time. I am putting it off as long as possible.
I am a SAHM and think it is a tough job, but can’t imagine what it is like to work full time, clean the home, and take care of the kids. The best thing I can say is let some stuff go. Don’t worry about always having the house dusted, or vacumming once a week, or etc. If your hubby doesn’t like it then he can pitch in and help. There is no reason that you both go to work and you still do all the work at home. It is just to much. Also, I don’t know if your doing daycare or a nanny, but if your doing a nanny sometimes they are willing to some little stuff. I did when I was a nanny. I did the kids clothes, unloaded the dishwasher, dusted, and swept the floors. Not everyday of course. The mom had me do one task a day. Of course, that baby slept a lot and it helped me to not get bored. I hope someone has a solution for you. Like I said, I am a SAHM and I still let stuff go.
LOL, Brenda! My OCD is showing through!
I can’t relax unless the house is cleaned up. Our house is by no means spotless, but I like it always presentable because we have so many birth to three therapists etc…..
In the interest of full disclosure, I should admit that cleaning has never been a strength of mine. I am actually better about it now than I was before having children. (Of course, I was working two jobs and going to grad school at that point, so I didn’t have a lot of free time then either.)
Here’s what we do:
1. I use the antibacterial wipes that Ann Marie mentioned for our bathroom. We also use the daily shower cleaner that hangs in the shower and you just push a button and it sprays everything down. It’s not great, but it works to help keep the cleaning manageable.
2. We bring all of our laundry to the laundry room daily. I don’t do the girls clothes separately anymore so there are 3 hampers for sorting – whites, darks, colors and we throw towels on the floor in front of the hampers (no room for another hamper). I treat any stains right away and I do at least one load every night. I actually usually try to do laundry while the girls are awake. Alex likes to cruise around the room while Kaelyn helps. She puts clothes in the wash with me and helps transfer to the dryer. She also likes to pour in the detergent and push the buttons to start the machines. Lately Alex “helps” by pulling clothes out of the dryer while we load it, but it’s easy to keep putting them back in and it makes her happy.
3. I have a roomba that I try to use fairly often. I just put it in a room that we aren’t using at the time and let it go. It doesn’t work well in the living room (the room we use the most) because there is just too much stuff (toys,etc) for it to maneuver around, but it’s great for our mudroom and all of the leaves that get tracked in.
4. Kaelyn loves to “help” vacuum. Generally, that means that she pushes it back and forth over a very limited area, but she’s getting much better about noticing the areas that really need it and hitting them. Then I can go behind her and finish up. She thinks we’re playing and I’m getting some housework done. I generally wear Alex in my hotsling while we do this.
5. Kaelyn also likes to help with the Swiffer Wet Jet on the kitchen floor. This takes a lot more supervision and guidance, but, again, she’s getting good at finding the dirty spots and she thinks it’s great fun. (If you have toddlers helping with this, remove the batteries after using or you’ll end up with a big puddle of cleaner on your floor one day because they are “helping” you.
)6. Dh is responsible for bringing a lot of the laundry downstairs most days. He also brings the baskets up and often helps fold the laundry. He’s in charge of Kaelyn’s lunches for school and he usually loads the dishwasher at night. He also bathes Kaelyn at night while I give Alex a quick bath in the sink and then work on the kitchen or laundry.
7. Kaelyn went through a stage where she loved to help empty the dishwasher. I would quickly remove anything that could be hazardous to her (knives). Then she hands me one thing at a time while I put it away. Again, it takes a lot longer this way, but she thought it was great fun. Unfortunately, Alex wants to be included in this activity and she’s not quite ready for that, so I generally do the dishwasher when the girls are otherwise occupied.
8. I’m more of a morning person, so I’ve started getting up earlier to get things done before the girls wake up. It gets done much more quickly for me that way.
9. I can’t help you with cooking. I hate to cook and I’m struggling to manage that part of our lives better.
I don’t work outside the home but I use a lot of Ann Marie’s techniques to stay on top of things.
My best trick is what I call Extreme Baby Proofing. Almost every room in the house is safe enough for them to play without me watching them every second. The doors are closed to rooms which are not safe.
The next thing that helps alot is rotating toys. I keep most of their toys in their closet up on shelves and out of reach. Once every other week or so (when they seem to be getting bored) I rotate the toys in their rooms, the living room, the kitchen, and in the playroom. Just a few toys in each room keeps them more occupied than lots of toys strewn every where. I did this even when I only had Liza starting at about six months of age.
In the kitchen I keep one drawer and one cabinent at baby level unlocked and filled with safe items. They’ve all gone through stages when they loved the rubber maid bowls and lids. I don’t keep them in any particular order so when they are done playing I just throw them all back in. This keeps them occupied when I’m cooking.
Also I keep some special, non-toy items that they love put away and I only take them out when I really need to get something done. When Liza was little she loved laundry so I used to keep a small laundry basket with missing socks, rags and things I didn’t really need and she’d have a ball with it. Another thing that she loved was a deck of cards. Why I don’t know
but since she loved it so much I only took one out when I needed to do something for myself or something time consuming. Clearing the countertops and keeping knick knacks to a minimum helps alot!
For cooking… I cook only a few times a week (at most) and I usually cook ALOT and freeze, freeze, freeze! Then I can just take something out of the freezer, heat it up in the microwave, steam some veggies and we have dinner!
I’m at home now, but with the two of them, I get very little done as well.
When I worked and had only Claire, the only way I survived was by delegating a lot of the workload to dh. Thankfully, he was willing to help. We shared the dinner responsibilities.. either he cooked and I cleaned up or visa versa. We took turns bathing and putting her down at night (once she was weaned of course). As for the cleaning. Other than the nightly clean up of the kitchen, most of if got done on Saturday. One of the benefits of having a small house.. we would divide up the dusting, vacuuming, mopping, bathrooms and do it all in a couple of hours.. usually while she was napping. My house was never what I would call very clean, but looking back on it… well, it was spotless compared to now!
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