Do you panic every day when dinner-time approaches, leave the house each morning minus your make-up, or end up with half-packed school bags as you reach the school gate? Then take these 10 tips on how to grab back some time and organise your life.
Shower at night
While it might seem like a superwoman level of organisation, showering and washing your hair in the evening can save precious minutes in the morning rush hour and help you get out the door on time.
To keep your locks quick to style each morning, make sure you condition your hair with a deep-conditioning treatment every second wash. This will keep your hair salon-smooth and easy to style.
Shop monthly for grocery items
There’s no reason to spend a couple of hours every week in the supermarket. Doing a big shop for supermarket items like toilet paper and cleaning products once a month can mean that your weekly shop for fresh bread, fruit and veg, and perishables can be done in a jiffy once a week after dropping the kids at school or on the weekend.
If you really want to save time, do your big monthly grocery shop online. Before you start, save a couple of itemised shopping dockets and use these to create an online shopping list. Then, you can tweak it slightly month by month, instead of having to select items from scratch every time you shop.
Train your kids to put a load of washing on
Along with spending less time in the supermarket mums wanting to save time should spend less time in the laundry . Domestic goddess and co-author of Speed Cleaning (ABC Books) Shannon Lush advises teaching kids how to put on a load of washing. She suggests keeping dirty clothes baskets in the laundry marked whites and colours. “When one of the baskets in the laundry is full, whoever is there puts a wash on. Then whoever is in there when it’s finished, hangs it on the line. It’s a simple way for other people to help.”
Eradicate ironing from your life
Claim back the hours you spend ironing with this simple tip from Shannon Lush: Spray your clothes with a lavender oil and water solution (one teaspoon of oil to one litre of water), after your threads have left the washing machine. This will get rid of creases altogether and you can kiss ironing goodbye. “Lavender oil is a fibre relaxant so the creases just drop out,” says Shannon.
Recharge your batteries with a power nap
If you’re sleep deprived (and hello, what mum isn’t?) recharge your batteries in a jiffy by taking a ‘power nap’. Set your alarm clock for 25 minutes as soon as you feel yourself getting drowsy and you’ll wake before you enter the deep-sleep zone and feel instantly reenergised.
Have dinners on standby
If you ever find yourself thinking, ‘Oh no, it’s dinner-time, what do I feed the kids?’ then you need some quick dinners on standby. Get speedy dinner inspiration with these dinner recipes from Kidspot Kitchen. Just keep meat in the freezer ready to be defrosted in minutes and a well-stocked pantry so you can whip up a range of family-frendly dinners which can be prepared and on the table from just 20 minutes.
And if you’re feeling particularly clever, double the ingredients and pop one meal in the freezer for a night when you don’t even have 20 minutes to cook.
Car pool the school run
If you drive your kids to school and back every single day, why not set up a car pool with other mums in your neighbourhood at the school gate? You’ll not only save time and petrol, but you’ll be doing your bit for the environment too.
Simplify your beauty routine
Don’t waste hours on fiddly beauty regimes. Here’s one that all mums will have time to do – simple mum-friendly beauty tips.
Also, if you like a natural bronzed look during swimsuit season, buy a daily body moisturiser which builds a gradual fake tan. It won’t take you any longer to apply than your usual body moisturiser and your skin will be glowing.
Get on top of paperwork
Don’t let paperwork build up and intrude on special family weekend time by having a bill paying system in place. Simply allocate a drawer or tray to unpaid bills and then save time by paying them in one batch every fortnight online.
Give yourself a mental boost
If you’re feeling tired and unable to go about things as efficiently as you would like, take a few deep breaths to calm your body and mind. Breathing deeply fills the lungs with oxygen, sending richly oxygenated blood around the body, lowering your blood pressure and heart rate.
This article was originally written by Joanna Bounds for our sister site www.kidspot.com.au
What’s your best time-saving tip?
See more:
Preparing the evening meal earlier in the day if you can. Saves so much time and stress later on in the day. Also, if you have a slow cooker – cooking large roast style pieces of meat in it are great. Add some vege or a salad at the end of the day and wa lah! Tea is served!
There are some great tips there, especially the using lavender ironing oil and not ironing! I hate ironing and only iron my husbands work shirts but I would be super happy to not have to do that again!
I never iron but I might have to invest in some lavender oil. Great tip! And I could absolutely embrace power naps. Sounds blissful 😉
Love the lavender oil tip for the ironing..never knew that but very helpful to know… and i already prepack my meat into portion sizes for my family so in the morning i put a pack in a bowl of water and leave to defrost in time for dinner… it works well… the kids do help with dirty clothes popped in the washing machine and i cant tell you how helpful that is!! Making it fun for them means they do it without being told cos they love to help with grownup jobs.
Doing grocery shopping online (as well as other types of shopping) has been such a time saver for me. Another one is packing the lunchboxes, bags etc the night before as I never have enough time in the morning it is all a big rush.
I am one of the lucky ones as my husband is a high C (in the DISC personality test) which means he likes being organised and in control so when it comes to paperwork aka bills – he does them mostly. I like the idea of a power nap, not too sure how to do it in just 25 minutes though does that include trying to fall asleep in total?
Awesome tips. Great read. My best time saving tip would be doing school lunches and homework and bags packed in the car at night ready for the morning then we just have to have breakfast get dressed do dishes and have our washes and go to school. I find it works amazing for us. And that way we not stressing in the morning trying to sort everything.
There are some fantastic tips here and great to see there are also a few things I do currently to save on time. I know for sure that our household could never get away with a monthly shop though with three young children!
Great tips! I already shower at night as it’s much easier than doing it in the morning ha! The ironing tip is wonderful and I think I’m going to have to try it! I hate ironing so much, we have a huge ironing board – it’s a really decent one but I really can’t be bothered dragging it out, as I only iron when I need to. So I put a towel on the floor and iron that way haha 🙂