Being a Mum is hard work; emotionally, mentally and physically. You definitely learn a lot when you become a Mum, you learn how to survive on little to no sleep, you learn how to do everything one-handed while holding a baby that is trying to rip out your hair and you learn how to get things done quicker and more efficiently so that once the baby is asleep you can drown yourself in white wine spritzers rather than still be running around like a madwoman.
There are a few things that I have picked up along my journey into Motherhood so far that have made my life easier and much less stressful.
The first thing is to use a weekly planner. I’m a sucker for a beautiful bit of stationary and I picked up a lovely coral and copper one in Sainsburys for about £3. It has no dates in it just Monday to Friday with space for to do lists and notes for the week. I mainly use this to plan out our meals and any plans we have for the week. I try to write out the weeks meals in advance so I can work out what ingredients we are missing and when to go to the shop. This saves us money and keeps us eating healthier too as there is always something planned for dinner, meaning less last-minute takeaways. It’s also much easier to write down any baby classes, play dates or outings we have planned just because then that’s one less thing I have to remember.
On the subject of food, I am using my Slow Cooker so much more these days. If I have a particularly busy day planned I can just throw it all into the slow cooker in the morning and not have to think about dinner again until it’s tme to eat it. Also it makes the house smell amazing all day, plus there is much less washing up!
Sticking in the kitchen, the dishwasher has seriously become my lifesaver! We didn’t have one until we moved recently and it’s probably one of my favourite things about the house. It makes it so much easier to keep the kitchen clean all day when you can just quickly tidy everything away into the dishwasher, I usually put it on in the evening so that in the monring I have everything clean and ready to use.
This leads onto my next point, I try to never go to bed with a messy house. Keeping the house relatively tidy throughout the day helps with this because then you don’t have to tidy a bombsite before you go to bed. At the bare minimum I like to have all of Darcie’s toys tidied away and for the kitchen to be clean ready for the morning. I hate waking up to a messy house so that motivates me to make sure I have a little tidy before we go to bed.
Getting Darcie a toy box was a revelation to me not that long ago. I’m sure most people thought of this sooner but until she was around 5 months old we used to have ‘Darcie Mountain’ which was a great mound of toys piled up on her playmat. Putting them all into a box makes my life so much easier, the lounge so much tidier and it’s also a really fun game for Darcie to take things in and out of the box.
I try to be really productive during the first nap of the day. If I rush around for that half an hour tidying, cleaning and doing any other odd jobs that there are that day it means that I then have a better chance of being able to take a break or do something I actually want to do during any other naps she takes that day.
Speaking of naps, I use the Johnsons’ Bedtime App on my phone to record Darcie’s sleep times. I know some people will this is totally lame but I find it so helpful. Particularly when she was a bit younger and wasn’t awake for very long between naps it made it so much easier to have a record of when she last woke up so I would know roughly when she would need to go back down. I don’t have a good memory for remembering things like this so it has really helped me out and I’m sure it has helped to improve her sleep because she is less likely to become overtired.
These are just some of the things I do in an attempt for an easier life, what do you do? I’ll always appreciate any tips for an easier life!