Parenting has its ups and downs, and nearly every parent is faced with challenges that can feel a little insurmountable from time to time. Parents who work outside the home face a set of challenges that can be downright painful. This has been compounded by the ongoing health crisis, which has meant that many parents are trying to balance work and home life simultaneously, without a break from either.
It can be tough to be equally committed to your children, your job, and running your home, yet many working parents find that they somehow have to be anyway. The Harvard Business Review writes that more than 50 million Americans find themselves facing this exact struggle each day:
"Working parenthood requires you to handle an endless stream of to-do's, problems, and awkward situations. There's no playbook or clear benchmarks for success, and candid discussion with managers can feel taboo; you might worry about being labeled as unfocused, whiny, or worse. Moreover, the problem persists for 18 years or more, without ever getting much easier."
With a problem so huge, where do working parents begin? If you ask me, the key to balancing as much as possible is organization.
How Getting Organized Can Help Working Moms
When I bring up organization tips, I don't just mean making your living space neat and tidy — I mean actually structuring each day in a way that makes it easier to manage every responsibility and every joy you might experience. These tips will be about everything from organizing your mind and heart to organizing your workspace in a way that makes it easy for you to accomplish your goals.
While it can be fun to be a hot mess, there are a lot of benefits to being organized that shouldn't be ignored. Beaumont Health says that stress relief is the top benefit of leading an organized life, and that's definitely something all parents need!
Organization Tips for the Home
Many working moms often struggle to keep their home life organized and balanced. It turns out that, sometimes, all you need are a few quick tips and tricks.
I began waking up at 6 a.m. each day a few weeks ago, and while it's been a little tiring, I've found that I am generally more alert and energetic in the end. Waking up before your kids do can give you time to get settled and focused; it's also a good time to plan out your workday before you even leave the house.
You might be the kind of person who has things organized in terms of what needs to be accomplished at home and at work, but your physical living space could be in need of some TLC. That's OK: Your home not being Instagram perfect isn't a big problem.
It turns out that keeping your home organized could even be good for your mental health, which in turn makes it easier to get out and conquer your goals. Vicky Motley, the brand manager at disinfectant maker Zoflora, told Yahoo exactly that:
"Cleaning has been found to have positive effects on our mental health by helping us gain a sense of control over our environment, whilst being absorbed in the activity itself can also help calm your mind. It has also been found to help improve mood and provide us with a sense of satisfaction."
There are a lot of articles out there about how to organize your home, but it can be overwhelming if you really need to start at ground zero. Here are a few tips for organizing your home and keeping it that way:
- Take it one room at a time: When I really get in the mood to clean, I tend to jump from spot to spot instead of taking my time with each room. I've found that when I make myself slow down and take it room by room (even if it takes days), I end up with a much cleaner, tidier house.
- Take stock of what you really need: My favorite part of cleaning my house is getting rid of all the extra stuff! As you go, take stock of what your family really needs and uses — and of what's just extra.
- Take breaks if you get overwhelmed: I don't deep-clean my home often, so when I finally make myself do it, it's really easy to get overwhelmed and just quit altogether. When I find myself feeling anxious about how much needs to be done, I force myself to take a break. Sometimes that's just a quick walk around the block to clear my head, and sometimes it's several hours.
Organization Tips for Handling Kids
As much as we all love our kids and (most of) the ins and outs of parenting, there's no denying one fact: Sometimes, you just have to handle and manage your kids and their lives and various activities. Typically, those things are being managed while you're also balancing your own life, possibly the life of a partner, and trying to keep up with every other demand placed on you.
It can be easy to let your kids and their activities, needs, and wants stress you out — and that's totally normal. Kathy Gruver, PhD, the author of Conquer Your Stress With Mind/Body Techniques, told WebMD that when we're stressed, our kids usually are, too:
"Children are very perceptive. If you can deal with your stress appropriately, they'll realize it's not a sign of a catastrophe — that stress is something you can deal with."
Luckily, there are plenty of tips for handling kid-related stress, and those tips are both practical and effective.
On an emotional level, it can feel overwhelming when you wake up each day and know there's a long list of things to accomplish. That might be helping your kids with virtual school. It might be figuring out a breakfast, lunch, and dinner that everyone will eat without complaining. It might be wading through the current state of the health crisis to find out what activities your family is comfortable rejoining, or it might be something else altogether.
One of the best tips for organizing my mind emotionally that I've ever received has been to make sure I don't wait until I'm totally stressed to start trying to chill myself out, and that's echoed on WebMD:
"Most people know good stress-busting techniques, like eating healthy, exercising, meditating, or taking time-outs. The problem is that they wait until they're stressed to do them."
Basically, if your brain is already stressed, those tricks aren't going to work. The key is to practice lessening your stress levels every day, even the ones where you feel great.
On a more practical level, when it comes to keeping up with everything my kid has going on, I'm a big fan of something you already know about: my Google calendar! Since my son goes back and forth between my home and his dad's, it's extra important to make sure we both know what's going on and when. It turns out that we're all still a little busy, even in the middle of a global health crisis!
Our trick has been to make a separate calendar for our son and to color code everything on that calendar. We can both see and edit it, and we're each responsible for adding anything we set up. If his dad calls and sets up an appointment at the dentist, he needs to be the one to put it on the calendar. If I sign him up for a class, I have to make sure it's on there. This way we're accountable, and everything is easy to see.
Organization Tips for Your Relationship
It might not sound super romantic to think about how to organize your marriage or relationship, but I think it just might help keep things happy and whole. Larger problems such as money and physical/emotional/mental safety aside, a lot of anxiety and stress between two adults can be lessened if both people know what their responsibilities and obligations are.
A lot of what's already been written can help you and your partner get into a more organized state of mind — one that is respectful, responsible, and really engaged. We all know that it's important to stay connected with your partner, but if you rarely see each other in a meaningful way, that's probably not going to happen.
How you organize your relationship or marriage is up to you; for some people, it could mean scheduling things like dates and even sex. For others, it might mean having conversations about responsibilities and exhaustion, and then making a plan in which both partners are more equal. For others, it might be something else entirely.
Ultimately when it comes to relationships, I'm a big believer in the idea that you can't love someone the way you should until you love yourself as much as you can. So if getting your life organized will help you love yourself, then that's probably the best place to start.
