Get Stuck in a Rut!

Sometimes being stuck in a rut is good- routine is comforting and efficient.  Make a routine for you and your kids each night to make the morning flow more smoothly.  My twins were at the age where they wanted to do everything for themselves.  Rather than have the morning fight over what we would wear each day, I solved the problem by laying everyone’s clothes out the night before- yes, it’s one of the oldest tricks in the book, but that’s because it works! 

I have a small bench in the boys’ room, and every night before bed, their pants, shirts, shoes, and socks are all laid out and ready to go, and the boys have happily gotten up and dressed themselves without issue since they were three.  Socks, preschool nap mats, coats, backpacks, and lunches are all readied the evening before as well, and ready to grad on the way out the door, including mom and dad’s!

Set Boundaries on After School Activities

There are so many activities these days for our children to participate in. While most of us believe we should provide as many opportunities as possible for our children it is possible to go overboard. So how do we draw lines and set boundaries while providing the best opportunities? BusyMomsOnline has put together a great method of setting priorities with the whole family in mind when scheduling after school activities.

* Make the family the priority. Yes, its true that as children go through their school years they will find more and more extra-curricular activities they would like to be involved in. Instead of allowing them to be involved in them all, tell them you expect them to be home to eat with the family. Your family is more important than any school activity.

When Not to Waste Time at the ER

You may have already been unlucky enough to go through this situation. I can tell you it’s frustrating! Hours with a sick child in a rather unfriendly waiting room doesn’t make either of you feel good, especially when the doc tells you to give him some cold medicine and check in with your primary in the morning. If your going back and forth about the severity of your child’s symptoms there are a number of things you can try to help you make the decision:

• Call your hospital’s Advice Nurse.
• Attempt to call your primary physician. Many have an answering service and can be reached after hours.
• Call the Advice Nurse associated with your Health Insurance.
• When in doubt, follow your gut and go. Sure it may not be much fun for either of you, but if it is something serious you’ll be thanking yourself later.

Make the Most of an Hour

Working Moms Against Guilt has multitasking down. These ladies offer sound advice on how to carve out some more productivity during the day:

Have something with you to do for that unexpected delay, while waiting for an appointment, during a child’s practice or lesson - reading, writing cards, or your to-do list. If you want to use it as a refill time for yourself, bring along that book you can’t wait to finish.

Listen to the news while getting ready in the morning.

Make phone calls while doing mindless tasks: walking, riding in a car/public transportation, filing, decluttering your desk or another surface or room, laundry, cleaning, ironing, unloading the dishwasher, etc. Consider getting a headset to free your hands.

Do mindless jobs when you can be interrupted.

Record or Tivo TV shows and fast forward through commercials. Use TV time to read mail, exercise, iron, clean, make shopping lists, pay bills, cut coupons, wrap presents, etc.

Reclaim your Schedule

When school first comes back in session there’s usually a transition period when it comes to schedules. Kids who were used to staying up all night are now required to go to sleep earlier for a school night. The same thing can happen during the winter break, albeit to a lesser degree. Busy-online-moms.com had these sage words of advice in getting your children back to their school sleep schedules:

Instead of goofing off when they first wake up, have your children start getting ready as if they were going to school, also within that same re-training period. Before they go to bed each night, have them set out their clothes for the next day so everything’s ready for them when they rise.

21 Easy Hacks to Simplify Your Life

Zen Habits breaks it down to 21 Hacks to make your life a little easier.  From keeping e-mails to just 5 sentances to limiting your food intake to only 7 items a mom could adopt a few of these to make life just a little bit simpler.

I use these “hacks” myself (in this case, “hacks” refers to workarounds or tricks to reach your goal), and I’ve found them to be effective in many cases. Please note that you might have read some of these once or twice (or thrice) on this blog before, but I thought it would be a useful resource to gather them all into one post.

Also, don’t try to implement all of them — that would be far from simple. Not all of them will apply to your life anyway. Pick one or two and try them out.

Simple tricks to simplify your life:

1. Three-box decluttering. If you’re trying to declutter a room, drawer, shelf, desk … use three boxes to quickly sort everything. Just quickly go through each shelf or drawer or flat surface at once, putting things into three separate boxes: Trash, Donate, Maybe. The first two boxes are obvious … the Maybe box is for stuff you’re not too sure about — you can put this in storage for a few months and decide later. Put everything else — the stuff you love and use — back neatly.
2. Create a no-distractions zone. This is great for when you want to do some focused work — which is just about every day for most of us. Create a zone with no distractions — no phones, no email, no co-workers or kids or spouses, nothing on the walls, no IM or Twitter, no web surfing. Just the tools you need to do your work and nothing else. You could also create a time within your schedule for this distraction-free zone — say 8-10 a.m., for example. No distractions within that block of time. You can do email and phone calls before and after, but not during. I like this hack for when I need to do some writing but have a hard time concentrating.

Create a short-list.

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