Here are my top ten tips for WAHM’s in the school holidays
1) Get up early
I get up at 5.45 a.m most days in the holidays This buys me 1 1/2 hours completely quiet work time before the kids get up.
Strong coffee and a plan created the night before mean you get straight to it.
2) Schedule 1 hour in each day
and let the kids watch a movie or set them up with arts and crafts or a jigsaw or TV. Plan in the early morning how you care going to use that hour.
3) Stick to normal bedtime routines
If your children normally go to bed at 7.30pm stick with it. Have them help tidy up before they go to bed or do it round them so once they are down you can get an hour or twos work in most evenings.
4) Get some childcare
Plan ahead with family member exchange play dates or book in a few hours at a holiday club if your children are old enough. The summer days are long and a few hours elsewhere will make you and your children appreciate each other more AND you can get some work done.
5) Quality is what matters.
When you are with the kids be with them. Turn off twitter alerts and the like and really get down and play or get out and about, they will be a lot more forgiving when you carve in work time and tell them to go and play/read for an hour later if you have given them Quality TIME first.
6) Lower your expectations
You can’t do what you normally do so let it slide a little. Stick with the important tasks you can go back to empire building when they are back at school.
7) Don’t wear yourself out
Pace your tasks and plan them but don’t over do it you need your energy for your kids they don’t want a frazzled, stressed mum
8) Take a few shortcuts
Get school uniform NOW
Double batch the bolognese you cook so you have tea all prepared for next week in the freezer,
Shop online
Keep cleaning wipes in the bathroom and clean as they bathe
Have everyone tidy up before bed every night
Eat outside where you can
Make sandwiches for lunch at the same time as making breakfast
Put the washing on every morning as you get up and fold as soon as dry. You only need to iron shirts and if you don’t wear them why are you ironing them?
Stop reading other people’s blogs for the summer and schedule tweets and blog posts
Have two times a day when you check email. That’s it.
9.Don’t overbook yourself
If asked if you can do something say ‘let me get back to you on that.’ If you don’t want to do it ABSOLUTELY say ‘Sorry too busy or double booked’ (you have an appointment with yourself and your work sometimes and that is OKAY!)
10. take care of yourself
Trying to be superwoman business mum and stay at home mum is a VERY tall order. Take long baths, read, breathe deeply, walk a lot and eat well and take a few days completely off working. You need your energy.
But if we all stopped reading other people’s blogs then I would never have found this post, and I really liked it.
I think lowering your expectations is really key – it’s unrealistic to think that you will get as much done as you would during term time. And don’t feel guilty about doing less, because you’re lucky if you can do so. Plenty of people don’t have that choice.
The biggest challenge I’ve found this summer is that every time I move away from the computer, my son is in there playing Minecraft.
Great tips Becky. I’ve been running around like a mad woman, I definitely need to calm down a bit. I’m not sure I could get up at 5.45 though 😉