Five Ridiculously useful tips for parents on time management (Printable)

5 Time Management Tips for Parents to help you stay Organised and Make life easier for you and your children every day.

 

Everyone is busy, whether they have children at home or not, but when you have children, you have to manage both your own and their schedules.  The task of completing it all may become more complex and challenging as a result.

 

This is where time management comes into play, and these 5 tips and strategies will help you improve your daily life without worrying about missing appointments or having days that are too long and tiring.

 

Keep a Calendar for the Family Updated and Organised.

If you don't know what needs to be done, it's impossible to plan your day or your week. For this reason, a calendar of some kind—whether it be printed on paper, one that is electronic, or one that combines the two—is crucial.

A family calendar is no longer a luxury but rather a necessity when you have to coordinate multiple schedules due to how challenging this task becomes.  Everyone must be able to check in one location to determine who must be present where and when. If not, double booking or overbooking will inevitably occur, which you want to avoid.

An online calendar that can be synced across the entire family, like Google calendars, maybe your best option if you need to take into account the schedules of several people.

 

For everyone to look at the calendar together at the breakfast table each morning and plan the day as a team, you may also need to keep a paper calendar for those family members without smart devices.  Additionally, a lot of people prefer to keep their family calendar there, along with a lot of other information that the entire family needs to share and be aware of. This area is known as the "command centre" in the home. 

Meal planning is key when it comes to time and money-saving strategies.

You and your family will want to eat, every single day.  Unavoidable, I'd say 😊

 

Making your plans now is best because preparing meals takes up a sizable portion of each day. You can use it to budget your time and money for grocery shopping all at the same time.

 

When you have a plan for your meals, you can buy everything at once to avoid making multiple trips to the store, prepare any meals in advance, and select meals that will take the least amount of time to prepare and consume on that particular day, this is especially handy if you have football practise sessions on the evening.

 

Create a basic menu plan for at least your evening meals by sitting down at least once a month, or perhaps every week if that works better for you.  It would be ideal if you had a plan for your breakfast and lunch – But I don’t bother with that, because I know what packed lunch the kids have each day, and my husband usually eats lunch at work.

 

If you have a monthly plan, you can divide this up week by week for grocery shopping needs or do large batch cooking once a month so your evening meals only require pulling a freezer bag out, thawing it, and popping it into the slow cooker.

 

There are also a few free printables included here that can aid in meal planning.  

 

Weekly Meal Planner - Click Here

Monthly Meal Planner

Use a timer

When you are focused on a task, whether it is enjoyable or not, it is incredibly easy to lose track of time.  You look up and have no idea how much time has passed, and are often surprised by how quickly time seemed to pass (or how slowly it crawled, if it wasn't a fun task).

Social media, television, and even reading a good book are among the enjoyable activities that can take up a lot of time. The downside is that you might become bogged down in more time-consuming tasks or decide not to start them at all if you think you won't have time to complete them.  I've discovered that you can solve either of these issues by using a timer.

To give your mind a good break while not wasting too much time, give yourself, for example, 30 minutes to browse social media before stopping and doing something else.

On the other hand, if a task overwhelms you, break it down into smaller ones and then set an alarm. I have alarms for everything.  I used to have two alarms to remind me to pick the children up from school, in case I got stuck into a task and forget about the time– Let me just say -  I NEVER  forgot about the time – I just wanted to make sure I didn’t.  I have an alarm to tell me when to take my medication.  Alarms are just part of my everyday life now.

 

The 30 Days to an Organized Kitchen Challenge will employ precisely that tactic. It is effective for that overwhelming task and is also applicable to any other overwhelming task you must complete.

 

You'll be surprised at how much you can accomplish in and around your home with this easy trick.

 

Say "no" more frequently.

Understanding that we only have 24 hours in a day and that we cannot fill them up with more activities and expect to complete everything is one of the keys to effective time management.  We are not required to do anything just because someone asks us to.

 

We need the ability to say no so that we can put our own needs and wants ahead of other people's expectations.  If you are going to agree to something, make sure it will advance your goals as well as theirs.

 

Making sure you don't double or triple book yourself, especially by scheduling in family time or personal time to ensure these things don't get neglected, will help you with this. Use your family calendar to this end.

 

Simply say no to things that do not benefit you or bring you joy.

 

Reduce the number of things on your to-do list.

You do need to say no more frequently, as I already mentioned. That advice was intended to help you say no to people who try to pressure you into doing things that, in all honesty, you don't have the time or desire to do.  However, there are times when you are under more pressure from within than from others.

 

Because sometimes you're the one pushing yourself to take on too much, you also need to be able to say no to yourself.  A to-do list that is far too long to be completed in a reasonable amount of time frequently represents this excess.

 

Making an unrealistic to-do list is a demoralising way to set yourself up for failure. Instead, consistently use your timer to help you gauge how long different tasks take before estimating how long each item on your to-do list will take you.

 

Prioritise your list of tasks now, before you start, and mark some of them off if you have three hours to work on it and five hours' worth of work to do.

 

Give yourself a "margin" when making your to-do list as well. To allow for unforeseen circumstances and interruptions that might cause tasks to take longer to complete, add some extra time to each task's deadline.

 

You're more likely to finish it and feel better about what you've accomplished once you've prioritised and have a more accurate idea of what you can accomplish.

 

Please share your ideas in the comments section below on how you try to better manage your time as a parent.

I really appreciate you stopping by and want to say thank you - because without you I wouldn't be here. Believe in Yourself, You got this, NOW Go Declutter!