Tag: time management

Prepare for the Week Ahead | Working Mom Week Prep

Posted on by Sarah Marshall

repare for the Week Ahead Tired Mommy Tales blog resize I have this problem where even when I know that doing something is in my best interest, I resist it. I dig my heels in real deep and stomp my feet and have the most epic (figurative) adult temper tantrum.

Then time passes and I’m cursing my past self for not doing the thing that would make life so much easier for my current self. It happens in the morning when I’m mad at myself for not closing Instagram and going to sleep earlier (sometimes Insta-stories are better than TV, y’all!), when I don’t take my contacts out before bed, and on and on.

Clearly, adulting isn’t my strong suit.

The past few weeks, maybe months, I’ve kinda slacked over the weekend. We’ve had plenty of activities keeping up busy but when at home, I spent a little too much time doing lots of nothing. Doing a little bit of nothing is no big deal but I was doing too much nothing.

At first, I was blaming on football season and all the solo parenting that happens this time of year. But the truth is I was just being stubborn.

Then Monday would come and I’d be overwhelmed and stressed when doing a few things to prepare for the week could have alleviated so much of my strife.

So this past Sunday, I put my big girl pants on and made an effort to get ahead before the week started. In the below video you’ll see me do a brain dump to get all my to-dos out of my head and onto paper, get my meal plan set for the week, tackle one thing at a time and lots of meal prep. Lots and lots of meal prep!

What kind of things do you like to accomplish over the weekend so that you can start the week on a good foot?

How I’ve Streamlined My Laundry Process

How I’ve Streamlined My Laundry Process

Posted on by Sarah Marshall

When it comes to laundry, I think most of us can relate to this meme:

the-never-ending-story-as-an-adult

Of all the chores, laundry seems the most overwhelming to me. There are just so many steps – collect it , sort it (I’ve heard – we skip that here), wash it, dry it, fold it or hang it, and finally put it away.

Getting all that accomplished when you’re out of the house for 10 hours a day without saving it all for the weekend is all the more challenging.

Streamlined Laundry

When we were cloth diapering, on diaper washing days, I would do the 20 minute rinse right after we took Leah’s bedtime diaper off. By the time she was finished getting dressed and ready, the rinse would be done and I would put the detergent in and put it on the correct settings and then choose “Delay Wash” so that it would finish around the same time we would get home. That way the clean diapers wouldn’t be sitting wet in the dryer all day waiting to be dried. Then first thing I would when I got home is transfer them to the dryer for the first round of drying.

A couple weeks ago, I realized I could use this same concept on our regular laundry. Since Leah is using less diapers now, we aren’t doing cloth diapers loads every other day anymore which opens up the washer to be used for other loads more often.

My new process is to load up the washer and get it ready to go before I go to bed. Then I set the “Delay Wash” so that the load finishes before we leave for work & school in the morning. Then before we leave, we move the load into the dryer and get it going. Even if we need to do another fluff to get rid of the last bit of dampness, it will be done in plenty of time for us to work on folding after the girls go to bed.

We’ve only been doing it this way a few weeks but so far it has been really nice to have both the washer and dryer working so that it’s ready when we are as opposed to trying to get to it when its finished doing its thing and not letting it sit there because we’ve forgotten about it.

How do you keep the laundry monster from taking over your house?