Life Hacks for Working Moms

I’m  fortunate to get to speak around the country on a topic I love – women’s leadership. Invariably though when I talk about women, careers and family the question I always get asked is, “How do you do it all?”

I have a great career. My family is awesome.

But the truth is I don’t have it all figured out. Like everyone, I’m a work in progress and I have on days, off days and really off days.

I have figured out a few tricks to making my life more efficient that have helped me both at work and at home.  Here’s what works for me.  Share your hacks in the comments.

Prepare family meals in advance.

This is one of my biggest time savers. Every Sunday I put on a movie, prepare and cook three meals and then store in tupperware. Now this won’t work if you family hates leftovers but this is a huge time saver for me and keeps Dr. D. us from making poor food choices during the week.

Organize the living spaces where you spend the most time.

Re-organizing my kitchen pantry changed my life. A couple of years ago I was lucky enough to work with a professional organizer Miriam Ortiz y Pino who helped me get my act together.

Outsource non-value added tasks like housework.

I’ll probably draw some flack for this one but I’ll take it. I hate cleaning bathrooms and mopping floors. This is a marriage saver and worth the money. The time I used to spend on Saturdays cleaning the house I now spend with the kids.  I’m not sorry. Yeah, I said it.

Review your calendar for the week and for the following week.

This past year I did something I thought I’d never do. I went back to using a paper organizer.  I found I was not staying ahead of my crazy schedule just using my Outlook Calendar so now I use this Passion Planner for my long-range planning. I put travel, kids appointments and other long-term events in my calendar so I can look out several weeks in advance.

Get rid of minor annoyances.

I wish I could claim credit but this suggestion comes from Ramit Sethi. Read this post. It will change your life goals.  My minor annoyance? Running out of toilet paper…while I’m on the toilet. Following Ramit’s advice, I put several rolls of toilet paper in all of our bathrooms. BOOM. Problem solved. Now if I can only get Dr. D. to actually put the new roll of TP on the holder…..

Stop watching the news.

This was a hard one for me. I am a hardcore news junkie with a special addiction to political news. 2018 is pretty much changing all that for me.  Between watching the news getting dressed in the morning, scrolling feeds and then listening to the news on my AM and PM commute, I was on overload. Not only did I feel more anxious and upset, I was taking up way too much mental space with negative, useless information. I still scan the Wall Street Journal, New York Times and Washington Post online daily but now I am more into audio books and and podcasts. Check out a future post on my faves. Your turn. What hacks are life savers for you? Share in the comments!