Working Mom Survival: Time-Saving Tips

As a follow up to an earlier post I did about my weekly meal-planning, I thought I'd also share some time-saving tips that we use in our house to keep us organized and on schedule every day.  Warning: these tips may be seen as

A) OCD
B) Neurotic
C) Overkill
D) All of the above

BUT, I will say that these tips are tried and true. If you're sleep-deprived like me, and try to get as many winks as you possibly can every morning, then these should be useful to you. And for anyone who has run around like a headless chicken in the morning looking for your favorite pair of pants that you just HAVE to wear that day, and they are nowhere to be found, these tips are for you too!

Ok, so just like my weekly meal-planning, it's all about planning and doing things ahead of time. I wish I could tell you that I have a sophisticated process in place, but alas, a trained monkey could do this. The whole premise is that in the morning, when you are trying to get yourself and kids out the door on time, every minute counts. For me, lost minutes could mean the difference between commuting in a nice, big plushy charter bus, driven by someone else, or driving myself in, doubling my commute time and tripling my road rage. That is no bueno for nobody. Oh, and I also am not interested in waking up at o'dark thirty just to get all these things done.

So this is what Randy and I do every evening. We don't have a set time that we do these things, we just kinda work them into our other evening activities. We also don't have designated people for each task, sometimes we both do it, sometimes only one of us does. All that matters is that someone does it.

1. Put the kids' backpack and diaper bag, jackets and shoes all by the front door (or wherever you will be exiting in the morning). This is good especially if your kids are at an age where they can put their jacket and shoes on themselves, because you can bellow at them in the morning "go put your shoes and jacket on!" while you are getting your coffee/wrangling younger siblings/checking the stock market/painting on your face/fill in the blank.

2.  If possible, get breakfast prepped. We take everything out that we can. For example, if the kids are having cereal in the morning, we take out everything but the milk - bowl, spoon, cup for water, and the cereal. This will help in the event your child decides he wants something that you don't even have, and you find yourself asking him what he wants instead and he goes "ummm....uhhhh.....I don't know..." as the clock just ticks by and you become more and more late. Cruz loves smoothies for breakfast so I will even wash, peel and slice fruit and have it in a bowl ready to toss into the blender the next morning.

Breakfast at the ready

Fruit washed and peeled for smoothies

3. Prep packed lunches. My kindergartener brings lunch from home a majority of the time so that's one more thing to do each night. I know a lot of parents do this in the morning, but I just can't. I really don't like having to think about all the little details of his lunch first thing in the morning, and more importantly, I don't trust myself that I won't forget something important. Like to pack food. So the night before, I will do as much as I possibly can.

I slice fruit that won't oxidize in the fridge, and wash whatever fruit will be sliced in the morning.

If the main entree is a sandwich, I make that the night before. If it's hot food, I will warm that up in the morning. Cruz likes to take plain pasta with butter and grated Parmesan a lot, so the night before, I pour out the pasta into his Thermos so it's already portioned out and ready to be boiled the next day.

Any snacks or dry items can be portioned out and put directly into his lunch bag already.

Snacks

I put the sliced fruit and his water bottle into the fridge so we can just grab it in the morning.

Ready for the lunch bag

4. Pre-load and set the coffee maker and 5. Prepare our own lunches

Randy will grind up the coffee beans, load the water into the coffee maker and program the brew time every night. One less thing to think about in the morning, and boy do I love the smell of freshly brewed coffee as I come down the stairs. I feel like I'm in a freaking Folgers commercial. But without the nasty Folgers. 

If we are bringing our lunches the next day, we'll pack that up too.

6. Take out the kids' clothes

I check the weather (yes, I do this daily) and pull out the kids' outfits for the next day and set it on their dresser. In the morning, Cruz can get himself dressed and we don't have to think about what Lucas will wear, let alone hunt down a clean pair of pants or shirt.

7. Take out our clothes for the next day. Yes, seriously. Whenever I tell people this, they are always surprised for some reason. Look people, I do not allot myself a lot of time in the morning. I do not have time to languish about, deciding what I feel like wearing that day. If I didn't choose my clothes the night before, I'd probably spend an obscene amount of time rifling through my closet and would either be a) terribly late or b) throw something inappropriate on, like my Tupac sweatshirt (inappropriate for work that is). And I don't know about you ladies, but if I am not happy with my outfit, it puts me in a bad mood for the rest of the day! I know, so shallow.

So those are my 7 main time-saving tips that help get us through hectic work weeks, Randy's ever-changing schedule and the hustle and bustle of every day life. Maybe some of these will work for you or at least give you some inspiration for what might work for your family. If you have any other pearls of wisdom, please share!