Tips for Stay At Home Moms to Get Things Done and Find Fulfillment
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One of the main challenges that your wife faces as a stay at home mom, is to get things done and find fulfillment.
Especially because there is no forced routine in her day, like a 9 to 5 employee has.
However, as a stay at home mom, she is her own boss like you as an entrepreneur. And she has the luxury to set her own routine. Yes, she is the boss, not the kids.
You have to make sure that your wife knows that her house is her kingdom. She should treat it as her own dream, like a big business. And act like any successful business woman out there.
Let her know that she is changing the world by raising good children, and supporting her husband to become successful in his business as well. She is part of a bigger purpose.
Never underestimate her role in your family structure, as a main reason for the success of your children and yourself as well.
My wife is a new stay at home mom, and she struggled a lot at the beginning to be able to handle her day. Even before she give birth to our baby boy.
As an organized person by nature, I started to give her some proven tips, to help her get things done through out the day. Whenever she implements those tips, she can finish her daily tasks and feel fulfilled.
You need to help your wife with these tips, to remove some stress from her daily routine.
So, let’s start with the most import part of the day, the morning.
Stop Morning Distractions to Get Things Done
We all suffer from this issue. Not only stay at home moms. I used to wake up everyday, open one eye, and check all the unimportant notifications on my smartphone screen.
If there are no notifications, I start to scroll news feeds without any purpose.
These morning distractions drain your morning energy, and ruin the clarity of your brain. So, instead of having a productive morning, and a powerful energy boost, you wake up very lazy and down.
Notifications on your mobile often give you bad news, negative energy, useless posts or videos. Stuff that do nothing but wasting your time and energy.
You become overwhelmed by irrelevant news, or pieces of information. And feel stressed out because of the pile of emails in your inbox that you have to read and act on.
How do you think she can wake-up energized after that?
Everything can wait!
It is important for your stay at home wife to have a relaxed morning, and efficiently start her day. But this can’t happen if these morning distractions are controlling her as well.
Morning distractions are the worst obstacle to get things done. And she has to get rid of them today.
So, here is my solution to this issue. Starting from tomorrow, ask your wife to turn off mobile notifications while she is asleep. And to delay her notifications check until one hour after she wakes up. The only thing that she will touch her mobile for is to dismiss the morning alarm.
It is very helpful to start her day relaxed with a clear mind, take a shower, mediate or pray. Then eat a healthy breakfast. And then, take a look on a very valuable tool sticking to her fridge. Got confused? Continue reading to find out about this tool.
Planning for tomorrow, today
Now, what is the tool that is going to help her get things done?
Not yet.
Let me first tell you how the power of to do lists changed my wife’s life.
She used to wake up every day very stressed and with lack of interest. Until she started to write lists.
She wrote lists about house chores, things to remember, recipes and the tasks to do next day.
The effective tool she used was a fridge whiteboard, and a set of markers. Simple right?
Once she started using the whiteboard, her ability to get things done highly increased.
So here is my advice!
Get a fridge whiteboard for your wife. And every day before she gets to bed, ask her to write tomorrow’s action plan. After a while she will get used to it.
This action plan can be a simple list. This list should contain the pending, and incomplete tasks that she plans to continue tomorrow. Or even the tasks that she wants to complete someday.
Once she finishes writing this list, she will have better sleep knowing that she planned her tomorrow. And she will relieve her mind from thinking over and over, about her unfinished tasks.
She will be amazed by how this simple tip improves her morning routine, and helps her to get things done.
Once she wakes up, she needs to avoid mobile notifications. Then, starts her morning, then go straight to the whiteboard, and read her today’s action plan. And she is good to go.
Train the brain to focus
Using our brains as warehouses is not an efficient use of this vital organ. Brains are built to be creative, they are factories not warehouses.
So, she shouldn’t use her brain to fill it with task lists, appointments, recipes, phone numbers … etc.
She needs to get used to right down notes instead, in a notebook, a whiteboard or on Evernote.
Then, focus on important things she needs to do free of distractions, and scattered thoughts.
If she started to forget things recently or feels that her memory is overwhelmed, she doesn’t necessarily have signs of Alzheimer. What she feels is distraction, information overload, lack of organization skills, and filling of her brain with unrelated and unimportant stuff.
She has to train her brain to focus, by not giving attention to things that don’t add value to her, or help her reach her goals.
Utilizing the power of lists to organize ideas and priorities is very efficient. Also, using technology like smart phone reminders to alert her about important things ahead of time.
Other useful tips she can use to train her brain to focus is reading a book, a hard copy, without internet distractions.
She can also play games that can enhance her memory, and avoid games that encourage addiction.
Write A Grocery list
In my the first months after getting married, my wife used to ask me to get a few grocery items on my way home daily. Until I asked her to write a monthly grocery list.
She wasn’t convinced at the beginning of the effectiveness of this tool. But she tried anyway.
Once she wrote the list, she was able to remember all the required items before grocery shopping day. And she was also able to check what we already have, and if it is about to finish, she writes it in the list. Now, instead of wasting money and time getting needed, and unneeded grocery everyday, we got only what we wanted in one or two days per month.
If you want to save your time, money and energy, you will need to ask your wife to write a grocery list before you go shopping.
Always write your grocery list, then categorize the list based on the location of the list items, or even the shelve number in the supermarket.
Yesterday, I stayed shopping for 90 minutes instead of the 30 minutes “at most” I used to. That was because the list was very unorganized for the first time since a while.
I kept moving back and forth in the market to find the items, and read the list many times to remove the items I already got. It was a huge waste of time
How Grocery Lists Can Save Your Time & Money?
You have to write related items together in blocks, or close to each other’s. So you can get each few items from the same place, instead of moving around and waste time.
For example, write down chicken and beef items in the butcher category of your list, and vegetables and fruits in the relevant categories as well and so on. I use an app called Out of Milk for our grocery and shopping lists.
You will save time and energy right away, because you will know exactly how to efficiently move with your cart between stores. Or even inside the market itself. You will not need to keep trying to remember what you have to buy, and what to skip.
Also you will save money because you will stick to what is written in your list, you will not be tempted to buy items on impulsive decisions. Because those items are not written in the list.
After the shopping day, if you remember some other important stuff that you have to buy this month, you can write it in a new list for the next shopping day.
Don’t waste your family time and money by just going to the supermarket without planning. And don’t keep buying what sales people want to sell to you, not what you really need.
So what this have to do with helping your wife to get things done?
Grocery items are important components of your wife’s daily routine. If you don’t efficiently and timely get those items, you will simply make her life more difficult. I am just telling you, if you didn’t notice before.
Write down expenses
Writing down and tracking your expenses doesn’t mean that you are a cheap person.
Tracking and categorizing your monthly expenses, is one of the most important factors to succeed in life.
By doing so, you will able to have an overview of your monthly spending behavior, and you will have the chance to reduce less required expenses and invest or save the remaining amount of money for future financial security.
By having this insight, you can also change the household purchasing options from retail to wholesale if you always buy in bulk, or you can buy on sale or on a discount instead.
Your wife will thank you, when you monitor your household expenses. Because you will be able to direct your money to more useful stuff. And eventually help her to get things done, instead of complaining all the time about money shortage.
So, above I talked about getting things done. What about helping her find fulfillment?
A stay at home mom’s main goal, is to see her children successful and becoming better as they grow up.
In the below tips, I will talk about raising children to be successful.
Raise Your Children To Be successful
All parents want to raise children to be successful in the future. They want to see them the next Steve Jobs or Mark Zuckerberg.
In order to be able to raise your children to be successful, you and your wife can apply the below proven tips.
Achieve Balance
Your wife needs to try to control herself by maintaining a balanced atmosphere in her home with children. Don’t push them all the time to study and do homework as if this is the only important thing in their life, because they will not believe her or you, even if they pretend to believe.
At the same time, don’t make all their time wasted on playing and hanging out, just to put your mind at peace, because this way you will make them careless as same as you. They will not perceive hard work as a road to success and as an essential thing, they will just keep wasting the time without feeling guilty.
Keep Rewarding
Create a weekly schedule for studying, homework and related follow-up. Then, reserve one or two days on the same schedule for fun and hanging out only, without stress.
Put the schedule in a visible place in front of your children “a fridge whiteboard for example”, so they know that it is their weekly plan. Work hard to be rewarded. This will motivate them to study during the week because they know very well that they will be rewarded by weekend.
Motivate Continuously
If your children are doing well at school or even the opposite, don’t disgrace or punish them as a type of pushy motivation to force them to avoid punishment in the future, they will not take it the positive way.
If they get convinced that they are a failure, no motivation will make them want to be smart or successful.
While they are young they consider studying as a waste of a time, they can’t see the benefits of being knowledgeable or well-educated and that’s normal at their age.
For them, what is the meaning of being graduated at this very moment?. They will just look for short-term goals, so keep motivating them positively.
If your children are smart and successful, you have to let them know that you acknowledge that, you have to reward them with a lovely trip or a gift.
And if they are not, you have to let them know that it is not normal, and that they are smarter than that.
You have to ask them about what makes them not able to use their skills or try to know if something is upsetting them. Also tell them that you are expecting to see their true skills in the future.
Discipline Simply
Simple, never hit, never shout!
If you correctly apply the above tips, now you can punish them by strictly preventing them from enjoying the reward days in the weekly schedule until they understand what went wrong.
Teach your children that life is not easy, they don’t get everything they want “every time” without hard work.
If they want to go out with friends this weekend, let them know that it is OK as long as they finish their homework or assignments before weekend. Otherwise, home is where they stay during the weekend.
Conclusions of The Tips to Help Your Wife To Get Things Done
So if you have reached this far in this long article, you are really serious about your wife’s fulfillment and happiness. And you want to help her to get things done today not tomorrow.
You are a good family man! 🙂
So, now let’s summarize. The most important time of the day is the morning. If she starts distracted, she will eventually stay distracted. She has to be ready in the morning by avoiding distractions, and check her today’s action plan. The plan that she prepared the day before.
She has to always free her mind from unrelated stuff, and stay focused. And avoid going to shop for grocery without a grocery list. This will save you both a lot of time and money.
Help your wife with those tips, and truly help her with monitoring expenses and raising your children to be successful in the future. This is the goal that every family should go after eventually.
If you have questions or thoughts on how to help your wife to get things done and find fulfillment, please put them in the comments below.
