As a first time mom and having always worked outside of the home, I found it really difficult to find my stay at home mom routine.
I want to start with saying that if you are a new mom give yourself grace. I did not feel like I had a good rhythm until my daughter was probably about 8 months old and even still teething or changes in her nap schedule would throw a wrench in things often. Fast forward to a year old and now I feel like I’ve got a good system in place.
With a little trial and error and communicating with my husband I was able to figured out what my family needed and what I was capable of accomplishing throughout the week. In this guide you will ask yourself what do you need to get done, what you hope to get done and what goals you want to accomplish as a stay at home mom. I hope through reading this post you can go through the process for structuring your week to the best of your ability to help you create the absolute best stay at home mom routine for you.
Time Management
Time management is the foundation for your organization in the home and can definitely be a pain point for many people. Because we as stay at home mom’s don’t have a “boss”, minus the little 2ft ones, it can be easy to fall into a rhythm of doing a lot but not really getting anywhere. Sometimes you just need that accountability from someone else. I would call myself a “wanna be type A” person. I’m naturally type B but not very productive. So after many years of resisting, I’ve finally tried time blocking and it has changed the game for me. Your calendar is your accountability partner.
I first had to change my mindset. Time blocking is not restrictive but rather freeing. It gave me permission to not feel guilty when I had a free block to do what I’d like. The quote ” either you run the day or the day runs you” comes to mind and I have allowed the day to run me for far too long. If you haven’t tried time blocking I highly recommend it to keep you accountable.
“Either you run the day or the day runs you.”
– Jim Rohn
Figuring out your Stay at home mom routine
To begin ask yourself the following questions: You could answer like:
- What needs to get done?
- What would I like to keep up with each week?
- What do I want to accomplish to make our home better?
- How many things are typically scheduled weekly?
- How often do I want or need to leave the home?
- Laundry, Clean the house, Make meals
- Toy rotation, Library story time, Call my sister
- Make curtains, Organize the office, Make snack foods from scratch
- Church on Sunday, Teach a pottery class on Wednesday
- 2- 3 x per week feels right for me
The next thing you will want to do is pull out a weekly calendar. One of my goals this year was to continue to time block my schedule to keep myself on track but even if you don’t time block you will want a visual to give your week structure. Of course I made you all a free template to make your life easier. Feel free to download and print it out to complete the next steps.
Weekly Routine Planner Printable
Free weekly routine planner to help you structure you r weeks as a homemaker.
- How to Plan a Small Space Kitchen Garden from Scratch
- Surprisingly Easy Winter Simmer Pot Recipe For The Coziest Evenings
- The Best Way to Create a Simple Stay at Home Mom Routine | Free template
- A Simple Guide to Winter Homemaking
Ideas for your stay at home mom routine
Based on your answers to the questions above you’ll start mapping out what a typical week looks like for you and your family. Start with the appointments and/or events that regularly take you out of the home and plug those into your calendar. I will walk you through mine to help you visualize. Next step is to schedule in the things you need to accomplish each week (i.e house chores). There are many ways you can do this. You can assign certain tasks for each day like specific cleaning tasks or, my personal preference, create themed days. Examples of themed days could be:
- Errands Day
- Baking Day
- Planning Day
- Office | Computer Day
- Catch Up Day
- Rest Day
- Meal Prep Day
- Garden | Outdoor Chores day
- Project Day
- Cleaning Day
- Laundry Day
- Family Day
Themed days
Giving yourself a theme for each day will give you direction or a blueprint to follow which will lessen any sort of decision fatigue. Example SAHM Routine. My current weekly breakdown is as follows:
- Monday – Meal Prep Day: I prep lunches for the week and Monday night’s dinner to get us started. I will also prep sauces, doughs or other ingredients that will be used for dinners later in the week, and freezer meals for later date if I can.
- Tuesday – Baking Day: I will prep breads, snacks, toddler foods and pantry staples on this day.
- Wednesday- Cleaning Day: I do a little here and there throughout the week but I do most of my heavy cleaning on this day. I enjoy seeing the house completely tidy if only for a brief moment.
- T: Project day: This is the day I dedicate to tackling projects around the home like organizing or decluttering an area, sewing, pottery, writing blog posts, etc. Errands also usually happen this day.
- F- Catch up day: I like to leave this day as a sort of open day to finish whatever I couldn’t get done earlier in the week. This is also my planning day where I schedule time in to start looking to the week ahead.
- S- Family Day: Usually the day we plan outings together just my husband, daughter and I or we go and see other family members.
- S- Rest Day: Sometimes this also ends up being a planning day but I try to leave this day as a restorative day.
As you can see this schedule is very much catered to me and my family. I purposely make sure the heavy cooking days are back to back and at the beginning of the week when I am the freshest. Which means most errands and commitments naturally happen in the second half of the week. Its a great rhythm for me and I rarely feel overwhelmed. It definitely took time and fine tuning to get it right, so don’t feel like you can’t change things as things develop.
Other factors to consider for your routine
How much of your day will the themed tasks take? Sometimes a two hour block is enough time to get things done, sometimes you need the majority of the day. Figuring out how much time the tasks in your themed block will take is going to help set you up for realistic expectations. For example, meal prep day is a heavy kitchen day. I know there is not much else that I will have time for factoring in taking care of my daughter and filling her cup with some activities together. Therefore, I know I shouldn’t schedule anything at all on this day that takes me out of the house. It just wouldn’t work.
Also consider your daily rhythm and how you will incorporate your themed tasks into those daily tasks that you do to maintain your home. Your weekly routine and daily rhythm will need to marry. If you want to figure out the best way to create your daily rhythm, read about it here.
And there you have it. If you’ve gotten this far congratulations, here’s a friendly reminder to go warm up your coffee for the 5th time. I hope you find this useful and find peace and focus in your weekly stay at home mom routine.
