7 Tips on How to Find More Time in the Day for Busy Moms

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Whether you are a stay-at-home mom, work-from-home mom, or working mom, odds are you are wondering how to find more time in the day CONSTANTLY!

After playing all of those roles, I wanted to compile a list of my seven best tips for finding more time in the day. These tips have helped me while I was in different stages as a SAHM, WFHM, and working out of the house mom.

How to Find More Time in the Day

I have broken up my tips on how to find more time in the day into seven easy-to-follow tips and I hope these ideas help you figure out how to find more time for yourself and the things that matter most to you!

Tip #1: Let’s get REAL.

Before we even get started on how to find more time in the day I want you to grab whatever paper and pen you have around you and jot down your to-do list for the day. Don’t read on just yet. Just brain dump everything you want to get done today.

Don’t have a pen and paper? Use your notes app. Something. Just jot them down real quick.

Done?

Okay. We can get started.

My first tip when it comes to making more TIME? Being real. You’re never going to get absolutely everything you want to get done, done. Especially if you are a big dreamer like myself!

Instead, you have to be REAListic. What exactly HAS to be done and what do you WANT to get done. Odds are, that the first list is a lot shorter and manageable.
So, you start there.

I know I get caught up constantly in thinking what I WANT to do is what I NEED to do. And I am willing to bet you do too. Laundry doesn’t need to be done every single day. One load every few days will suffice. I am sure of it. And it also doesn’t have to be folded right now.

You don’t NEED to make a nice dinner that takes up an hour each night. I’m sure everyone will be fine with a grilled cheese or Red Robin’s.

To be REAL and honest, I don’t dress up my twins every day. If we are staying home- odds are we are having a PJ day. And that saves me about 30 minutes plus the time of the added in laundry I would then have to do if they wore nice clothes every single day.

I make little cuts like that all throughout my day and you know what? It gives me the TIME to do what I actually want to do!

Being REAL with the to-do list you make for yourself is your first step in finding more time in the day. Tomorrow we will be talking about my next (and near favorite!) step.

How to prepare yourself for SUCCESS and WHY being prepared will give you more TIME.

Tip #2: Time to Prepare

Okay, so we talked about deciding what we need to do vs. what we want to do and how those needs have to come first. I know it can be hard to decide what is truly a need vs. want, but if you start intentionally thinking about it more often, you’re going to realize that a lot of what you think you needed to be doing all of the time is actually not necessary and becomes a total waste.

What isn’t a waste? Preparation. Preparation is one of my ultimate tips on how to find more time in the day. My favorite example; the diaper bag.

Now when you get home from the zoo, for example, you might be tired. Just want to get the kids down for a nap or dinner on the table and be able to clock out after the day. BUT this is the time when you know exactly what you need to refill in your diaper bag. You know exactly how many diapers you used, snacks you ate, or accidental undies were used. Instead of tossing the bag on the floor and saving it for “future you”, fill it up now.

I promise you, it’ll take less time now. Plus, when you need to leave next, it is one less thing to worry about AND you can just grab it and go.

Don’t you already hate the hustle and bustle of having to leave the house? Wouldn’t it be great if you were already prepared to do so? So, DO THAT.

How can you best prepare yourself?

Wake up and get dressed right away. Then you’re not stuck doing it later in the day with kids trying to climb in the bathtub making it take twice as long. Plus you’ll actually get that shower in if that was one of your goals for the day.

You can also get the kids dressed first thing, you know, while they’re still kind of groggy so that they aren’t wired up and fighting you the whole time you’re trying to get the damn t-shirt over their ever-moving bodies.

You can prepare a car box. Something that has everything you might need for the kids. That way if you forget it, you aren’t running to the store with your baby or toddler. Instead you’re reaching into the back seat and grabbing the extra snack pouch or new pair of pants.

You can meal prep. Or you can just intentionally shop at the store and make sure you always have quick and easy meals on hand to be prepared for when the day doesn’t go as planned.

You can prepare by keeping an ongoing grocery list on the fridge, or better yet on your phone so that you don’t leave it at home when you go to the store.

You can prepare your coffee for the next morning while you’re already in the kitchen making dinner or cleaning up. That way come morning you can turn on the machine and let it do its magic while you do what you need to do.

Preparation is one of my favorite tips when it comes to time management. You can’t expect to make the most of your day if you are essentially always playing catch-up.

Today, I want you to look at your to-do list and jot down or make a mental note of how you can make those tasks easier by preparing.

Could you bust out a week’s worth of lunches in one sitting and knock off 30 minutes each day? Or put your clothes away intentionally so that you can easily pull out an outfit to wear in the morning? What are you thinking??

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Tip #3: Planning over Prepping

In the last section, I kind of touched on meal prepping regarding how to find more time in the day. It might work for some people. But in all reality, it just doesn’t work for me and actually costs MORE time and MORE money.

I think meal prepping is a total waste of time. For my family anyway.

Why? Because more often than not I’ll forget to get the crockpot going, or I’ll be tired of chicken by day three and order out anyways, and whoops. There goes the money spent on dinner! Time put in- GONE. Money spent on a full week of chicken meals? GONE.

I did my last meal prep session probably two years ago at this point. Instead, I plan.

Meal planning saves so much time and energy for me, and really allows me to go with the flow. It’s how I find a big chunk of time, actually.

For me, meal PLANNING is having a set meal for each day of the week. Something we just know. Like Monday is breakfast for dinner night. Now without any real thought, I just know to grab some pancake mix or whip up some eggs. All because it’s Monday.
This helps me focus on other things, and not take up a big lump of time deciding what to eat for dinner, or what meals to plan for the week when creating a grocery list. Everything is put on autopilot.

Meal planning also helps me have a set “standard” in my kitchen. For example, I always have the same kind of staples and if I really don’t want “taco Tuesday”, I have plenty of backup meals to whip up real quick.

You might be wondering now how meal planning is just so different from prepping. Well, planning still gives you a choice. The chicken isn’t divided into three or four meals that you then have to have. Instead, you know Thursday is Chicken crockpot night and you can throw something in the crockpot real quick while making breakfast. Or if you forget, you can throw the chicken in the oven at dinner time and that’s that.

A huge time saver in my everyday life is putting things on autopilot- just like our dinners. Having the meal plan allows me to focus my energy on something other than figuring out what to make for dinner or snag at the grocery store this week.

Here is the link to a blog post I have up all about how to create a meal plan. Why don’t you take a look, and come up with a week’s worth of ideas for yourself? Just seven nights on auto-pilot. Then let me know if that took some stress off your plate and gave you a bit more time in the day.

I am very sure that you’ll find the planning to help you out a lot more than you think it will!

Tip #4: Time to BLOCK

Okay, now that you have a few of my basic tips when it comes to how to find more time in the day, we’re going to talk about how to better manage your time to make the most of your day!

And that means BLOCKING.

Blocking means cutting your day into time chunks and giving those chunks of time purpose.

I’ll share my personal blocks in a sec. First, I want to go over why these blocks will help you find MORE time in the day.

I love using blocks because they help me really focus on the task at hand. And they also help me prioritize. If I don’t get everything done within the block period, that’s it. It waits for tomorrow.

So far, this method hasn’t given me total chaos. Now if you have like an important call or whatever else might come up, you adjust your blocking accordingly. No one is perfect and can do the same things at the same time each day.

But if you give yourself general time blocks for doing certain tasks, not only will you start to become more driven to actually get those tasks done, but you’ll likely find new ways to be more efficient.

I started giving myself time blocks because I thought they would bring more structure to my SAHM lifestyle years ago. I’m sure you find the same problems if you’re a SAHM also. There aren’t any deadlines, timelines, anything. You can literally do whatever whenever you want!

But then when I jumped into school and launched Twins and Coffee, I needed some kind of system.

Here is what my blocks looked like back when I was a SAHM (and keep in mind these are rough time estimates. I adjust when I want):
Block 1: 6-7AM – up, shower, dress (sometimes I skip and just start block two @ 6 AM)
Block 2: 7-9AM – Work time (usually my Twins and Coffee work)
Block 3: 9AM – wake twins, breakfast, play, clean up house, ect. This is also when I’ll run errands for the day.
Block 4: 12PM – Lunch, small work projects
Block 5: 2PM-5PM – twin nap AKA work time for me! This is when I would work on school work a few days out of the week.
Block 6: 5-6PM – snack and play time with twins. Usually a YouTube video or two.
Block 7: 6-8PM – Dinner and family time (two nights out of the week this was “me” time and my kids dad took over)
Block 8: 8-9PM – Twins night-time routine and bed time
Block 9: 9-10pm – Time to relax then bed!

Now, take that with a grain of salt because that block schedule is very basic.

But you get the idea, right?

Essentially within those time chunks, I have a few set things to do and that’s that. I clean up the house once in the morning, spend about 20-30 minutes doing so, and then tidy up toys at night.

If I kept cleaning, I’d just spend the day cleaning and that’s it. And that is no fun.
So, today’s challenge, if you haven’t guessed already, is to try out a time block schedule for yourself. Write out an idea of one and try it out for the rest of today or tomorrow. And then let me know if it is something that worked for you or not.
Blocking saves me SO much time and keeps the stress level to a minimum. Let’s see if it does the same for you! It’s worth a shot, right?

Tip #5: Stop Cleaning Your House

Yep. I said it. Stop. Tip #5 on how to find more time in the day might be a complete no go for you, but I bet it would help more than it would annoy you.

The last time I actually cleaned my whole house? No clue.

I have better things to be spending my time on.

You have little humans. Little disastrous humans who are actually walking tornadoes.

I personally do not have it in me to keep cleaning up their disasters all. Damn. Day. Long.

So, I do bits and pieces here and there.

You know that 30 minutes of cleaning time I mentioned yesterday? That is all I do.

Whatever fits inside of that time. Might be the whole bathroom, might be unloading/loading the dishwasher and cleaning the counters. Might be vacuuming the house and scrubbing the walls where the kids like to stash their boogers.

But I don’t “clean the house” anymore.

And let me tell you, I have SO much more time and so much LESS stress because of it!

My key to it is just keeping the house “tidy”.

At first, it was hard, to be honest. I have always been the person that had to have spotless mirrors and a freshly swept floor. But the feeling that came from just knowing I didn’t HAVE to aimlessly clean the house every day has just been a life saver.

It might seem impossible, I’ve been there. Ask anyone in my life. Oh MAN have I been there.

But now? I enjoy the greater things. And have more time for things that might actually matter.

That 30 minutes of cleaning a day is so nice.

I dare you to try it.

If you need to close all the doors in the house or lock yourself away just to not look at it all, do that. But don’t focus on keeping the house in the absolute tip-top shape.

You’ll have time later in life for that.

Right now, there are greater things on your to-do list if you want to learn how to how to find more time in the day.

Tip #6: Nap time is GO TIME!

Again, back to those blocks. Let’s talk nap time.