5 Best Time Management Tips For Busy Moms

Are never ending to do lists stealing the peace in your motherhood? You’re not alone. I too am a recovering overachiever who finds temporary satisfaction in checking off item after item, day after day.

You’ll notice I said recovering and not recovered, because I’m not sure I’ll ever fully shake off the perfectionism that follows me like a shadow. But as I’ve worked to create a more purposeful life, I’ve come to realize that checking things off that list never truly brings me peace, because that list never ends. It grows longer day by day, and as I fall ever farther behind, the feelings of failure overwhelm me and steal my joy.

How then are we supposed to manage all the things while still creating room to breathe and not end up behind? 

This is still a work in progress in my life, but I’ve been able to put some systems in place that have allowed me to cover the basics each day while still leaving a little margin for me.

Here are the 5 best time management tips I’ve got for busy moms. I hope they help you as much as they’ve helped me!

1. Focus On The Essentials

After hearing so many great reviews about the book Essentialism by Greg McKeon, I decided to pick it up and see what it was all about. To say this book is a game changer is an understatement. 

Greg McKeon doesn’t recommend taking things off of your overflowing plate. He advocates dumping the whole plate in the trash, and intentionally choosing to only add back the tasks that promote growth. 

When you look at your to do list, what is absolutely essential to your life? Obviously things like eating and sleeping, but what about your second cousin Arthur’s birthday party or dinner with a your mom’s best friend? 

Are these tasks adding to your life in a purposeful way or are they simply obligations fulfilled out of guilt that don’t move you toward your ultimate goals?

How many of your tasks are really just fruitless pursuits that you could cross off your list forever without significantly impacting your life at all? Probably a substantial amount.

Try to narrow down your to do list to 1-3 essential tasks every day. Each of these should be moving you toward your goals. Create routines for the things that have to get done on a daily basis, and eliminate the things that aren’t serving you well in this season.

2. Automate

One of the benefits of living in our modern world is that we have the ability to automate a lot of our everyday tasks.

One of the biggest changes I made was ordering my groceries rather than going to the grocery store. We pay a yearly fee (which works out to less than a dollar a week), and anytime we need anything, even just a gallon of milk, we place an order and drive up to grab it. Some stores and services also offer delivery, saving you even more time!

Another errand we’ve automated is going to Target. We place an order and either have it delivered or drive up and grab it. Easy peasy. And both options are free!

There are so many tasks you can automate. The library, clothes shopping (I love Stitch Fix), the Post Office, and banking are few other services we use.

3. Create Rhythms And Routines

This is probably my number one time management tip. Creating rhythms and routines helps take the mind work out of the everyday, mundane responsibilities of life. Cooking and cleaning have to happen. If not every day, then most. So why not put these things on autopilot and get in the habit of doing them at the same time, every day?

This way you know that the bases are covered, and you don’t have to stress about chores piling up.

Rhythms help you to know when certain things will happen, and routines are a set way of doing those things. I have rhythms in place for my mornings and evenings as well as set routines for things like dishes and laundry. Most importantly, I have rhythms set up to create quiet time for self-care, so I can give to my loved ones from a full well rather than overflowing exhaustion and fear.

4. Looping

Looping is something I learned about while homeschooling, but it applies to your life as well. Instead of assigning certain tasks to certain days, create a loop. Every day, at the appointed time, complete the next task. That way if you miss three Monday’s in a row, your toilets won’t be disgusting while your windows are sparkling clean. You’ll simply move the bathroom cleaning to Tuesday and carry on down the list.

When you reach the end of your loop, start back at the beginning.

Here’s an example of how I use looping:

Cleaning Loop

1. Kitchen
2. Living Room and Playroom
3. Entry Way and Powder Room
4. Bedrooms
5. Bathrooms

In a perfect world, each of these items would be cleaned one day per week, but in this beautiful mess we call Motherhood, it looks more like this in my house:

Monday: clean kitchen

Tuesday: baby is fussy and cleaning is skipped

Wednesday: clean living room and playroom

Thursday: clean entry way and powder room

Friday: impromptu family dinner out

Saturday: clean bedrooms

Sunday: rest

Monday: clean bathrooms

Then start again.

5. Batching

Batching is something I do for my business, but again, it works great for time management in everyday life. It’s when you do similar tasks at the same time or on the same day.

For example, you run all your errands on one day of the week, so you aren’t continually having to pack everyone up and leave the house. Or you do all your planning for next week on the same day rather than meal planning one day, schedule planning one day, budget planning one day. 

When your mind and body are doing a particular kind of task, you build momentum and are more productive than when you’re constantly switching gears.

In Real Life

This is all well and good to talk about, but sometimes it helps to see it in practice. 

Please keep in mind that time management requires a lot of trial and error, and what works for my family won’t be an exact formula for what works in your life.

Narrowing Down My Essentials

Instead of a never ending to do list, I now separate my tasks into three groups:

1. Must Do – this never has more than 3 daily items.
2. Should Do – these will probably become tomorrow’s must dos if I don’t have time for them today (and that’s okay).
3. Would Like to Do – these are the things I’ll tackle in my spare time that aren’t pressing right now.

I’ve also implemented a rule that if it takes less than 2 minutes to get it done, I’ll do it right away.

A Typical Day In Our Home

5:00 – 7:00: (Rhythm) Morning Quiet Time & Work

7:00 – 8:30: Morning Routine: Make Beds, Laundry, Unload Dishwasher, & Get Ready For The Day

8:30 – 9:30: (Batch Schooling) Breakfast & Morning Basket

9:30 – 10:00: Outside for Gross Motor

10:00 – 12:00: Snack and School

12:00 – 2:30: (Rhythm) Lunch & Quiet Time

2:30 – 5:00: (Rhythm) Snack & Family Time (Handicrafts, Walk, Outdoor Play, etc.)

5:00 – 6:00: (Routine) Dinner Prep & Cleaning Loop)

6:00 – 7:00: Dinner & Clean Up (Routine: 10 Minute Tidy, Clean Counters & Table, Run Robot Vacuum)

7:00 – 8:30 – (Rhythm) Bedtime Rhythm (Baths, Books, & Prayers)

8:30 – Boys Bedtime

8:30 – 10:00 – Evening Quiet Time & Work

10:00 – My Bedtime

See how my daily chore routines are built into the regular rhythms of the day? This way enough gets done each day to keep us running smoothly, but there are also rhythms built in alternating periods of work and play. 

This helps me not to feel feel like a slave to my to do list, and we’re better equipped to drop everything and take a family outing without spending a day, or even a whole morning, catching up.

When I decided to let go of my to do list and exchange it for rhythms and routines, I thought I could do it all in one fell swoop. The truth is that when I try to take on too many changes at once, I revert back to old behavior.

Pick one thing that you want to automate and implement it for a week or two. I started with homeschool (if you’re curious to see how I apply rhythms and routines to our homeschool and my kids’ day, you can read Our Gentle Daily Homeschool Schedule) because it was the place that made the rest of my day easier. Maybe for you that will be a morning or evening routine. The most important thing is that you take action.

I’ve learned that the true thief of joy is expectation. When you have a mile long to do list, the expectation that you might someday get though it (and the inevitable realization that life happens and that will never happen) makes you feel like you’re failing. 

I go into detail about time management and a lot of these practices in my five day Out of Overwhelm Challenge for Moms.

Take back your time, mama! You deserve a life that’s full of the things that light you up.

Did I miss anything? Leave a comment. I’d love to hear your time management tips!

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