- Decree or work? I didn’t even have this question before me when my son was born. From adolescence I thought that children should fit into life, and not drastically change it. Therefore, two weeks of vacation after childbirth - that's all, work. However, in practice, everything turned out to be more complicated than I thought. The child requires attention, work - results, the body - rest ... I had to contrive and learn to combine completely different things into a single harmony. How? I share life hacking.
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1. Give the unimportant
The first thing I realized:I am not a hundred-handed creature and I cannot cope alone. Therefore, I tried to get rid of all the tasks that do not fit into the schedule. For me, this is cleaning, partly cooking, ironing. It is clear that you cannot completely give up these things. Therefore, once a week a housekeeper comes to me and does all these necessary, but not the most important things. From visit to visit, I cope myself - more on this later. In addition, I stopped going to the supermarket for groceries. Now I buy online: it saves time, effort, and you do not buy anything extra. In a word, delegate.
2. Without time management anywhere
When we returned home from the maternity hospital, it becameIt is clear that my previous schedule is no good. Yes, a child always brings a certain factor of surprise and risk: plans can collapse in one second, like a house of cards. Nevertheless, a working mother should at least approximately build her own schedule and the schedule of the child. First, we analyze when you work most effectively: during the child's sleep or late in the evening. Or maybe early in the morning? Then we record your condition throughout the week. Are you cheerful on Monday and Tuesday, and tired on Friday? Or do you get a second wind and can you still work? How many hours of sleep do you need to get enough sleep? In general, we analyze everything. The second step is to count the hours you spend on a particular task. Each of us has 168 hours a week. How many of them are spent on work? And how many on household chores? On the child? And how many were spent on who knows what? Calculate: I am sure the numbers will surprise you. And the third step is to plan. For example, I like to work until late in the evening on the first three days of the week and complete as many tasks as possible. In the remaining days, close current unimportant issues.
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3. Make up the menu for the week
Personally, it took me a lot of effort and nervescooking questions. What should I cook for dinner tonight? What should I cook for lunch? You seem to be getting ready to cook borscht, but in the middle of the process it turns out that there is no beetroot. Then I decided to try to make a family menu for the week. You can use recipe cards for this. How does it work? First, print out the recipe cards - you can find them on the Internet or type them yourself. Choose what to cook for the week. I get three soups, four main courses, three or four salads, one or two baked goods, three or four breakfast options. We attach all the cards to the refrigerator with magnets, dividing them by day. Personally, I order complex dishes, such as bograch soup or Kiev cutlets, from a chef I know, and I cook the rest myself. Of course, I buy the required amount of products in the store in advance (the ingredients are written on the cards, you can't make a mistake). Surprisingly, such planning helped save a lot of time!
4. We will improve cleaning
Yes, a housekeeper comes to see me.But it is impossible to maintain perfect order during the week with a one-year-old child, especially in the kitchen. Therefore, I devote 20-30 minutes every day to tidying up the house. I follow the advice from the book Fly Lady. In short: there are areas in the house that get cluttered the fastest. These are "hot spots". If you monitor and clean them, the house will seem cleaner. It is better to devote 15-20 minutes to daily cleaning, having decided in advance which area you are tidying up today. For example, on Monday - the kitchen, Tuesday - the living room, and so on. The principle of a clean sink helped me a lot psychologically. In any situation, the sink should be perfectly clean. Eat - wash the plate. Feed the child - do not leave the dishes for later. If you accept this as an axiom, then the question of when to wash the dishes does not even arise.
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5. We solve the issue of entertainment for the child.
Children are different.Some people hold their babies all the time, while others can sit and play without any problems. My son can even do it on his own for an hour. Provided that he is interested in the toy. Cube books have become a real find for me. They are small, fit in a child’s palm, have thick cardboard pages and bright illustrations. At first, my son learned to open the box with cubes, then to take them out and chew them. And now, at one year old, he is already carefully examining the pictures. Another favorite is photo books from the “Baby’s Main Book” collection. Not a day goes by without them: my son can spend 20 minutes leafing through them, looking at animals, fruits, and transport. And how do you manage to squeeze everything into 24 hours? Read on:
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