The realities we face as parents in the modern day are completely different from generations ago. These days, it’s not just about the typical 2.4 children and one car; it’s a far more complex life where we’re having to hold down individual jobs while also figuring out ways to make extra money, purely to keep our heads above water. This means that it’s even harder than ever to make life easier, but it’s so important for us to recognize that life can become too much. So, how and why do we need to make life easier as parents? A guest writer shares some thoughts today.
Photo by Jonathan Borba on Unsplash
Outsource What You Can
It is essential that we get into the outsourcing frame of mind because we physically cannot do it all. Work and housework should, in theory, take second place to being a parent, but it’s not as easy as that, which is why, if you can, outsource so many of the little components to make life easier. You could easily get a cleaning lady to come to your home once a week instead of taking on the massive tasks that force you to work long into the evening.
Look at What Really Is Essential
This is pivotal to making life easier as parents. We need to make things simpler because if we don’t, we can easily become overwhelmed every so often. Taking a look at what is essential forces you to prioritize the tasks accordingly. The fact is that we can look at something like cleaning and think that every little thing needs to be done every week, but this is what spring cleaning is for! When you start to look at the essential duties, you could very well reduce the amount of time it takes to clean a property from top to bottom. Additionally, when you start to prioritize your tasks accordingly, you may realize that you’ve been placing too much importance on the things that don’t really matter in the long run. It’s always a good idea to follow the 80/20 rule, where 80% of the outcome comes from 20% of the effort because if you spend your time ironing every single item of clothing, even the socks, just focusing on the things that really need to be ironed could instantly shrink your workload.
Ask Yourself if You Are Paying Attention to the Children
It is harder than ever to get that balancing act because we have so much to do and not enough time to do it. But when we become overwhelmed by the sheer volume of duties that supposedly “must” be completed every week, this can, over time, mean that we are potentially ignoring our children for the sake of housework. What happens? Our children eventually start to pull away, and that means it requires a lot more work to build up that relationship once again. We need to make life easier for ourselves so we can pay attention to our kids rather than thinking that only once we’ve got the housework done we can sit down with the kids. It’s certainly not an easy thing to do, but sometimes we could all benefit from a simple reminder of this.