Episode #295: My Daily Schedule as a SAHM

Intro:

Welcome to The Healthy Catholic moms podcast where we make moving and nourishing our bodies the priority, so that we not only fulfill our vocations, but excel in our callings. I’m Brittany Pearson, a Catholic wife, mom, personal trainer, and I’m here to help you build healthy habits that actually fit your life. I am here to teach you how to get the results that you want and maintain the results that you want. Without spending hours at the gym, or meal prepping all weekend long. I understand I am right here with you getting my workouts done in the nooks and crannies of time, looking up recipes, while nursing babies and trying to prioritize my own health amidst everything else going on. But I have really good news for you, you can get the results you want. In less time without doing hours of cardio and restrictive dieting. I’m going to teach you how to use strength training and eating in a macro balanced way to get you feeling so good and your skin full of energy, and strong to carry out your life. Okay, on this podcast, we’ll delve into how to lose fat in a simple, sustainable way. What your workouts and nutrition should look like during different seasons of life, like during pregnancy and postpartum times. We’ll also discuss healthy quick meals, and how to get them on the table make foods that kids will actually want to eat, mom hacks for making your day run more smoothly, and so much more. All the while with continuous encouragement to stay the course and live with discipline. This is a place where we’re striving to steward our bodies well, in order to joyfully serve. I am so happy you’re here. Let’s dive in.

Main Episode:
Hello, hello, I am so happy you’re here. Thank you for joining me today. And I’m very excited and grateful to be here with you. I love our time together. I love getting to share our thoughts both ways. So I hope that this episode is helpful to you and blesses you today. And I always love to hear from you. So if you have any questions or feedback, feel free to shoot me a message on Instagram or an email to breed healthy Catholic moms.com. So it’s a little more of a two way conversation.

I am tackling this topic today of more kind of time management schedules, which might seem like Brittany, why are you touching on this? You were not a time management expert. I am definitely not. So I’ll say that right up front. But in over a decade of working with women in trying to better their health and fitness, you know, their nutrition, etc. One of the biggest roadblocks is time management. Because if we look at it, yes, sometimes it really does feel like we don’t have enough time. And sometimes we just don’t know where the time is going or it’s just really not organized. Well now, there’s so much more than we can cover in this episode that goes into that. That’s what I’ve really learned over the last couple years for myself, as I realized okay, things that I was getting away with with one child I can’t get away with with to like this whole winging thing, just running out and grabbing somebody’s birthday gift the night before and cleaning just whenever the baby slept and not having a big routine about it. It really was like that transition to two kids where I was like, okay, there are more people to take care of right now I can’t keep waiting this I need systems for things, I need a routines and that kind of thing. So that plays into scheduling a ton. Because I think if you don’t have any kind of framework for how you’re running your home, or how you’re working, or how you’re homeschooling or whatever, some of the things that we’re gonna talk about, it’s just still gonna feel really Helter Skelter. And it’s going to feel like all your hours are taken up, you know, we’ve all been there, when you’re running around the house looking for something and it takes you 20 minutes or 40 minutes or an hour to look for something really important. And I still do that all the time, there are still things I lose or forget or whatever, or don’t have, and then have to run to the store for and that is going to eat up our time, far more than if we’re pretty organized and well maintained in most departments.

So that’s the first and foremost, I’d encourage you to go back and maybe listen to some of my episodes if that’s helpful. But there’s other great resources and podcasts one that I really have liked for systems is Chelsi Jo Systemize Your Life. She’s got a lot of like meal planning systems or things like that. And I’ve you know, taken some inspiration there. So that’s helpful in this conversation about time management. But then also, you all know, I know where you’re all listening to this from different walks of life, some of you are working full time outside the home, this might not be helpful to you, or working part time outside the home or have all different kids ages, etc. Maybe there’s a couple things you can still glean from this. I’m gonna give some overall tips, but that’s totally just the nature of the game. I’m sharing things that work at my stage of the game. So yeah, if I record this podcast five years from now, or 10 years from now, it’s gonna look different just like how I’ve shared with you different. What’s the word? I’m looking for iterations of My own morning routine, it’s changed, it’s evolved, it should. So, again, maybe you can listen to this and apply a couple things take some just overarching principles or themes here.

But why I really am recording this is for those of you who are in this very similar stage, now maybe you have young kids at home, maybe you’re homeschooling, maybe you’re a stay at home mom, all those things where I just personally find for me, it’s really helpful to hear what other people are doing. I love listening to,
you know, the schedule of chatting about it with friends, this is what I consider today. And many of you have asked for this, like when we asked about morning routines, I would still love to do another follow up to this sharing your own routines I just wasn’t organized enough. See you there it is, to have gotten it out to all of you on my email list before to ask you for, you know what your days rhythms look like, because I think that’d be helpful to again, kind of crowdsource it.

So I’ll just kick things off today with giving my own, I’m gonna start with just a couple more general tips, then get into just examples of really what the day itself looks like. And then, and wrap it up with some closing thoughts on what I think are helpful to me to make sure I’m including or not including so first of all, I just want to say it does absolutely change daily, I was really trying to pay attention to this this past week where it was okay, I know I want to record that podcast. So I’m going to pay attention to what my days really truly look like not my ideal days, fantasy days in my head that don’t really happen, I want to really give a good view of how things you know, flow around here because again, to try to be helpful. Now, it absolutely changes daily. A lot of it depends on somebody changing an app time somebody, there’s somebody that somebody’s sleeping late, I will say first and foremost, because I know some people are very diligent about sleep and wake times and whatever we are not.

So most days, we don’t need to be out of the house super early anymore, we did use to for different things in previous years, there’s one day that we pretty much for sure have to leave the house by 830, which I know is not even early. So my kids are not late sleepers either by nature. So most of the time, they’re waking up around seven on their own. But if somebody happens to this weekend, our oldest slept into like eight that was the really the latest and longest we ever get from anybody. So I will say there’s, but you know, if one of the little two or up later in the night, there, naptime might get moved around. So this is definitely in flux as always, or there’s just a lot that happens. Maybe I plan to get my workout in in the morning, but I didn’t get it in. So now I’m going to try to we like wiggle that into our day somewhere. So it does really change on the go, as most of us probably do. I will also just say my current setup, because some of you hearing this might be like, Well, what about this? What about this, I don’t have a newborn right now my current situation is I have an almost six year old, a three year old and an almost two year old. So I’m not nursing anybody, I don’t need those times, which is definitely not a time suck. But it’s something that needs your attention, right? It’s more you don’t I know with a newborn or, for me, it’s really any baby up to a year, I don’t get like those long naps, it’s just 20 minute pockets here or there. So this is kind of the structure my time I also because everybody’s super different. Some of you might have the luxury of your husband having really set hours or work from home or this or that. So again, everybody’s different. I don’t have the newborn, but I do have a husband that works very irregular hours. So some days, most days, he’s up and out by like 530. And then I have no idea when he’s coming home. It just depends the nature of his job is he’s manage you guys on his own team, where if somebody’s not there, and they don’t have a substitute, he’s out doing what they needed to do. And it’s just different every single day. Sometimes, he doesn’t have to go until 730 or eight but we never know until that morning, just last week, actually on Friday, he was like, so I think Friday morning, if you want to go out to adoration in the morning, you can I shouldn’t have to leave till eight unless there’s a call off and I said okay, I’m not gonna get my hopes up. And I’m not gonna plan on that. But thank you for telling me because if you are still here, like I will go. And then that morning at five o’clock, he’s like, Yep, I have to go in. Like, yep, okay, so irregular hours, he’s always gone for breakfast and whatnot. This is not my ideal. And this is obviously just the path that we’ve chosen to what we’re currently doing.

But I’m very planned. I’m very scheduled, I would love to know you’re gonna be home at 530 You’re gonna be home at seven, but I just know. And that’s not the nature of the game. So we roll with that too, right? That’s the setup. I also work from home, you know, and that’s an unboxing crannies of time. I’m recording this in the morning before the kids wake up. And some I usually work one night a week when Ben is home. I will do like two hours while he’s home and go out to a coffee shop or something like that. But that’s fitting in there too. So yeah, alright, we’ll get into it. So just a couple more general tips.

Start with your own priorities. This is really huge because I will, I’m like, I don’t know, I latch on to ideas. I’m like, Oh, that’s a great idea. Oh, I should put that in our day, oh, this or that. Especially think, as a homeschooling mom, who is like, wow, I have this whole day available. So let’s do this. Let’s do that. And then I got a little bit disheartened or disillusioned by the fact that okay, all this stuff cannot fit in in the same day. Like if I really want to do music with them, and I really value outside time. And I really want to make sure we’re doing movement, exercise time, like, yes, you could maybe fit in all those things. If you didn’t do much else, you didn’t leave your house or whatever. But you’ve got to kind of start with your priorities in general for yourself. And then if you’re a stay at home, mom, and you have your kids with you, for your kids, as well. And then obviously, for your homeschool is like another conversation, you know, because that’s really cool, you have all this freedom of what you’re going to include what you’re going to focus on what you’re not going to get, I’m super not an expert in that area. I’m definitely a novice in that area, and still figuring it out for us. But I know that I do right now like examples.

For myself, and my kids, I really prioritize outside time, I really prioritize kid cases having some kind of prayer time, or catechism or scripture reading or something in there with them. And I really prioritize movement. The other stuff is pretty flexible, right. And you’ll see that in our day. Some days, we’re doing schoolwork some days, we’re not some days, we’re leaving the house some days, we’re not some days, we’re, I need to make a meal or make a meal for a family that just had a baby. And for me to be able to do that and deliver it to the family by lunch, I’m gonna mostly just be cooking and prepping things. And they can be in and out of helping me but they’re doing their own thing, because this is what we have to do that day. And they got to come along for the ride. So there’s a lot of, you know, differences day to day. But you do have to start with your own priorities. If you’re it’s gonna make it you know, just look very different. If you the friend actually asked me that recently, again, us not homeschooling podcast, but asked like why we were deciding to start off with homeschooling, there’s a multitude of reasons. And that’s a whole thing. But a big reason to me is that there are things that I prioritize that we couldn’t get in, if they were in school X amount of hours a day, I don’t, I think it’d be very difficult to get in as much outside time as I want to be able to offer them. If they were in a building that had to come home that had to do their homework or whatever do other activities. I personally want them outside more than that. So that’s a reason right there. Right. And that’s one of our priorities.

So next up, rhythms are very helpful rhythms or like time blocks versus thinking about actual hours. I know in the morning episode, and I will give you the our kind of like roughly break rough breakdowns here. But it’s I personally get very disheartened when things are not going according to the plan that I set out. So if I wrote down like five to seven, we’re doing this, or I’m doing that in the morning, seven, nine, we’re doing this and then all of a sudden, somebody called me at 830. This happens all the time, and are all have like the perfect day plan. But then there was just Grand Central Station and people were calling and asking things or needing things, whatever, great again, that’s what we’re all here for. And your day gets a little derailed gets a little away from you. So I found this really helpful way back when I read a mother’s rule of life. And that book was very helpful to me, I believe that she talked about the same concept of like blocks and hours. And then when I just had Olivia on from into the deep, she talked about that how in her own homeschool days, it’s more blocks and rhythms not set hours. So that’s been very helpful to me as well thinking more of thinking of things more of morning time, like that time right before quiet time, then fit time after naptime. And it still looks different day to day. And I’ll get into that with my own schedule. But the rhythms not the exact hours have been helpful.

And then lastly, like I mentioned, there’s a lot behind this, the habits, the routines, the systems, and I’m not going to include that in this episode. So like cleaning schedules, laundry routines, again, you could go back listen to some of my things, tips and tricks or my I know I have a podcast if you haven’t listened to it and episode about my exact like, quarterly, weekly and daily cleaning schedules. If you find something like that helpful that again, maybe you can glean a couple of things from but that’s, you know, a big backbone of this why you don’t see that a lot and be like, Well, where did you clean? It’s a lot of just as you go because things are maintained when you have a minute. I probably won’t talk about this again later. So I will say it here a tie that I often clean because I know I have this rough structure going on like okay, Thursdays I do the sheets, it used to be Fridays, but our Fridays have now changed to being very busy days. So I do the sheets on Thursdays but say like I know that Tuesdays I’m going to clean the bathroom or whatever day it is. I don’t necessarily go into Tuesday thinking this is my cleaning time. It’s usually and I do have a slight kind of backup time for this but it Even when somebody calls me, I clean and a lot of you might do this. And a lot of, you know, most of your mom’s listening to this, I think we just start doing this naturally, like maximizing the time that we have. I know my sisters do the same thing. So I know I’m not alone in this that if somebody calls me suddenly, I’m like scrubbing the toilet, I am cleaning the sinks, I’m doing whatever, because I just want to use that time. So it looks like that. Um, there’s something else I was gonna say about that. But don’t remember. So we’ll keep going. All right.

So my average day might look like something like this at five, usually roughly between five and 530. I wake up, I pray, I work out, I get ready for the day, usually do some quick little work like answer emails, upload a podcast really quick, those kinds of I usually end up having about a half hour left before the kids wake up. So it kind of takes me from like five to seven. It’s the prayer that workout shower, throw on some makeup, get dressed, then do a little bit of work, put out breakfast or kind of lineup getting ready for breakfast. This is again where I’ll like throw in a load of laundry or whatever. If it’s a laundry day, just get things kind of started kind of going for before they wake up.
I’ll just keep going with this whole one day and then I’ll switch it up for you have to then the kids wake up around seven reset, they’re okay to wake clock for 715 It’s not really okay to a brand, but it’s just one of those that turns to green lights. So they know they can come down. Sometimes there’s flexibility that too, sometimes the almost two year old I get earlier if he’s really having a hard time and yelling at us, because he doesn’t understand as well. But yeah, the kids wake up around 715 breakfast, then they pretty much after breakfast to have that routine of getting dressed and making their beds. We are totally in that phase right now where nobody wants to go anywhere without everybody. And I don’t know if this is just your kids, but it is sure mine where it’s like Mom, are you humming Why are you coming to my, my almost six year old was really just in this thing of doing it himself. Like he would go upstairs, he’d make his bed for all a really long time. You know, we would, I’d show him how I’d model of it. I do it with him. And now we’ve gotten to a place where he can do it. And now he’s in a place where he does not want to be upstairs alone while we’re downstairs. So it always during the new group thing where I’m like, Okay, go start your beds and get dressed guys. Sometimes the older two, three and six year old will go up together and do it. Then Judah my youngest just wants to follow them. So usually it looks like all of us ending up upstairs, which is fine. I help the three year old make his bed anyway. So I’m always heading up there. They make their beds, they get dressed, I changed Jude and all that. And then I usually tell them they can have some free playtime before we start morning or, or boarding school. So they’re always excited because they get to it makes them want to make their beds and get dressed more quickly. And then it gives me a chance to during that time I’m cleaning up breakfast and getting out the schoolwork and things like that maybe doing a couple more things there switching the laundry again, or just something else I need to do really quick text, I mean, okay to take a couple seconds. Met, it’s usually roughly around 9am That I will say it’s time for morning time. And here we just this is where we’re in a good groove of just doing morning prayers, and reading from the kindergarten catechism that we have and doing science because they really, they both really love science. It’s really story based. And I just paired that together there and I know mourning time and mourning basket all those things are big for homeschooling, that’s going to evolve for us through the years as well that’s what we were just doing right now we actually just finished both of those books. So just been kind of filling that time with different things reading against scripture verses or reading from a saint book or something like that. But I just like that kind of cozy couch time to start the day rather than diving into like paper and pen kind of stuff. So it’s usually around 9am that we’ll do that and then this could look different, we might do morning time and then because I need some more time again, I will go I will say okay, you guys can free play a little bit. And then I go switch the laundry whatever this also usually helps break it up I really usually do it this way where it’s morning time then broken up by other stuff then we kind of come back together to do more like out of the book worksheet gives the kids like their own things to do and this is helpful for the almost two year old because he’s not going to sit still or not wreck things for that long so then I can play with him in between, they can play with him between and by the time we sit down to do things where definitely the three year old needs me for and the six year old might need me for a little bit of guidance or instruction time was pretty much around snack time for the youngest guy so this is usually around you know I don’t know 930 or 10 This whole time after that because their schoolwork does not take them very long through only he’s my eldest is only in kindergarten. We will go right outside time so it’s usually like we’ve done most of the stuff sometimes I will save a little bit of work for him for nap Time or sometimes we won’t even get into like that paper pen stuff, it’s just been morning time and then could play again. And then we go outside depends on the weather. Last week, I saw that it was going to be really windy starting at 11am. So I was like forgetting right out at 930. And we were out there. So outside time for a while in the morning, usually like 10 to 1130, it might look like timeframe wise, then around 1130 will come in, I will once again tell them they can free play. And I prep their lunch. And this is where kind of this whole little pre lunch lunch before naptime block is where I am trying to get things as ready as I can, that so that I can have a productive nap time. And by productive I mean I’m almost always doing healthy Catholic mom’s work during nap time. So this is where I’m like making their lunch but then doing the dishes really quickly. I actually started which is so funny. I think a lot of you in this is, you know, you can judge me for killing the environment. I don’t do this every single day. But I found this to be like a nice little hack for myself. I never used paper plates like almost never we would maybe have used paper plates if we were eating outside at the picnic table. In the summer. That’s pretty much it only, I guess if I’ve hosted like playdates or have a bunch of kids over my house, I’ll grab paper plates, I usually have them on hand, but we do not use them typically. Well, what I’ve found lately and like you know what works really great is if I get all the dishes done from breakfast, we don’t have a dishwasher. So this is also like a time suck spot, okay. And then I just serve lunch on paper plates so that after lunch, I can toss them out, I save their cups for dinner, like rinse them out, stick them back in the fridge or whatever, maybe I need to wash the cups. And that’s it like done and dusted until snack dinner, whatever. So that’s I don’t intend to do this every single day. But in a pinch, it’s been working nicely. So we got to use what works. But anyways, in this black this is where like I said, I’m getting lunch ready. I’m also maybe doing some quick cleaning this is before we’re after lunch, it’s flexible, depends how hungry they are, how quickly I made lunch, whatever looks like I make one round, you know 12 or 1230 either coming in for lunch and just from playing inside their audience. And then a lot of times I’ll put on a read aloud during lunch for them listen to a scenes live podcast or I’ll just go to YouTube and find some like Pete the cat read alouds or whatever kind of read alouds so we’ll do that and then in a perfect world
and then I’ll make mine or grab mine out heated up, sit down with them. Because really again, I just want to have everything done by naptime. This does not always happen many times I am starting off naptime by walking down the stairs and then eating my lunch and getting going but I honestly don’t like using that time for that. So I try to eat with them. But we’ll see. Then after that, so might look like okay guys clear spots, wipe down the table like you guys tidy up from lunch. Now go tidy up anything that needs to be tidied up before the show. And this is when typically I will like run the vacuum. I will get in again maybe another laundry switch or I’ll put all the laundry away or fold the laundry really quickly. So that naptime comes, and we are done. I will also say we are in this habit of it’s lunch show nap. And then nighttime looks similar dinner, lots of play time then show nap. So they get like 220 minute shows a day where it’s right now for lunch. It’s something that’s formed if you know a forum does or like a super book or Wild Kratts is allowed. It’s got to be like educational or religious pretty much and again around 20 minutes so they’ll get one I have just always done this since Josh was little this is like I know some a lot of moms do the show time before dinner so they can prep dinner. It’s just always been nice for me to have those two separate intervals with the shorter show so that I have time to like get the house totally in order again so that it’s all set for when they go to nap. I usually drop that show in summer my husband I already talked about that. And like I really just inconvenient sometimes to have that show before nap because then I have to plan getting home in time to have lunch show and nap instead of just whatever. So it’s flexible. Some days we’ve had it some days we don’t. But right now it is still helpful for me getting those extra 20 minutes to finish. Like I said folding laundry. This is usually where like if I’ve washed their sheets. I’ll grab the sheets out of the dryer and I’ll go upstairs with my youngest and put the sheets on their beds while they watch their shows so that everybody’s just ready to chill a nap or quiet time. So the nap quiet time is usually around. Again very roughly one to 330 and like I said sometimes amusing at first a little bit to eat really quickly. I do also try to use the first bit to read aloud with my oldest so right now we’re reading like Boxcar Children and things like that, give him that time and then I do do work. So this is where sometimes I will record a podcast or a workout. But usually I’m trying to do that stuff in the morning or at night, so that I don’t have to be recording when the six year old is up and around. So almost six, you have to keep making them six in this episode. And sometimes I will have him do some extra work. This is oftentimes I’ll have him do extra work, like handwriting or whatever, while I work on my laptop like answer emails, or airline podcasts, plan out workouts, those kinds of things. So I’m right there and available for questions, not recording anything. And then typically to I try to close out, naptime or quiet time with getting in another thing with him. So it’s usually I give him the first couple of minutes of it with a read aloud. And then the last couple of minutes, I usually tell him like if I get what I need to done, we can play checkers or we could play memory match or something like that. And then after the kids get up, it’s snack time. This is usually around 330, quarter to four snack time and I start dinner prep is such a crapshoot like I’m sure it is with your kids. Sometimes they’re super wound up here. And sometimes they just want a quiet like they’ll have a snack and then they’ll go look at books by themselves. Usually it goes the other way where my almost two year old is begging for me to turn on the speaker. So I’ll turn on the speaker with music and they will just like dance and go crazy. And it usually is that time now. This is not my ideal but three days a week. My oldest has taekwondo right at 520. So it’s like right about dinnertime. And this is totally day by day of sometimes my husband is going to make it home in time for all of us to eat dinner at like 445 and then go sometimes I feed the kids dinner right at 445 so that they don’t you know, like go crazy on the snacks. I can just give them dinner. It just all depends. And I’d say more often than not, it looks like a snack. Get everybody ready, take window and then we all eat together at six when we come home. Just depends if we’ve gotten dinner done. And we are out the door already take one no then we come home at six. We play that and we kind of get our evening routine started which is just like baths, reading show prayer bedtime. And you know bedtimes it’s a long thing like I’m sure it is for you to where we do read them another book, right after prayer we pray, read a book, and then they go to bed. So that’s kind of always the pm block no matter what time or what happened with dinner. This is where if both of us are home and this is not typical, my husband, I only have like two or three nights where it’s both of us home all hands on deck. Because the one night he’s running the show while I’m doing the work doing work. Another night, sometimes I will go see my grandma who’s in a nursing home, which to this point, it was like a whole shindig because he had to COVID test every time last week we just met for the first time it’s the first time we didn’t have to COVID test. You’re not even supposed to take the you’re supposed to your youngest is supposed to be two. So sometimes I get grief about bringing him in sometimes I don’t. So it’s like very difficult for me to take all the kids. So usually just one night a week, I just go by myself and my husband holds down for here too. And then a couple nights a week why I know he’s always working late. It’s already planned. So it’s me doing it. But a lot of times, if you know we’re both home, this is kind of where we divide and conquer where one of us is doing baths. The other one is doing dishes making lunches for the next day. Like I always make his lunch for the next day. All that good stuff. And if we’re doing it solo, this is where again, that little 20 minute show just comes in handy because we bustle around and do the do the dishes and get things organized in that 20 minutes before they go to bed. Alright, I hope I have not bored you to tears because I’ve kind of bored myself to tears. Like this was as I’m recording like, this was a terrible idea of ruining your life, like really just talking about laundry and shows and whatnot. But again, maybe this is gonna encourage you be helpful to you. So what you didn’t really hear or see in there is my own workout. Now, some days, that has to be included in there. Like I said, if I didn’t get it in, and I will say like, Hey, Mom’s doing a half hour workout, everybody’s coming in the basement, or I just bring the TRX up and I stick in my kitchen door and I will do it while they’re eating lunch. That’s honestly 99% of the time because if I’m doing a workout with them a week, it’s usually right there because a lot of times I will have that intention of oh, I can just stick it in anytime in our morning. And things really are moving and going quickly and it takes a long time to get everybody dressed to go outside right now when it’s so cold out then everybody comes in super muddy. Everybody still needs help except my six year old so it’s like these things obviously take a lot of time, right? And a lot of times I’ll have the intention to get the workout in and it just doesn’t happen till lunch anyway, so then through all seated, they have their lunch listening to a read aloud and I’m just working out right next to them in the kitchen doing stuff. Sometimes we swap out the outside time for different activities. Wednesdays we go to adoration. Most Wednesdays, I should say with the caveat, we have, like 12 hour adoration on Wednesdays, right five minutes down the road. So it’s really nice, really convenient to take the boys to and I again, don’t have to get there like, at a certain time, we don’t have a set hour. So that’s usually like, okay, great. Once we do schoolwork, sometimes we can also get outside time that day, depends on if it is out, then we’ll go to adoration or vice versa, maybe like, Okay, we’ll go to adoration and then you guys can go outside after
some days, we’ll go to the library, those kinds of things once, once, not once a week, every other week. My mom does a saint class for all of them. And they’re cousins. So that’s, you know, another outing, every other week, we have Co Op one day a week, that kind of stuff. So a lot of times it’s instead of that schoolwork and outside time or out somewhere and we’re and then we’re back and but it’s the same rhythms and routines of them when we come home, it’s lunch show nap. And the quick clean up. Now something else that I think is really helpful. And some days too I will say like if I have a lot of work to do right for a challenge. And I have a lot of incoming emails or something or request things I have to get back to I will just take my laptop with me to the playroom. And I will be standing working at it and like well, you guys just play mom has a little bit of work to do. And then you know, be within an hour and that’s what we’ll do. That’s not often because it can’t focus very well. And it’s all it’s another one of those I’m usually like, oh I can get a little bit done and I usually can’t so that has gotten a little bit out the window once I got three kids. Things that I think are very helpful to me. This is again, me personally, is to have some days at home.

So it is my ideal to have at least it’s my ideal to have two days of the week at home because I think in the beginning I had us out and about a lot more where it was like one day or grocery shopping one day is a playdate one day is Co Op one day st class. And I did find I was always scrambling and trying to do laundry. Things were like very Helter Skelter, like, it’s just those things that need attention at your home that you don’t have time to do like switching over the seasonal clothing and just little things like that baking muffins, whatever, if I don’t have at least one day, but I like to at home, it just feels a little too chaotic. And I’m not getting schoolwork done with them and things like that. I do have to remember and this is for me personally. Like, if we’re homeschooling like I need to school you at some point, and I need to have things running smoothly in the home. So this is hard because in the summer, this is something I’m so bad x i just want to we pretty much like wake up, eat breakfast, we’re outside. And then maybe we’re going to a park or maybe we’re going to a creek maybe we’re going to splash pad. Maybe we’re just in the yard. But I tend to super neglect things in the summer. Until it’s a rainy day. I’m like, Okay, we really need a rainy day to go grocery shopping. So we have no food left, we need to apply breaks, things are due and I never want to do that kind of stuff. When it’s nice out. Like we live in upstate New York, we need to be outside Once nice out. So that’s you know, that’s a personal discipline problem. But um, you know, having those that day or two to catch up is really helpful to be I can’t do if people ask for three different people ask for a playdate. That week, it’s going to be a no till the next week or two weeks out. Because it’s just too much. That’s I also think it’s too much for the kids for my own kids that you know, this is again, personal where it gets to the end of the week. And I’m like Kay, you guys just wanted some time to play by yourselves in your home. And I again, don’t have anything prepped no energy balls, no muffins, because I wasn’t home to like cook anything or bake anything. So I like having a couple days at home. Another big tip that I mentioned in there is the cleaning when the kids are awake. Because in a perfect world. If I was not working from home, or doing anything on the side like that I would having a business I would probably love to clean during nap time. I love cleaning. So I’d probably put on a podcast and my headphones and then just have a little lovely time cleaning. However, I need that time for other things. And you might just really not like cleaning, you’re like yeah, I’d rather not use that time for cleaning. So I find it really helpful to try to get things done while they’re awake. And again, Kid ages goes plays a lot into this and the fact that I don’t have a newborn. I know with a newborn or a little baby in there, you are more at the mercy of their schedule. You have to even if you have an infant who you’re spoon feeding like that’s time that you now have to spoon feed and you’re not doing things during so the you need to sit and feed them when they cry. You can’t say wait a second, wait till the kids show because that’s when I’ll do it. You know, so I absolutely get that. I’ve also been there. I’ve you’ve heard if you’ve been here on this podcast for awhile, heard me recording podcasts through babies crying babies nursing. I’ve had two little babies in the course of this podcast so things change And we have to be flexible. But right now this is working well, I hope that some of these ideas can work for you or help you to kind of get thinking about what your schedule, you know, your ideal schedule looks like I will say one last thing. We are in charge of our schedules, there’s a lot, we can’t control. There are a lot of things I mentioned that pop up for me that I didn’t know like, oh, now I’m going to do this. Oh, now this person needs a ride. Oh, no, this, you know, random things. And that’s wonderful. And that’s what we’re all here for is to help one another and to, you know, live in a community that helps embarrass one another’s burdens. So there’s totally that flexibility in there, I just lost my train of thought, the train totally stopped. But know that there’s those uncontrollables this was the point, but that we are still in control of a lot more than I think we think we are. And we will have this ideal that we think is like absolutely crazy to implement, we just can’t do it. And I challenge you to think outside the box on that I was just thinking about this the other morning, because my ideal for when it is summertime is to have my coffee and my prayer time out on the deck. And I was like pretty. Why have you thought this every day for the last five years that you lived in this house? And you’ve never done this? Like never done this? Usually, you know, one or two weekend mornings, my husband, I’ll do this when it’s little bit later, and the kids will play in the yard and stuff. But almost never do. I remember and there are other factors like okay, sometimes I have live training clients at 530 or at six. That was a big period of my life. Right? Right. From 515 to seven I was training people. So that makes sense. Why didn’t do that didn’t have that morning time. But right now that’s not the case and thinking like, Okay, what’s getting in the way of that? Why can’t I do that? Or can I do that come summer. And then I kind of structured by year like that, where workwise I’m doing a lot of pre recording of the videos pre recording of podcasts. Because I told myself at the start of the year, I’m going to grind out January through March, so that I can have a little bit more flexibility.

Come summer in July, I don’t want to be inside of my basement recording videos, I want to be like I tell all of you, I want to have that flexibility of just grabbing my weights and going outside and doing my work outside. Like that’s again a priority to me. So your priorities obviously show through and our scheduling. But I do just want to challenge you with that of like, think about what you really would like and and how you can make it happen. Because there have been other times that I feel really frenzied in my day with the kids. I’m like, Why do I always feel frenzied, like, My ideal is us having music in the day like, that’s another thing in there. I’m teaching my son piano. So some of those days I’m doing a piano lesson with him and naptime. And they’re, you know, a floor apart. So the kids don’t hear it. They have really loud sound machines on. But like, you know, I just had to look at, you know, to what’s getting in the way of this ideal day. And one of the big things that was getting in the way of my ideal day was the fact that I was popping on my phone too much and didn’t realize it like oh, well I’ll just real, real quick make a post while they’re up. So I don’t have to do that at naptime. And things turn into the audio training poster reel, and it took like, I started at naptime and it took 20 minutes to make the reel it was taking like 10 minutes to try to post and it kept posting one slide without the text on it. So I’m messing with it, then all the kids are up from nap. I told them we’re gonna go outside it was a whole thing where I’m like, Okay, I just had put my phone down say whatever, I’ll figure out the real later because this is this is just sucked an hour of my life away. And things like that. It’s that’s been really big for me to try to chunk that time I’ve shared before trying to just be on my phone in the morning, naptime. And then I’ll check some things like right before bed, usually during the show time or whatever. Because that I didn’t realize how much it would take now I’m not just talking about like, you know, flipping through social media, but like doing actual work, answering emails, scheduling this that like to try to do that all at one time. So it’s not eating wait your whole day, your whole day doesn’t feel frenzied and distracted. That’s been really helpful for me too. Alright, ladies, this is way longer than I intended. I hope this was helpful. Thank you so much. If you found it helpful, I would appreciate if you’d take a second to rate and review the podcast, maybe share this episode and get the message out to others as well. All right, I hope you have a great rest of your day and next time we’re going to talk about how we can kind of even out our moods and our blood sugar naturally and cure what we think is a lot of like sin problems and moral evils. A lot of these things can be solved by truly fueling ourselves properly. So we’re gonna talk about that next episode. All right, have a great rest of your day!

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