Time Management Strategies For Overwhelmed Moms

Are you looking for time management strategies for overwhelmed moms? If so, I want you to know you are not alone.

As a mom, it’s no secret that managing your time can feel like an uphill battle. But for working moms who homeschool, the challenge of juggling work, family, and personal responsibilities can feel even more daunting.
With so many tasks to juggle, feeling overwhelmed and stressed is easy.

That’s why it’s essential to have effective time management strategies for busy moms to help you stay on top of your game.

In this article, I’ll share time management strategies specifically for working homeschool moms who feel like they’re drowning in their to-do lists.

Whether you’re trying to meet deadlines at work while keeping your family life running smoothly or managing your children’s education while running a household, I’ve got you covered.

So, let’s dive in and explore some time management strategies for overwhelmed moms and find a better balance in your daily life.

5 Time Management Strategies For Overwhelmed Moms

Do you ever feel pulled in a million directions at once? No matter what kind of job you have, there are times when everything you need to do feels overwhelming.

When this happens to me, I stare at my to-do list, frozen. I feel like I am drowning in tasks, completely overwhelmed.

As much as I might like to head back to bed and toss the covers over my head until tomorrow comes, I can’t do that.

Over the last 14 years of working and homeschooling, I’ve found a few time management strategies for overwhelmed moms that work for me.

Remember, everyone is different. What works for me might not work for you. As you read through these five time management strategies, take note of anything that might help you.

1. Assess Your Time

If you are feeling overwhelmed, chances are you are overstuffing your schedule. 

One of the biggest time management mistakes working moms make is underestimating how long tasks take to complete. Trust me: things take longer to do then you think, especially if you have kids. 

How to track your time:

• write down everything you do each day for 3-5 days
• write down how long it took to do tasks
• complete a time audit 

You don’t need to go into a lot of detail but simple notes to know what you were doing and how long it took. 

Using this information, you can create a simple plan that makes sense for you. When you stop overpacking your week, you will feel less stress. 

2. Plan Your Day

Creating a plan for your day is one of the most challenging time management strategies for overwhelmed moms because planning takes time, and often, plans need to change mid-day or mid-week. It is easy to feel that creating a plan is pointless. 

However, if you don’t create a plan, you’ll spend the day reacting and running around putting out fires. This is exhausting! 

Planning is the highest form of self-care you can do because planning provides the framework and structure for your day. Even if you end up regrouping mid-day with a plan, you can see exactly what is on the task list and what can be moved to make room for the changes. 

I struggled to find a planner that worked for my life, so I created my homeschool planner for working moms. 

Knowing what is expected of me makes me feel in control and less overwhelmed. 

You can grab these free planning pages where I walk you through how I use each page. 

Tips for planning your day:

• Block off 15-30 minutes once a week to create a weekly plan. Use the “estimated” time for tasks to create a realistic plan. 
• Check the plan the night before and prepare as much as possible for tomorrow, such as gathering homeschool books, making lunches, making coffee, etc. 
• Take 10 minutes each morning to review the plan for the day and make adjustments.

Creating a plan will help you see what needs to be done each day and help reduce the amount of time you spend reacting each day. 

3. Organize Your Environment

One of the best time management strategies for overwhelmed moms is being organized and not just with our time (although that is important) but also our space. 

I live in a relatively small place with four people and three fur babies. We have stuff. To help reduce overwhelm and save time on cleaning, we take time each year to declutter. I use the 30 bags in 30 days routine in my Cleaning Planner for Busy Moms. 

Tips For Organizing Your Space:

• Create dedicated places for the homeschool resources, such as bookshelves and baskets for books. 
• If you work at home, declutter and organize your workspace. When you have a dedicated place for repeatedly used things, you’ll save time hunting them down. 
• Take note of where you spend time looking for things and brainstorm solutions to fix them—for example, a basket for all the mail on your counter. 

Once you get into the habit of decluttering and organizing, you’ll find it much easier to keep a cleaning schedule and save time trying to find things. 

4. Use A Family Calendar  

If you need help keeping track of everyone’s appointments, the social activities for your kids, your medical appointments, and who is doing what chore today, you are not alone.

In our home, it falls to me to keep track of each child’s work schedule, college classes, my husband’s work schedule, and my own.

Using a family calendar is a great way to free up mental space and still what’s happening each day.

A large wall calendar is a great visual reminder for all. I like a dry-erase style wall calendar, but there are a lot of different versions available for you to choose from.

Disclosure: I may receive commissions for purchases made through links in this post.

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If you prefer a digital family time management app, make sure it has sharing capabilities.

Both Google Calander and Homeschool Planet are great options.

Using a family calendar or command center where everything is recorded will help you stay organized and avoid overbooking yourself.

A family calendar is one of the most overlooked time management strategies for overwhelmed moms and yet the most helpful for making sure everyone is on the same page.

5. Delegate

When you hear the word delegate, what comes to mind? You don’t have time to train someone? You don’t have money to hire someone? Or it’s faster and easier to just do it yourself?

Confession, I fell into the last category for a long time. It wasn’t until I experienced survival mode that I realized the value of teamwork within my home.

Delegating isn’t always about spending money. While hiring a housekeeper or investing in meal subscription boxes, such as Hello Fresh, are great options to free up space, it is not the only option.

Here are a few things you could delegate:

• Cooking – teach your kids to cook simple meals
• Cleaning – create a cleaning schedule and assign chores
• Driving – carpool when you can
• Shopping – use online options such as grocery pick up or delivery
• Homeschooling – You are not required to teach everything, use tutors or online classes

When it comes to splitting household tasks among family members, remember that not everyone has the same skills. My youngest child is a whiz when it comes to organizing, and my husband does a great job in surface cleaning.

Whereas my oldest is great at focused physical tasks, such as getting wood or taking out the garbage.

Sit down at your next family meeting and discuss the weekly tasks that need to be done. I find giving my kids a choice in what tasks they can do makes them feel like they are part of the family team and results in less nagging on my part.

Delegating and asking for help might be one of the hardest time management strategies for overwhelmed moms to put into practice, but you can do it!

Will this go smoothly right off the bat? No. Change takes time, but keep working on it, making adjustments as you go. It’s worth it.

The Key To Time Management Strategies For Overwhelmed Moms

When putting time management strategies for overwhelmed moms in practice, the key is to not add to the overwhelm.

Start with the first strategy of figuring out where your time is going. Then use that information to create a plan that works for your working homeschool mom life.

Decluttering is something I like to chip away at over time. If I try to do it all at once, I am overwhelmed and won’t do anything. Maybe you are a jump-in and get-it-done person? If so, go for it!

Lastly, set up a family calendar and ask for help by delegating tasks.

Time Management Help For Stressed Moms

All moms feel stressed from time to time. Here are a few resources to help you out:

• Time Management Tips For Working Moms
• Time Management Techniques To Reduce Stress
• Best Productivity Apps For Moms

Which of these time management strategies for overwhelmed moms will you try today?

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