Home Management Tips for Busy Families

Modern family life is incredibly busy. Between school assignments, sports practices, and other family obligations, the household calendar can quickly get overfull. Fitting in the day to day necessities like grocery shopping, meal planning, and cleaning can feel impossible for many families today. Thankfully, there are many helpful home management tips for busy families. Let’s explore tips to manage your busy family life.

Start Small

It can be tempting to try to completely overhaul your home management routine. But that’s a recipe for failure. Don’t overwhelm yourself or your family with too many new routines at once. Begin with a few manageable upgrades to the way you manage your home, and gradually increase from there.

If you’re completely drowning, it’s understandable to be craving a complete overhaul. But if you try to completely change the way you manage your family’s calendar and to-do list, you’ll just overwhelm yourself in a different way. Give yourself grace. When you start small with easy to integrate changes, such as ordering grocery pick up or grocery delivery. From there, you’ll have more time and headspace – which will feel amazing! – and you’ll be motivated to keep going with integrating new family organization tips.

Let Go

You can’t do it all. Whether you work full time, part time, or are a stay at home parent – modern life means that each family is their own island by default. It’s exhausting and isolating to keep up with all of the many tasks that go into managing a busy home. Let alone the mental load! If you’re struggling to keep up with everything – keeping the house clean, getting your kids to and from all their activities, meal planning, etc. – find somewhere you get let go a bit. Do your kids really need 4 extracurricular activities, or could one or two be let go? Do you need to deep clean every weekend, or could you move to every other? Find little ways to let go or lower your standards, even if only temporarily.

Ask for Help

You don’t have to do everything alone. You CAN’t do everything alone, or at least you can’t do it well. That might be hard to swallow, but the truth is that you and your family deserve to be well-supported. The saying “It takes a village” is heard so often for a good reason. It’s true! If you have the option for support from family, friends, and neighbors – take it. Send your kids to the neighbors for a playdate, or arrange for a sleepover at the grandparents’ house.

Whenever you can, delegate tasks to your other household members. Kids can get involved in chores – and it’s good for them, too! In two-parent households, make sure one parent isn’t holding more mental load than the other. Regular family meetings are a great way to keep everyone on the same page.

Finally, hire professional help – you deserve it! There are so many professionals who can help lighten your load. Whether you need a part-time housekeeper or household manager, a full-time nanny or a full household staff, there are many wonderful options to help your family and home thrive.

Put Things on Auto-Pilot

Whenever you can, put things on auto-pilot so they don’t have to live in your brain. Set bills to auto-pay, arrange for household supplies to be ordered regularly, and set reminders for tasks like ordering groceries, so you don’t have to remember to do so every week. There are so many tools and apps to help you manage your mental load and to-do list.

Buy in Bulk

Not only is it cheaper to buy household supplies and groceries in bulk, but it saves you time and effort, too. Start by making a master list off all the household supplies and grocery items that your family uses regularly. Make a note next to each item of how often you need to re-order it. You can always adjust this over time as you get into the swing of this! Invest in some great pantry storage containers and you’re good to go.

Reevaluate Regularly

Home management is an ongoing process. As your family’s needs change and evolve, so will your routines and rhythms. Make time to reevaluate these home management tips for busy families regularly by yourself, with your partner, and with your whole family, too. And remember to go easy on yourself! Some seasons will be easier than others. What’s most important is that your family feels close and connected, despite how busy life can be.