3 simple ways to have more time and energy at home ⋆

a young girl helping her father planting in the garden

“When you’re doing what you love, your energy is magic, magnetic, powerful AF”

When you’re at home with your family, there’s nothing you love more than doing all the housework, cooking, laundry, and family management. Wait, did I say love? I meant loathe.

What you’d love to be doing is snuggling on the couch with your partner, playing on the floor with your little ones, playing board games with your big ones, and maybe even practicing some self-care.

But you’re so overwhelmed with the care and maintenance of the house that you don’t have the time and energy to spare for the members of the household.

Here are three ways to have more of that magic, magnetic, powerful AF energy in your life.

1. Delegate to your partner and kids

An 80+ year long Harvard study has shown that having kids do chores is a key indicator of their success in life. Even as young as two, kids can start doing chores and developing a work ethic and sense of responsibility.

Now, granted, you’re going to have to teach your kids (and your partner!) how to do each task, the way you want it done, and give them the opportunity to suck at it, before they get good at it. But that time and energy up front will give you more time and energy to spare in the long run.

A quick Google search will give you tons of chore lists by age, but this one is my favorite: resources.krissjudd.com/chorelist

2. Hire help

Sometimes your partner and kids helping just isn’t enough. Or maybe they’ve already got so much going on that you don’t want to add anything else. That’s when it’s a good time to hire help.

There are service professionals for every household chore you can think of. Housekeepers are usually the first domestic pro people think of, but they’re certainly not the only ones out there.

A former employer of mine bought meals from a woman at her church who would take orders every week and deliver healthy, homemade meals out of the trunk of her car.

Landscape maintenance folks will take care of your yard, trees, flowerbeds, and even vegetable garden.

If it’s laundry you’re struggling with, your local laundromat or dry cleaner might have a wash and fold service to meet your needs.

If you don’t want to pay a trained professional to do it for you, there are always college and high school students in need of some extra spending money.

Anybody you hire will result in you having more time and energy in your life.

3. Lower your expectations

Look, I get it. You have certain expectations for how you want your home to look. But unless you want to quit your job and devote yourself full-time to scrubbing grout with a toothbrush, you need someone to help you. And you’re going to have to let them do it their way.

Now, you can teach them your way. But if you’re the grout-scrubbing type, you’re probably not going to be satisfied with the job they’re doing. This is where lowering your expectations becomes crucial to your efforts to have more time and energy in your life.

Maybe you can be happy with time to make homemade potpourri while someone else uses a spray-on, leave-on grout spray. Maybe you can check in on your 12 year old while she washes the grout with a washrag. Or maybe you can channel your inner Elsa and let it go.

But for this to work, you’ve absolutely got to lower those expectations to mere mortal proportions.

You and your family will be all the happier once you have time and energy to spare.