All Mums are busy, whether you’re in paid work or home with the kids, it’s a full-on role! You constantly feel like you’re juggling too many balls than you can handle, afraid of dropping any of them because they’re all just as important as one another. But inevitably it’s going to happen because…well, we’re not super-humans.

There are only 24 hours in a day and seven days in a week, so that’s the time we have to work with. Factor in sleep and the number of hours decreases even more. So how do you manage the time you have leftover? Here are eight things you can do to help manage your time as effectively as you can.

Be organised and think ahead. Get a whiteboard for your kitchen and plan the week ahead. Write down your meals for every night and what activities, meetings etc will be happening. By thinking about when you’ll get home from Mr 8’s football practice, you’ll be able to think of a dinner to prepare that would be easy to do if you’re late. This also means when you do your supermarket shop, you only buy what you need.

Do you really need to sort through the kid’s drawers and wardrobe to take out the things they’ve grown out of at 4.30pm? Or would getting dinner ready be a better thing to do? We’re all guilty of saying ‘It won’t take me long, I’ll just quickly get it done’, and before we know it the ‘quick’ job has escalated and something more important has been missed or pushed back. Write down what you want to achieve and put them in order of most important to least important.

Ask for help. This is a tough one for so many people, asking for help doesn’t come naturally. But you know when someone says, ‘Sing out if you need help!’, well you know what? Do it! Let your neighbour look after the kids so you can get something ticked off your list, or just to enjoy some time for you. Take your parents up on their offer to have the kids overnight so you can enjoy a sleep in. Any help is better than none so be brave and ask for it.

Have a to-do list but be realistic. Writing down what you want to achieve in a day is a good idea but be realistic about what you can actually get done. Putting too many things down and not getting them done will just make you feel stink about not achieving everything.

Learn to say ‘no’. Don’t try to be everything to everyone. It’s nice to be able to help others and lend a hand, but not at the expense of yourself and your family.

Encourage your kids to help. Even the littlest ones can help put things away or set the table, you don’t have to do it all. And guess what? Learning to help around the home and contribute to the running of the household is a key lesson in life. If the kids can help tidy up their things at the end of every day, that’s at least 20mins that you’ll get back in your evening.

Put down your device. ‘I’ll just quickly see what’s happening on Facebook.’ Is it ever that quick? What you intended to be a couple of minutes all of a sudden has turned into 15mins. If you’re disciplined about your screen time and use it as a break or whatever, then that’s fine. But if in fact you are wasting a lot of your day simply scrolling through pointless posts, reading random articles or watching some crazy YouTube clip, you should probably put your device down and use your time more wisely.

Use your evenings to prep for the next day. Just tick off a couple of jobs at night that will mean the morning rush is a little less stressful. Pack the kids school lunches the night before (use frozen bread for sandwiches and it’ll be lovely and fresh the next day), put the washing on so it’s ready to hang out in the morning, have the kids clothes laid out so they’re all sorted first thing. Once these are done, your relaxing evening will be even more enjoyable.

And a bonus one to finish…find time for YOU. As Mums, it’s too easy to put yourself at the bottom of the pecking order, focusing on everyone else other than you. Taking some time every day just for you will make the whole household a happier place. Whether it’s 10mins to meditate, half an hour to read a book, or half an hour to go for a walk, you deserve the time so do everything you can to get it.

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