Busy Mum’s Guide To Home Maintenance
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Between caring for the family’s needs and balancing your career, being a busy mum can feel like a lot of work nowadays. Couple that with the various house chores you have to stay on top of daily, weekly, or monthly, and it can feel overwhelming to manage them all.
The good news? It’s more than possible for busy mums to adjust their schedule in order and fit home maintenance into the mix. It won’t be easy, but pulling it off can feel extremely rewarding. With the right system, it’s more than possible for mums to balance their family, career, and housekeeping while still having some time for relaxation.
If you’re a busy mum who wants to achieve this level of productivity around the house, then you’re in the right place. We’ll give you some tips on how to keep up to date with your home maintenance to ensure that your place is spotless amidst a busy work and personal schedule.
Let’s jump right into it!
Enlist The Help of Others
While many mothers presume that they can be a one-woman army, this can be an ineffective way to go about things. For one, relying solely on yourself can lead to burnout and chronic stress, which can chip away at one’s health and make it harder for you to keep up with a continuous workload.
Secondly, doing all house maintenance chores by yourself can end up with you producing sloppy outcomes. You can only do so much in a short amount of time per day, and unless you’re truly gifted in multitasking, it’s not unheard of to miss out on certain aspects of upholding a well-maintained and clean home.
To combat this prevalent issue, mums can consider enlisting the help of others to do appropriate household tasks for them. Some of the easiest people to call are your family members, particularly your spouse and children. You can have them cover for you for chores that need to be done around the house, helping you free up time along the way.
However, for more major projects, it may be better to enlist the help of professional removalists to get the job done. There are several reliable rubbish removalists like 1300 Rubbish that can expertly navigate various house projects in every stage of home ownership, from moving in to deep cleaning season.
In particular, they know how to segregate and dispose of rubbish, which will enable you to come home to a spotless home without needing to do many physically demanding things.
In any case, getting assistance from other people is something that’s always an option if you’re going about home maintenance. In doing so, you can free up your time and develop peace of mind knowing that someone proficient is helping you out with certain chores.
Create a Chore Schedule
Another way to stay on top of home maintenance duties is by creating a schedule of your chore list.
A schedule helps you stay on top of your duties by plotting a time for when you have to accomplish tasks around the house. It prevents you from relying solely on memory, helping provide organisation and reducing the odds of delaying priority maintenance work or forgetting tasks altogether.
For instance, a chore schedule can be used to establish a morning routine on certain weekdays. It can also be used to schedule a weekend routine. It’s like a checklist but more geared towards home maintenance tasks like reorganising the bathroom, replacing faulty light bulbs, and deep cleaning the kitchen.
A chore schedule can even be used to assign people around the house their respective chores, making assignments easier to manage and communication smoother. In essence, a schedule helps keep your home functional and operational, making it easier to manage as you go about your day and do other family and personal duties.
Follow the 5-Minute Rule
One effective productivity hack that can be used in various contexts, including home maintenance, is abiding by the 5-minute rule. This rule is one wherein you do tasks right away if it takes less than five minutes to get done.
For instance, if you’re due to replace a broken light bulb at home, then do the task urgently with no further delay. If you have to get your rags out of the laundry machine and pile them up in their respective cabinet, then get it done as soon as you can.
By sticking with this rule, you’ll slowly chip away at your chore list and make housework feel a lot less like a burden. This, in turn, makes the thought of undergoing various home maintenance tasks feel less overwhelming, thus granting you the motivation you need to follow through with these tasks.
Prioritise Preventative Maintenance
Another way to save time, money, and energy as a busy mum is by ensuring that you’re upholding habits that keep you from needing to maintain things around the house in the first place. In other words, you should try to prevent the need to fix things around the house.
There are several ways to stay on top of your housework, from doing the aforementioned checklist plan to enlisting the help of others. But besides those duties, you should also try to be aware of your actions and ensure that you’re not contributing to the need for your house to be inspected and maintained in the first place.
One way to uphold preventative maintenance is by running regular checks in the household for things that may break down, like sockets, sinks, and light sources. This helps you stay aware of problems that may arise into something bigger if left unchecked.
Another way of keeping your home well-maintained is by cleaning problem areas before they become worse. This includes checking pipes for leaks, cleaning A/C filters, and so on.
By prioritising preventative maintenance, you can help make the space more efficient and smooth, no matter how busy life gets.
Declutter Often
The more things you have, the more often you’ll have to take time to maintain things around the house. Hence, one direct solution to all of that is by cutting down and streamlining the number of things you have around the house—decluttering, in short.
Decluttering helps make things like deep cleanses feel a lot less overwhelming. If you fail to declutter and have a hoarder’s mindset, you can feel great stress and uneasiness navigating your house and finding your belongings in good shape.
By decluttering, you’re less likely to have a huge pile of tasks and things to maintain. This makes it easier for you to focus on other aspects of your life, like work and family.
Have a Game Plan
A common problem that busy mums face when dealing with a crowded home is the feeling of dread at having to tackle the maintenance work required of it. One way to make the task feel approachable is by creating a game plan and focusing on one room at a time.
One strategy you can take on, for instance, is by dividing task categories per day of the week: think like Mondays are for cleaning the kitchen, Tuesdays are for cleaning the bedrooms, and so on. This approach makes things more manageable.
You can also consider organising your tasks by the type of activity that needs to be performed. For instance, you can make Wednesday your scheduled laundry day and Thursday your grocery shopping day.
By making these breakdowns, you can create a system that makes it easier for you to handle home maintenance. We hope these tips will serve you well as you work your way through keeping your home in a well-maintained state. All the best!
