Juggling work, family life, caring for my home, taking care of the finances, the cars, the yard, and trying to keep up with my other responsibilities can get overwhelming.
I know I am not alone in this constant juggling act!
A few years ago, all of the stress and busyness became too much, and I found myself on the brink of a mental breakdown. I decided it was time to make some big changes to my approach and my perspective on life. Of course, it didn’t happen all at once, but I have managed to simplify my life over the last few years with amazing results.
Today, I will share some of the strategies I used to simplify my life, find the peace I was looking for in my home, and reserve my time and energy for the things that are truly important to me.
If you find yourself feeling stressed out and overwhelmed, it may be time for you to take some steps to simplify!
- Simplify Mealtime
Several years ago, I used to cook three meals a day for all the people in my house—homemade, fresh meals from the healthiest and finest ingredients.
And literally, no one appreciated it.
At nearly every meal, someone was unhappy. When you live with several strong personalities with varying opinions, it is impossible to make them all happy.
Recognizing that I was fighting a losing battle, outnumbered and exhausted, I stopped trying to please them.
My children were old enough to use a microwave, and I had taught all of the basic cooking skills and how to make food from a recipe.
I turned over breakfast and lunch to them and let them be responsible for feeding themselves twice a day.
I sat them down and explained that everyone would take turns preparing dinner from now on, and they got to make what they wanted on their night.
Is this a popular approach in the mommy groups? No
But I will tell you this: When I cook dinner now, I make something I want to eat, and everyone appreciates it.
I felt that there was an expectation placed on me by external forces in my life to cook meals and have a family dinner every single night because all the “experts” maintain that children need to eat dinner with their family every night…and for some reason, I internalized that to mean that I had to be the one to prepare that meal and ensure that everyone sat around the dinner table as a group to eat it.
“Dinnertime was a nightmare…every single night”
Dinnertime was a nightmare…every single night.
Someone was always miserable, people were arguing and saying mean things to each other, I was more of a referee than a participant in the meal…and I felt unappreciated and resentful. Nothing beneficial came from forcing ungrateful, entitled children to sit at the same table to eat food they didn’t want with people they didn’t want to spend time with.
No more.
We eat out or order takeout at least once a week because that fits our budget and our life.
I have groceries delivered, rather than spending two hours a week grocery shopping…which has also simplified my life. I have everyone text me things they need from the store, and I make sure the pantry and refrigerator are packed with appropriate and “mostly” nutritious foods. Then, they can eat what they want, and I don’t have to hover.
If we are eating in, the person cooking only cooks what they want to eat, and everyone else can choose to eat it or make something for themselves.
And if no one wants to cook a meal, then everyone fends for themselves, which is one or two nights a week.
It is simple, there is no pressure on anyone, and it works for us, regardless of what anyone else thinks.
“…once I released myself from other people’s opinions, I was finally free to tailor my life to my own circumstances…and I could actually start making decisions based on what was best for my family and me.
I discovered that once I released myself from other people’s opinions, I was finally free to tailor my life to my own circumstances…and I could actually start making decisions based on what was best for my family and me.
Even if this specific approach isn’t the right fit for your family, I encourage you to take some time to consider how you handle mealtimes more simply in your house and find a way that does work for you.
You are not stuck doing things the way your family did them or the way you have always done it. If it isn’t working for you, and it’s creating stress and chaos in your life, it’s time to rethink it and find a way that works better.
- Examine Your Parenting Approach
I have one teenager living at home now, but I have spent many years living with teenagers. Nine, to be exact.
Nine. Long. Years.
When all three of my children lived at home, I had lots of rules…and miserable teenagers.
But I recognized that this was one of the areas of my life that were creating stress, sapping a lot of my energy, and stealing the peace from my home. I spent a lot of my time policing people’s behavior, dictating what they could do with their time, and constantly dealing with “problems”. But worst of all, this parenting approach was devastating to my teens, my relationship with them, and our family life.
My journey to simplify my life required me to examine my perspective on parenting and my relationship with my children. It was apparent that I needed a different perspective…and a simpler approach to parenting.
Like me, my children are all very independent people.
When I was a teenager, I grew up in a home with lots of rules and very little room to explore my own identity and figure out who I was.
From a very young age, I dreamed of the day I could move far away and be free from rules…to live how I wanted to live and do what I wanted to do.
I realized I had created the same environment for my own kids, and it made me feel so sad because that is not what I intended for them. So I made a change.
I decided to create space for them to develop into who they want to be inside the walls of our home.
“It required me to step back, let go, and allow them the freedom to direct their own path”
That required me to step back, let go, and allow them the freedom to direct their own path.
For example, with my sixteen-year-old daughter, I do not insert myself into her decisions unless it is a matter of safety or engaging in behavior that will have devastating long-term consequences.
She makes her own decisions regarding her clothing, hair, and makeup.
She makes her own schedule
She does not have a curfew. Instead, she tells me when she will be home, and if her plans change, she is responsible for communicating the change before she is later than she said she would be.
She is responsible for completing her school work and asking for help if she needs it, cleaning her own room, her own bathroom, and cleaning up her own messes in the house.
She decides how she will spend her free time.
Communication and responsibility are the only two hard and fast rules.
She is required to communicate with me about her plans, what she’s doing, when she’s doing it, where she will be, and who she will be with….ALWAYS.
As long as she is responsible and communicating with me, I give her the space to continue to direct her own life. And she knows that being irresponsible or failing to communicate is a one-way ticket to having me directly in the middle of her business asking questions, checking up on her, and being way more involved than she’s comfortable with. Thankfully, she enjoys her freedom so much that she makes a point of being a great communicator and being unfailingly responsible.
This simple approach works with her. It would not have worked with my oldest child, and it did not work seamlessly with my second child. But with this one, it works. So that is what we do.
This exact approach may not be right for your family or your children at their current ages. But it’s important to take a moment to consider what reigns you can let go of and where you can simplify your parenting approach to give your kids some more space and release yourself from the responsibility of managing every aspect of their lives every moment of the day.
The appropriate approach when a child is four is very different from the appropriate approach when they are fourteen. It’s ok to reexamine what’s working and what’s not working and make the necessary changes to simplify your life.
If peace and simplicity are what you need, that may mean that you have to sacrifice the appearance of perfection or to have complete control over every moment of your child’s day and everything they do.
Giving your kids the freedom to direct their own lives also opens the door for them to make mistakes and bad decisions.
“I used to protect them from everything…but that didn’t teach them anything.”
I used to try to protect them from everything…but that didn’t teach them anything.
They have learned far more from having freedoms and making some mistakes than they ever learned from me controlling every single thing in their lives.
I would rather they learned to be independent, make decisions, and make some mistakes while in the safety of our home than to prevent them from having any experience with life until they move out and experience freedom for the first time in their lives…that is a recipe for disaster.
Take some time and determine your end goal.
My end goal is to have three financially and physically independent children who are mentally healthy and have a great relationship with their mother.
Achieving that goal has required a course correction more than once. But simplifying my approach to parenting has done the most for my relationships with them.
Parenting is one of those things that many people are hesitant to discuss in public because there are always those moms that come at you as if they know better, and, for whatever reason, they feel like they get to have an opinion about how you raise your kids.
But, here it is.
I legitimately do not care what other people think of how I parent my kids. I tried falling in line with what was “acceptable” to the mommy brigade…and it simply didn’t work for my family or me. My kids are not their kids. My life is not their life. Every child is different and has a different set of needs than every other child.
So my advice is to find a way that feels right to you, provides maximum benefit to your relationship with your child and the simplicity you are looking for, and then go with it…mommy brigade be damned.
- The house…
This one is always a big one…
My desire for a clean house was making my children miserable. There was yelling at some point every day as my demands for things to be picked up and cleaned up were met with resistance and children who were unwilling to even make the smallest effort…including putting trash in a trash can.
The angrier I got, the more trashed my house became.
When having peace in my home and simplicity in my life became more important than trying to control every square foot of my house, I adjusted my approach and came up with a new plan.
Most importantly, I let go of trying to control everything…because my need for control was making everyone miserable, including me.
I gave myself the gift of a housekeeper a couple of years ago, which has immensely simplified my life.
Along with this, I made a decision to relax when it came to the house.
My children have learned that as long as they keep things less than gross, I won’t lose my mind…and we all live in peace.
If you have it in your budget, even for a once-a-month cleaning, this can be a game-changer.
If not, then cleaning in time blocks and focusing on one area at a time simplifies the process and helps keep you from feeling overwhelmed.
You can click HERE for more strategies on getting your house under control in the simplest way possible.
But first, work on your perspective.
Is your goal to have a perfect house or a peaceful house? Because the reality of having a home full of people who spend 24-hours a day inside the same four walls is that you most likely can’t have both.
“No WiFi until the chores are done is a powerful currency. Use it!”
You can train the people in your house to be responsible for certain chores because you have one thing they don’t…control over the WiFi password. Nothing gets people’s attention more quickly than the WiFi going out!
No WiFi until all the chores are done is a powerful currency. Use it! Then, once they have complied…leave them alone. Don’t expect perfection, don’t nitpick the details. Instead, train them that getting the job done quickly gets you out of their hair and gives them their freedom.
You can set a time every day where the WiFi goes off, everyone gets busy, and as soon as the basics are taken care of, the WiFi goes back on. You have just bought yourself peace, and better yet, you weren’t stuck being a maid for everyone, and your house is no longer spiraling into an irreconcilable mess.
This, coupled with your new perspective and focus on peace and simplification, will give you a passable house, content kids, and a simplified approach without housework stealing the peace from your home.
- Time
Time is our most precious commodity…so why do we waste it on crap we don’t even want to do?
There is a difference between the things we have to do and the stuff we FEEL like we have to do.
It’s time to figure out the difference.
If you are saying yes to things because you will feel bad about saying no, you need to check yourself.
I recently listened to a TED talk by an author with a really great perspective but a really naughty mouth. She assigned some very colorful words to a straightforward concept.
“Stop spending time and money on things you don’t care about.”
Stop spending time and money on things you don’t care about.
The real reason we feel guilty about saying no to things we don’t want to spend time on is that we are more concerned with what other people think of us than we are with what we think of ourselves.
You’re afraid someone will have hurt feelings or be offended if you don’t show up.
Here’s the thing, if you tell them beforehand that you won’t be there, then there is nothing to feel badly about.
But if you cancel at the last second because you can’t bring yourself to do the thing you feel like you should do, but you don’t really want to do (I have totally been there), then you have something to feel bad about.
You don’t have to feel bad about telling someone beforehand that you won’t be there.
That baby shower you don’t want to attend. The going-away party for the coworker you don’t even like. Birthday parties for other people’s kids…when you don’t even like other people’s kids—none of it.
You do not have to spend your time and money on any of that!
Just tell them, “I won’t be able to attend, but thank you for the invitation.” And then move on.
“You don’t need to explain. You don’t need to apologize. You just need to say no so you can reserve your time and money for the things that are important to you.”
You don’t need to explain; you don’t need to apologize; you just need to say no, so you can reserve your time and money for the things that are important to you.
This one strategy can be a powerful tool to simplify your schedule and ease the strain on your time. Therefore, I encourage you to find some things you can say no to and free yourself of some obligations to simplify your life.
By finding strategies that worked to simplify my life, decreased the amount of time and energy I was wasting, and created a more peaceful atmosphere in my home. I was finally able to turn my focus to some of the more important things I really cared about. But most importantly, it helped me to focus on building stronger, healthier relationships with the people who matter most to me, my children.
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