Contemporary Mums: 10 Keys To Managing Your TIME Successfully (Part Two)

By Eyinade Eweje

Contemporary mums are always on call and there’s hardly enough time to meet up before 24 hours breezes away, especially with the unpredictable nature of traffic in our country. Save some extra hours to get more items in your long list of to-dos sorted and enjoy more leisure with these tips:

Continued from part one

6. HAVE A MENU PLAN: The time you spend every morning and evening trying to think up what to prepare for breakfast or dinner could be put to better use. Create a menu plan that takes care of what to prepare for the week on weekends. It does not only save you extra minutes to use, it eliminates the unnecessary headaches too.

7. IDENTIFY YOUR TIME WASTERS: Review your priorities and do your most important tasks first. Keep track of the things that waste your time and devise ways to nip them in the bud. Do you always lose yourself in long conversations on the phone or with your visitors that you forget there’s plenty of cleaning and dinner to do? Do you become a couch potato on Saturdays or public holidays watching movies and home videos when there’s so much to do? Perhaps, you spend a good part of your time on Blackberry, surfing the internet for latest gossip, free shipping deals and updates on your facebook and twitter accounts that you lose track of time. Does your morning beauty routine need to be simplified? Whatever your time wasters are, find them out and deal with them now.

8. DITCH THE IRONING: Rather than dedicating long hours to ironing a heap of clothes, take steps to reduce your need to iron at all. By removing clothes promptly from the washing machine and giving them a good shake before hanging, some won’t need pressing. You could also tumble-dry clothes on a low heat for just 10 minutes before hanging them out to dry- use hangers where you can. If you find ironing too time-consuming, consider using an ironing service or investing in a clothes steamer. The latter will cut your ironing time by around half.

9. DON’T SACRIFICE SLEEP: How often do you find yourself staying up late to do menial household chores that can wait till the next day? You really should stop pretending to be super-human! Losing sleep has a negative impact on the next day’s mood and productivity, so you have more unfinished tasks that’ll soon have you spinning your wheels. Then, you’ll be back where you left off, anxious and overwhelmed.

10. GET HELP: There’s no rule that says you have to do it all. Having an extra set of hands goes a long way to save time. Delegate age-appropriate tasks to your children to speedup getting household chores done, carpool with friends for school runs. See if a friend or relation could babysit your kids few hours after school occasionally, hire assistants if you have extra cash to spare. All these clear your schedule and afford you spare time to cater to your cravings.