If you need some help being a productive stay at home mom, here are my best 7 productivity tips for SAHM’s!

Being a stay at home mom it’s a wonderful way to live! It can, however, be frustrating to figure out how to balance life. 

We all struggle with this, and I have spent a good bit of the last couple years, testing out implementing different tactics to improve my efficiency as a homemaker.

The productivity tips listed here below are my tried and true pieces of the puzzle that fit well in my homemaking journey. Each of us have unique households and homemaking journeys so everything that works for me may not work for you. It may not be a puzzle piece that fits perfectly in the puzzle of your life.

I have had seasons, also, wear some of these did not work well for me. It’s good for homemakers to try and understand a variety of methods of doing things so that when life changes, we have a tool kit, how much to draw tools from in order to bring our home back into order. 

Along with my 7 productivity tips, I have also answered a few frequently asked questions that new stay at home moms might find helpful. Things like…

• What are stay at home moms supposed to do all day?
• Is being a stay at home mom harder than working?

Whether you are a new stay at home mom or a little bit more of an experienced homemaker looking to improve her homemaking systems, let me share with you my 7 productivity tips that have helped me as a stay at home mom!

What are stay at home moms supposed to do all day?

There is no one answer to this question. Every day is different and every home life is different as well. There are, however, a certain tasks that every homemaker should do to keep decent order in the day. These daily tasks are…

• Dishes
• Laundry
• Tidying up
• Cooking

Training children could also be one if you have children because it is a huge responsibility that we have to do every single day as homemakers. I, however, prefer not to think about it as a task because child training is about cultivating a good relationship with a living being whereas dishes, laundry, etc. are things that just need to get done. They do not have souls so they are simply tasks that fill up our day around interacting with our children. 

To wrap it all up and tie it in a pretty bow, SAHM’s care for children while taking care of other household responsibilities and ourselves as needed. This is what we do all day. 

Related Posts: Daily HomemakingTasks or My Simple Daily Routine

Is being a SAHM harder than working?

It really depends on the job. For the most part, being a stay at home mom is more flexible and therefore is a lot easier, but there are some really hard things that stay at home mom’s have to deal with. Some days it would be easier to just go get a job, but everything is hard in its own way. 

I personally feel like it’s harder to have a job outside of the home than to be a full-time stay at home mom because the flexibility and rhythm of the day makes for a slower way of life. It’s a much more pleasant way to live despite the hard days of child training and such things. 

Productivity Tips for SAHM’s

Surrender the day

This is the day that the Lord has made. Each day we have is created by the Lord and it is his. Too often, I think being productive is about getting things done my way in my time. Ultimately, my struggle with not being productive is really about not being in control of how things get done. 

By the end of the day, the chores get done one way or another. It may not be exactly how we want that to get them done, but the point is that they are accomplished. This is what matters.

Each day that we are given is from the Lord. It is his and not ours to control. We can make plans, but ultimately, we must surrender each and every day to the Divine Creator because he knows what each day holds and what each day needs to be.

Learn to be a flexible homemaker with your routines, systems, and plans. When we begin each day in our home, we do not know the future of that day. There is no way for us to tell how things will play out. 

It’s still good to make plans and give ourselves some structure so that we have direction for our day, but we must surrender and be flexible with whatever the day ends up being.

Structure your day

There are different ways and productivity systems to plan out your days and different methods work better for different people. It’s not a bad idea to get familiar with different methods, to try them out, and choose what works best for you and your home.

“Let the housewife read, investigate, and be willing to try a new method until she proves that it is better or worse than her own.” ~ Lydia Ray Balderston, Housewifery 1921 p. 240

Some people like…

• Time blocking
• Smart goals
• Eat the frog
• To do list
• And a lot of others!

I personally find that event blocking my day works best. This is similar to time blocking, except instead of being bound to certain times of the day you structure your day, using set event events like meal times for example. It’s super flexible and works every day for me no matter what each day holds. 

I go into a lot of detail about the method I use as well as my routines and systems in my e-book Systems and Routines: Simple Time Management for Homemakers. It’s all based on a daily routine that I got from a really old homemaking book from the 1800s. 

If you’re struggling with your days feeling really whacked and unproductive, find a flexible way to structure your day so that you have direction, but can still pivot and do whatever needs to be done in the moment. 

Plan every morning

I do very minimal weekly planning. Mostly I plan out my themed nights for my meal plan and maybe any doctors visits or appointments that will happen that week. Other than that, I prefer to plan out each day as they come living in the moment, surrendering and being flexible for whatever each day needs to be.

It’s hard to foresee what each day holds and what our family will need for that day until we wake up that morning and start living. This is why I like to plan every day as they come. My goal is to sit down with my planner every morning at some point either before or after breakfast and roughly plan out the day.

Get familiar with your daily tasks

For the most part, every homemaker has the same if not similar daily tasks that need to be accomplished. Things like…

• Dishes
• Laundry
• Tidying up
• Cooking

I also added to my list of daily tasks one thing that my husband really appreciates being done when he gets home. My husband does not mind so much if some things are not done or aren’t in perfect order when he gets home as long as the floor is swept. Every day I strive to get our main living areas and kitchen swept at least once a day.

If you don’t know what your husband would really appreciate, why not ask him tonight when he gets home and make it a priority to do something for him every single day?! I know he’ll appreciate it!

Once you have a basic understanding of the daily household responsibilities you have as a homemaker, the best way to improve them is to get familiar with them. Live out your days to the best of your ability prioritizing your children first and then the household tasks as you can. With each day that you live out, you will get an idea of what works for you and what doesn’t.

It’s been helpful for me to read other homemakers’ posts or watch homemaking vlogs about their daily routines and see what other homemakers are doing, but bearing in mind that what works for them won’t necessarily work for me. It’s good to get inspiration and tips from other people‘s homemaking journey, but I have to live out my own homemaking journey and figure out what works for me in my household.

Something else that has been super helpful in figuring out how to balance my household responsibilities is to think of the spinning plate theory. Spinning plates is a circus act where a person has a row of steaks on which a plate is set on each. The whole act revolves around keeping each of the plates spinning so they start all of the plate spinning and then as one slows down, they run to it and keep it spinning, and so they interact with the plates as needed to keep them all spinning throughout the act.

This is very much like home making. We get our household tasks spinning, and then we address them as needed to keep the plate spinning throughout the day until the tasks are accomplished. The goal is to get them all done each day but sometimes a task carries over into another day in which we simply just keep the plate, spinning day and day out and things get done as needed.

In some homemaking seasons, it’s a lot easier to accomplish all your daily tasks within the confines of that day, but some seasons consist of simply keeping the plate spinning, addressing each task at some point in the day so that each task gets some attention from you every day. 

This is how I’ve learned how to be productive in this season of home making with three children. 

Pace yourself

As homemakers, we have to learn to balance work and rest. We cannot serve our families and others to the best of our ability if we are not taking care of ourselves, too.  We must learn to pace ourselves throughout the day as we’re going about our tasks so that we don’t get burnt out. 

It is also helpful to have set moments throughout the day where we prioritize rest or times when we come apart to gather our thoughts so that we can be refreshed and more enjoyable to be around.

Prioritizing rest for me looks like this…

• Getting up when my kids get up
• Sharing my personal devotion time with them
• Meditating throughout the day on scripture and drawing virtue from the Lord
• Sitting down for the majority of nap time working on my blog as well as 30 minutes on something that brings me joy that I can do sitting down
• Embracing each opportunity, we have to sit down and hold a child as a moment of rest and not of interruption to my day
• Having my children do quiet time separately in their own rooms while I prepare meals

These things have helped me balance, work and play, rest and activity. They’ve helped me physically, emotionally, and spiritually. It is necessary as the primary caregivers of our home for us to balance the attention we give to our responsibilities and the attention we give to ourselves so that we can give of ourselves from a place of abundance and not an empty well. 

Putter

I’m not a big fan of to-do list. I get too selfish and want to control everything so that my to do list gets done that day. 

Spoiler alert! A homemaker to-do list is never done. There will always be more to do. 

Instead of sitting down to make a list of all the things I should get done that day and trying to stick them in my planner at the most appropriate times that I think I can accomplish them even though I have no idea of what the day will actually hold is not a very productive way to keep a home. 

I could see having a to-do list being a productive tool if you don’t have children or if your children go to school and they aren’t with you for most of the day.  However, when there are children in your home all day long, a to-do list can be very distracting for you as a homemaker.

A better way is to putter around taking care of things as you see them letting your home speak for itself as to what needs to be done right then. 

Sometimes I like to start at the back of my house and work room by room quickly addressing whatever I see needs to be put in order. This is a fun and more relaxing way than stressing over it and trying to accomplish a whole to do list.  

It’s easy to be flexible and to assess what’s more of a priority in the moment then when I sit down and make a list when I’m not actually looking at what needs to be done.

Perhaps it’s part of my personality, too. I find that I’m really good at making lists but terrible at doing anything with them. I much prefer to live in the moment and diligently keep plates spinning, making judgment calls as things come up.

Devote and redevote

Right along the same lines of surrendering your day, it’s a good habit to devote your day of work to the Lord and then as things get out of hand to take a few minutes to re-devote it back to him. Doing so allows him to redeem our days even when we have chaotic moments. 

Devoting your day and then choosing beforehand to re-devote it no matter how bad the day gets is a peaceful way of homemaking, and you can always count on the Lord being willing to redeem ourselves and our work back to him. 

Final Thoughts!

Being a productive housewife is a struggle for everyone and it’s good to know that no one struggles alone in this. Even when you have routines and systems in place, seasons of life, bring new opportunities to reassess the way our household runs.

There is no right way or wrong way to productively keep house. They’re simply the way that works for you and the season that you’re currently in.

I hope you found these productivity tips for stay at home. Mom’s helpful for your personal homemaking journey!

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