How to schedule your life day by day
Make your mama days more organized
Daily Rituals: Make a schedule for the day.
From the moment you roll out of bed, have a game plan for your day. Just like daily rituals, you will know what you’re going to do and feel more productive to get things done. It’s like a snowball effect: make one good decision and it leads to another.
Make a list of meal ideas and create a shopping list of things you’ll need.
Prepare for your weekly meals, and start simple. Maybe just dinners. Once you figure out dinners for the week, you can grow your grocery list of everything you’ll need for said meals, and then start adding what ELSE you’ll need to feed the family, such as snacks, lunch meat, condiments, etc. Take a look in your pantry and fridge to see what you have enough of for that week and what you may want to stock up on!
Make a schedule for each day for certain chores.
You will, of course, have your daily chores, like dishes, or making the beds for your daily rituals, but also keep some things just WEEKLY rituals. For example, laundry, cleaning bathrooms, meal preps, etc. For me, I always separate laundry into categories, “our laundry”, “kids laundry”. Our laundry might be a Tuesday, and kids laundry might be a Thursday, depending on amount of laundry that week or whenever you make it in your schedule. Choose one day out of the week for cleaning your bathrooms, and a different day for dusting furniture. A little bit here and there makes it feel less overwhelming and spreading chores out through the week keeps your mind busy and feeling productive.
Day in the Life
Here’s what my daily schedule looks like roughly (yours will look different but feel free to use mine as reference)
This is an average day at home.
6:30am
Wake up, go pee, throw robe on. Go into kitchen and make coffee, turn on tv and have some much needed quiet time to myself until kids wake up.
7:30-8:00am
Isabella wakes up, change her diaper, put her bottle in the warmer, go wake Jackson for school. Feed Isabella bottle and Jackson some breakfast.
8:30am
Take Jackson to school, come home, make my breakfast, put Isabella’s solid breakfast together. Make another coffee.
9:00-10:00am
Eat breakfast, feed Isabella breakfast, do dishes while she plays for another 45 minutes.
10:45-11:00am
Get Isabella down for 1st nap, while she naps I make the beds, throw in a load of laundry if it’s a laundry day, have some quiet time for myself (you might need to do work, read a book, or watch tv)
12:30pm
Isabella wakes from nap, she has her bottle, and I make myself some lunch or smoothie.
1:30pm
Isabella has a snack, either oatmeal or banana, puffs, baby oat bar.
Then she plays or we do cleaning (she watches me or I vacuum and she crawls after it. I sometimes have kids shows on in the background like WIGGLES or PEPPA PIG so I can move around the house doing little cleaning stuff.
2:30pm
We just hang out and play, maybe put laundry in the drier, and just wait until school pick up.
3:00pm
School pick up, get home, Jackson washes his hands, has a snack, I go through his lunch bag, make his lunch for tomorrow.
3:30pm
Give Isabella bottle, get her down for 2nd nap by 4:00. Fold and put away laundry and start dinner.
4:30pm
Isabella wakes from nap, dinner gets made.
5:00-6:00pm
Dinner gets eaten, dishes done, Isabella’s bottle in the warmer, kitchen tidy-up, water boiled for tomorrow’s bottles.
6:30pm
Isabella bottle fed, prepare her solids, usually oatmeal with peanut butter, Puffs, purée, snack bar.
Then I get her tidied, clean up high chair, wash her dishes, prep bottles
7:15-7:45
Isabella goes to bed (sleep trained so she sleeps through the night), Jackson gets in his jammies, I have a shower, get our rooms set up for bed(turn down sheets, close curtains, dim lights.) the three of us watch a movie for an hour or so, we tidy living room from the toy disaster.
8:30-9:00pm
Jackson has his bedtime routine, I get him to bed by 9pm, I get into bed with my glass of water on the nightstand, plug in my phone, plug in baby monitor, hunker down with my book until 10ish and I’m out like a light.
I know someone is going to think this is super tedious, but I know we NEED some kind of structure for the day, otherwise something will be forgotten, Isabella may not get a feeding on time or nap on time, and bedtime gets pushed. For babies, routine is everything. Having a plan for your day helps you make it to bedtime knowing you accomplished something, and you’re ready to tackle another day.