Any parent can tell you how much work goes into raising children. Having a career and raising a family are both time consuming and take a lot of energy. Any steps that you can take to save time should be considered. I know there are a million sites out there, telling you to do this or that, but the following tips are tried and true for me- and I’m a single mom!
Simple tasks like grocery shopping may need to be done multiple times per week- but you can save hours through the grocery delivery services that more and more stores are using. You choose the items that you want and place them in your “cart.” When you’re done you pay via credit card and set your delivery time. If you are constantly feeling pressed for time here are a few ideas that can help you and your mate delegate duties and save time:
Take turns
I’m a single mom, and after work I have to go pick up my son from the babysitter five days a week. The traffic is bad during rush hour and sometimes my personal training sessions run a few minutes over because certain clients need more time than others. So I’m constantly rushing to get him and trying to avoid the traffic. If I had the ability to alternate days with someone, I would be able to relax some afternoons and not have to face that commute. I could go home and start cooking dinner earlier.
Since I don’t have that option I have come up with an alternative way to free up time to rest after picking my son up. On Sundays I don’t work; so I use that evening to prepare meals for the rest of the week. I make big pots of vegetables and I’ll bake an entire chicken or pot roast. We eat that night and put the rest up in containers. During the week I make sandwiches from the leftover meat or just make a couple of side dishes to go with it. Not having to prep an entire meal every night has saved me about an hour or more per day.
Outsource
Having a financial advisor or hiring someone to help you file taxes and plan for the future is helpful and saves time. In the long run it can also save you a lot of money. Making mistakes on your tax paperwork can force you to pay money back to the government instead of getting a check. Filling out the paperwork and going over receipts and things like that is pretty time consuming too. Having a trained expert can alleviate that stress, and having someone to help you make smart investments can help your family’s financial future.
Around the home
Let’s be honest with this one, cleaning up the house is not a fun thing to do but it has to be done. The responsibility of that should not fall on one person, or else it would take an entire day up depending on the size of the house. But if you are a single parent of a young child, you really don’t have much of a choice. One thing that I do is take a few minutes daily to do some light cleaning around the house to avoid buildup and the need to dedicate large chunks of time to cleaning up.
