Being a stay-at-home parent is more than a full-time job because it’s all about taking care and responsibility. After all, the average full-time job requires a 40-hour work week, but when you’re a stay-at-home parent, you’re always on the clock. This constant workload can make life pretty stressful. So, how can you reduce your stress while still being an attentive parent?
1. Lower Expectations for Cleanliness
Your house is a mess, and you wish that you could make it sparkle again. Why can’t it look nice for more than twenty minutes? Well, when you have kids, pets, and limited time on your hands, maintaining a clean house is near-impossible to do on your own.
It may sound strange but consider lowering your expectations for cleanliness. Author and therapist KC Davis gives this advice in her book How to Keep House While Drowning.
For instance, she suggests that if you find folding the laundry a constant stressor, don’t do it. It doesn’t have to be meticulously folded and put away in drawers. As long as the clothes are clean, they can stay crumpled in laundry baskets. You can find other useful tips on KC Davis’s TikTok.
2. Share the Load
Chores and errands aren’t your sole responsibility just because you’re at home for most of the day. When your partner comes home from work, they need to tackle household tasks, too. Remember that being tired from their job isn’t an excuse. Your job doesn’t end, and you need their help to make it easier.
If you’re not sure how to divvy up these domestic tasks, look into the Fair Play method. The Fair Play method is meant to help couples balance their workloads so that no one is doing a lot more than their fair share.
3. Get the Kids Involved
Your partner isn’t the only one who can take tasks off your plate. Your kids can, too! Obviously, this depends on their ages. School-age kids can help prepare their lunches and snacks for school, while daycare-age kids can help tidy up their toys and put them back into their toyboxes. These small tasks can make life easier for you, and they will teach your kids valuable lessons about taking good care of themselves and their spaces.
4. Hire Professionals
If you can afford to hire professionals to tackle your domestic tasks, hire them. Book a cleaning service to clean your kitchen and bathrooms. Hire a dog walking service to bring your dog to the park. Use a grocery delivery service to pick up and drop off your groceries for the week.
At the very least, use professionals for tasks that are much more involved, like cleaning out your gutter system, clearing out the vents, or dealing with a stubborn plumbing clog. It will be less stressful to have a pro do this for you. And they’ll probably get the job done a lot faster than you.
5. Automate Bill Payments
Are you in charge of managing the household’s bill payments? Make this task easier on yourself by automating bill payments throughout the month. You should be following a personal budget before you do this because you’ll want to be absolutely sure that you’ll have enough funds for the payments to go through.
In addition to automating bill payments, automate your savings, too. You can set up automated transfers to a savings account on a monthly basis. Turn this into your emergency fund. An emergency fund can be a useful way to avoid borrowing funds to cover urgent household repairs and services.
If you don’t have an emergency fund, you might not have enough savings to cover an urgent expense out of the blue. You might consider borrowing funds through a credit card or an online loan to handle the expense. This will give you some temporary relief. After the expense is covered, you will have to make a series of scheduled payments to give back what you borrowed. Of course, automating these scheduled payments should make the repayment process much easier.
Being a stay-at-home parent will always be a challenge, but it doesn’t have to be an insurmountable one. Use these tips to make this responsibility a lot less stressful.
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