Tips and Tricks For Busy Working Single Moms: Get Organized Around The House and at Work

Life as a single parent who works outside the home is rewarding and challenging. Life as a single mother who works outside the home is even more-so. For many years I worked full time, completing my financial planning designation by distance education, and raising two sons who had full extra-curricular and school schedules. There were days my head throbbed and my eyes ached with exhaustion as I tried to complete course assignments late into the night, knowing I would have to be up early again the next day. There were mornings where I just didn’t want to get out of bed - the responsibilities at home and at work just seemed overwhelming. But I stuck it out, one day at a time, and one foot in front of the other. I’m not exactly the Guru of Organization on the home front, but after months…er, okay, years, of trial and error, eventually I picked up some tricks and managed to develop somewhat of a system that worked for our little family. While I would advise against trying to eat off my kitchen floors, my house was fairly tidy. My sons were clothed and seemed about as happy and well adjusted as their peers. I fed them routinely, and mostly healthily, eventually they fed themselves. Granted, they may have had more household responsibilities than their friends who came from two parent homes, but I believe they will thank me in the long run. Here are some strategies that helped this formerly single working mother stay on track. With these ideas and a good mom day planner you too can organize your week.

First of all, get a good planner. Mom day planners are becoming increasingly popular in print and online. To organize your week, begin by doing the following:

• LIST all defined blocks of time - ie. Work hours, school hours, sports practices, lessons
• LIST all household chores and errands that must be done.
• ASSIGN -beside each of the chores and errands, write down who must complete each. For example, your son might want to go to work, but only you can earn the money to support the rest of you (drat). You would rather go to school…but he must do that. Don’t forget to include yourself if you have to drive someone somewhere. Household chores: once you have listed them, think carefully about assigning them. Mum or Dad does NOT have to do all the chores. Even the youngest children can be responsible for making their bed (it doesn’t have to be perfect), sweeping the front hall, putting folded laundry away…. They may have preferences. One of my sons would rather do yard work, and the other would rather keep the garage clean and tidy. Great. For chores that no one wanted to do, such as cleaning their bathroom, they took turns.
• SCHEDULE Take a look carefully at your week. How many weeknights are taken up with extra-curricular activities? Limit it to what you can honestly handle. Find a time when everyone is home and schedule your cleaning for then.
• REVISE Try your plan for a month, then revisit your cleaning schedule with your kids. Originally we tried to get all of our cleaning done on Saturday afternoons, but it just wasn’t working…so we introduced a Mid Week Cleanup and it was a fantastic idea.

Cleaning schedules for working moms are a nightmare, believe me, I know! For three years in a row, each of the boys were on a travelling rep team for football during the summer. This meant that they had practices every Tuesday and Thursday evening as well as Saturday mornings. Sundays were game day, and usually took the entire day with prep and travel times (and were a scheduling nightmare if they were playing in different cities). Given our hectic weekend schedule, we assigned Wednesday evenings to be our midweek cleanup, as we were all home together.

Here is how it worked:
We concentrated on the high traffic areas only. I had the kitchen, son #1 had the front hall, stairs, and upstairs hallway. Son #2 had the family room where we spent the majority of our at-home time. We were each responsible for a fast (but thorough) clean of the area - vacuum and/or swiffer, dust, wipe, windex, disinfect, tidy. As Thursday is garbage and recycling day in Burlington, doing our midweek cleanup on Wednesday worked very well. We set the oven timer for fifteen minutes, and whirled through the house.

In our home, once each child turned eleven they were responsible for doing their own laundry. I bought a laundry basket for each of their rooms, and they were to put the dirty clothes in, carry the baskets down to the laundry room, and wash away. We had a lesson on how to sort, how to measure detergent, what goes in the dryer, what doesn’t. This worked…sort of. Sometimes laundry loads were filled to overflowing, other times there were only two or three items in a load(for example jerseys required for game day). I had to monitor this for several years. Towels was another issue as son #1 would throw his towel in the wash EACH time he had a shower, leaving no towels for either myself or son #2. As my elder son wasn’t keen on doing laundry anyways this posed a problem until we decided to each keep our towels in our own rooms.

Trying to get the boys to help keep the household running smoothly was not without its challenges. No one wants to clean a bathroom on a sunny Saturday afternoon when his friends have gone swimming, skateboarding, or are throwing a football around. There was some sulking and some resistance, but I find that kids are logical creatures and all I could do was to be completely honest with them. I had to work full time to support us. I had to keep taking courses to improve my knowledge and improve my earning potential. The house had to be somewhat clean and tidy and we needed to have meals to eat. There are only so many hours in a week, and there was only one of me. They have to go to school, and they want to play football (and neither one of them was old enough to drive when they started playing ball). I couldn’t drive them to football if I was cleaning their bathroom, or tidying their bedrooms. We couldn’t afford for them to play football if I wasn’t rested enough to perform effectively at work. Our Saturday afternoon chores were also divided up and alternated. Every other week they cleaned their bathroom thoroughly, with a light clean during the in-between weeks. They also washed their bed sheets on alternate weeks. I was very pleased to see them co-operate and often one would take on the bathroom while the other was doing the sheets…..whatever worked. I would clean my ensuite bathroom one Saturday, and vacuum all the bedrooms. The next week I would clean the main floor powder room and vacuum and dust the living and dining rooms (we hardly spend any time in there). My older son would take care of mowing the lawn while my younger son would water the flowers and keep the garage tidy. Leaf raking and snow shovelling were family activities, and always a lot more fun when all three of us were doing it.

Feeding a family is a job unto itself. Luckily I like to cook, and I love to bake.

For singleworking mothers, indeed, even for married working mothers, planning is key when it comes to preparing meals for your family. Here are some tips on how we do it in our home.

1. Use a magnetized tear-away notepad with an attached pen (on a string)on the front of the fridge as our grocery list. If we run out of something, anyone can it to the bottom of the list. If the boys even had a hankering for something, I told them they could add it to the list. As mom has the last say anyways, it works.
2. Use a magnetized wipe off board also on the front of the fridge. This is where I list the days of the week and write in what we are having for dinner each night. I wipe it off at the end of each week. On the lower half of the wipe-off board, I listed after school snacks that were in the fridge and cupboard - ie. Granola bars, apples, cheese, muffins, grapes, chocolate milk, cookies. The boys liked this as it reminded them what was there…and I liked it because it stopped (or at least slowed down) the voicemail messages I would get at work that began “Moooommmmm……there’s nothing to eeeeeaaaattt……”
3. Plan Ahead. On Thursday nights I would sit down with the weeks grocery sales flyers (our Friday paper is delivered Thursday evenings and my envelope of coupons. After checking the supplies left in the fridge, freezer, and cupboard from the previous week, and after confirming our football, work, and study schedule, I would make my shopping list for the upcoming week.
4. Shop on Fridays! Much less busy in the aisles than on Saturdays. I would either shop on Friday during my lunch hour, or on Friday at the dinner hour - the stores would be practically empty. Warning: Do not shop on an empty stomach or bring little hungry boys with you….or big hungry boys either
5. Once-A-Month Cooking is a great money saver and stress reliever if you have a freezer.
6. Your slow cooker is your friend! We would have soups and stews regularly from our crock pot, especially on the Sundays when we were out for eight hours at football games.