My top 5 time-saving hacks for busy mums

If you’re a busy mum (or dad!) and you’re looking for some time-saving hacks you’ve come to the right place.

As a mum of four I often feel like there aren’t enough hours in the day to get everything done that needs to be done – from homework and school admin to shopping and meal prep.

Staying on top of household tasks can feel overwhelming, especially if you’ve got a paid job to do at the same time, so anything that saves time and makes life a little easier can be a game-changer.

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With four children ranging in age from four to 13 people often say they don’t know how I do it (whatever ‘it’ is!) so here I’m going to share some of my top time-saving hacks that help get us through each week as a family of six.

1. Be clever when it comes to meal prep

I don’t know about you, but working out what to make everyone for dinner every night for the next 18 years wasn’t what I thought motherhood was going to be about. Throw in one child who won’t eat green, one vegetarian and one child who will only eat beige, and meal planning can become a recipe for an ongoing headache you’d rather not have to deal with.

But family meals don’t have to be a headache if you’re clever and think outside the box. Family meal boxes are the perfect solution if you want to make and eat healthy and varied meals together, without the stress of having to think about what to cook every day. At Too Many Foodboxes, for example, you can pick and choose between different food box brands including Hello Fresh, Gousto, Mindful Chef, Pasta Evangelists and Simply Cook. Each box comes with all the ingredients you need to make each meal already portioned and measured out, so all the all the hard work (and thinking!) is done for you. Having the different food box brands all in one place also means you can choose everything from familiar family favourites to new dishes. If you haven’t tried family friendly meal boxes before discounts codes are often available so you can see if a meal box will work for you and your family.

2. Cook once, eat twice

If you’re going to spend the time and energy cooking a meal from scratch, make enough so the meal can be eaten twice – or even three times – and put the rest in the freezer for another day. My motto is ‘cook once, eat twice’ and by doing that you’re buying yourself time in the future when you don’t have to cook. This also means you’ve always got a back-up for nights when there’s lots on, such as lots of after school clubs, and you’d really rather not have to cook on top of all the to-ing and fro-ing.

3. Lay out school uniform the night before

Laying out school uniform the night before in individual piles for each child means it’s to hand when everyone is sleepy and still waking up in the morning, and you won’t spend unnecessary time (and energy) looking for a rogue grey sock or lost school shoe. With four children to get out of the door by 8am each morning a school bag ‘station’ in the hall with their shoes, water bottles and whatever they need for that day already laid out also works well, ensuring a speedy exit and that you make it to the school gate on time.

4. Attack the washing mountain every six months

When I say attack, I mean go through the pile of dirty laundry every six months or so and ask yourself if everything in it is genuinely going to make it to the washing machine in the foreseeable future. If the answer is no, then get rid of it! I recently went through the kids’ dirty laundry basket because there were things at the bottom of it that hadn’t seen the light of day in months, and frankly never will. Apart from the fact nobody had missed or asked for any of the items of clothing lurking at the bottom of it, it turns out it mostly consisted of clothing the kids have since outgrown. So, what’s the point of keeping and washing it? Instead, I saved myself a job and bagged it up for the recycling bin at the dump – and what’s more it was SO liberating!

5. Create a lifemin routine

From booking online food shops (or recipe boxes) to doing the laundry and making packed lunches, creating a routine for lifemin tasks will save you time and help lessen the invisible load (although sadly it won’t get rid of it completely!) Choose a day or night to do each task each week and stick to the schedule. That way, you can forget about those tasks for the rest of the week. I find doing things in bulk also helps, because that way you don’t have to think about a particular task until it needs doing again. For example, we have our weekly grocery shop delivered to our door, and I book the online delivery slots in bulk in advance so I don’t have to think about booking a slot week to week or worry about not getting the time slot we’d prefer.