Getting time with your kids at home isn’t something that happens that often when you’re a working mom. If you’re a stay at home mom, the same is true in some respects; there always seems to be something that needs to be done around the home or some chore that needs completing. So when you do have precious time with the children, you don’t want to be feeling stressed and cranky.
Unfortunately, a lot of the time that’s exactly how we feel, even when we try our best not to. There are so many calls and pulls on us that we get stressed out extremely easily, and that’s to the detriment of ourselves and our families. So here are some ways that you can be more relaxed at home and enjoy the free time you have.
Be Prepared
Sometimes things will go wrong. Your car may not start, or you could have a flat tire. You might need to find a babysitter quickly, or perhaps you have a leak in your shower or a burst pipe. In a lot of cases, these things cannot be avoided, no matter how much you might like to wish them away.
The key to being less stressed even when problems like these occur is to be prepared. If you always have a spare tire in your trunk and you know how to change it, the problem becomes a lot less of a challenge. If you know you can search online for “plumbers near me” who will come and fix a leak or burst pipe in an emergency, you can react quickly and save yourself the worry.
Get Enough Sleep
When you don’t get enough sleep the night before, you’ll feel sluggish and lethargic the next day. You’ll also be grouchy and may even snap at those around you. You certainly won’t feel relaxed as everything will be extra irritating, and you’ll be annoyed at even the smallest problems that might not even have registered if you had slept well.
So, in order to be more relaxed at home and enjoy time with your family (and for them to be able to enjoy spending time with you more), sleep is important. Although it varies from person to person, an average of eight hours per night is the ideal amount of sleep to aim for. If you know what time you need to get up, you can work backward to determine what time you need to go to sleep.
Enough sleep is good, but it also has to be quality sleep. Broken sleep will leave you feeling unrested as much as too little sleep will. Don’t use any screens for an hour before going to bed (the blue light from these confuses your body and makes it think it’s still daytime), and don’t drink any caffeine either.
Switch Off Your Phone
If you’re spending time with your friends and family, you won’t need to be checking your phone all the time. It can become a big habit, and you might not even realize you’re doing it. When you’re looking at your social media accounts or reading emails, you’re not allowing yourself to be fully in the moment, and that can mean missing out on real life.
The best thing you can do is switch off your phone entirely, and ideally leave it in a completely different room. If you enjoy taking photos, invest in a small digital camera, and use that instead. Some will even allow you to upload directly to social media if that’s something you want to do.
The point is, using your phone less will make you less stressed because you won’t feel you need to be answering emails or calls, and you won’t see anything on social media that makes you upset. Smartphones and social media should be used in your spare time, and that’s it. You’ll quickly break the habit and be more relaxed too.
Have Dedicated Work Times
A working mom will have a job to do, whether that is out of the house or she works from home. A stay-at-home mom will have things to do around the house and children to take care of.
No matter which category you fall into, mixing your working times with your fun times is always going to be difficult, and multi-tasking will actually slow you down.
The best thing you can do to stop yourself from getting stressed and trying to do too much at once is to split your time up into sections. When you’re working, you should do just that. When you’re at home with your family, that’s what you need to focus on. This will help you to be much more relaxed.
The steps above are the best way to start on your new journey to feeling more relaxed at home. Once you start, your only regret will be that you didn’t make these changes sooner.
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