Survival tips for stay at home moms is a friendly guide for all the stay at home moms around the world that would help them with tips and tricks to survive the messy & chaotic side of a SAHM Life.
A lot if already being said about a SAHM life, however, it won’t hurt to reiterate that being a SAHM is not easy. And every now and then, we do need support, Love and understanding about this fact from family and society at large.
I have been through this mayhem for 13 years and over the years I have learnt some strategies that have proved to be useful in my journey everyday. So I will be discussing my 22 survival tips for stay at home moms in this post.
Survival Tips for Stay at Home Moms
At the onset, I just want to congratulate all the stay at home moms for doing a wonderful job that you are. I know we all have been trying hard to keep our houses spic and span, our kids happy and playful, and our tables filled with healthy & nutritious meals. Is that it? Well no there is a lot more too to a life of a SAHM.
The point I want to drive home is that we are doing a lot and we are doing excellent at it. May be its not near perfection but then Perfection is just a myth. We do need to pat our backs every now and then and reaffirm that we are doing a great job.
Also to let you know that we SAHM are all in it together. It is so relieving to know that you are not alone who has a messy living room even though you did clean up 4 times today. I know the chaos and have lived through it too. Infact all of us have. So it’s all ok.
Utile Tips For a Happy & Fulfilling SAHM Life
Here are my top strategies and survival tips for stay at home moms
| 1. Create your Schedule |
| 2. Have a Morning Routine in Place |
| 3. Indulge in Exercise |
| 4. Divide the Chores |
| 5. Have your Girl Gang by your side |
| 6. Be Organized |
| 7. Dress up Well Each day |
| 8. Embrace Chaos |
| 9. Teach free Play to Kids |
| 10. Take Time out for your Passions |
| 11. Know your Ikigai |
| 12. Make a choice to be happy |
| 13. Be part of a community |
| 14. Step out each day |
| 15. Eat healthy |
| 16. Pre plan your meals |
| 17. Take frequent breaks |
| 18. Automate things |
| 19. Stay away from Toxic People |
| 20. Lay down some House Rules |
| 21. Work Towards Financial independence |
| 22. Choose your Battles Wisely |
1. A Schedule builds in routine and predictability in SAHM Life
This is the first step that I would suggest to start with when you feel that your life is just going so much out of control. Take a break from whatever you are doing, sit in place where you can without any disturbances and work on creating a schedule for your days.
Be rational and be easy on yourself while you are doing so. Do factor in your me time, and an outdoor time for yourself each day.
Having a well planned customised schedule goes a long way in having you keep your sanity alive as a Stay at Home Mom. If you are looking for ideas on how to organize your day as a SAHM, look here.
2. A Morning Routine sets you up for a winning day, Dear SAHM
Having a super productive and well thought of morning routine helps you start your day on a winning note. Do factor in time for meditation or anything else that you love doing in your morning routine.
Having that time for yourself right at the start of the day helps set the right priorities and sets you out for a winning day ahead. You can find a lot of ideas & resources around Morning Routine for SAHMs here.
Also, have a look here if you are looking for Morning Routine ideas For SAHM of babies & toddlers.
3. Exercise helps SAHMs stay Happy
One of the best ways to feel in control of your life is to be in control of your body and emotions. And exercising every day even if it is for 20 minutes helps significantly in both these areas.
So one of the best Survival Tips For SAHM that I can advise is to Exercise and focus on your health as a mom.
4. Delegating Household Chores helps SAHMs in more ways than one
Although you are a stay at home mom, you are not supposed to manage the entire household on your own. Divide the chores amongst you and your partner, seek professional help for tasks that you can outsource in case your partner can’t handle the few of the chores.
And if you have grown up kids as a SAHM, involve them too in the chores of the house. You are just not helping them learn necessary life skills to be self-dependent but also teaching them respect for others who are managing chores for them.
5. Have your Girl Gang by your side
I can’t stress more on the importance of having your friends around. They act as a big support system and every woman on this earth needs her girlfriends around. So try and review the old ties or make friends with fellow moms in your community but have friends whom you like spending time with and who take you away from the everyday chaos for at least a few minutes of the day.
6. Being Organized is the way to a manageable life
Being organized in order to have the smooth functioning of the entire household is one of the top skills for being an effective SAHM. And yes this skill can be learned. Start working on organizing your home and take it further to meals, finances, and lot of other areas of being a SAHM.
If you would want to read about Top Secrets of an Organized SAHM, click here.
7. Dressing up makes SAHMs feel powerful
Dressing up well is my top tip For SAHM to have a feel-good factor in place every day in their lives. You have heard about the concept of power dressing right. Well, use that to feel more in control of your day and your life. It does have an impact.
So, if you are going out for some work or staying in to look after your kids, always dress up well & look put together.
8. Embrace Chaos
Once you have entered motherhood, it is high time you start embracing the chaos. Because it is unavoidable and embracing chaos would help you have less stress on yourself. There are always 2 ways of looking at things. Try the positive on and focus on all the love, warmth, and fulfillment that your kids have brought into your life rather than the chaos, mayhem, and clutter.
9. Teach free Play to Kids
This is again one of the important survival tips For SAHM. You are available to your kids all the time since you are at home taking care of them. However, it does not mean that you have to be always available for their entertainment and no you are not the answer to their boredom always.
Teach them to play on their own. Train them to free play at times so you can do something else or just simply enjoy your cup of coffee in the evening. There are a lot of other positives of letting them play on their own like you help them spark their creativity and things like role plays and pretend plays help them grow holistically.
10. Following your passions helps SAHMs to break free from everyday stress
Do what you like to do every day. That brings you happiness and is a great way to de-stress from the chaotic madness and exhaustion that is so big a part of a SAHM life.
11. Know you Ikigai helps SAHMs lead a meaningful life
The Japanese concept of Ikigai is simply our reason to live or our reason to wake up each morning with excitement. Invest your time & resources in self-awareness and find out about your purpose. Living a life aligned to your ikigai / purpose is always easier to live and more fulfilling.
Once you know you ikigai, do some things that are in alignment to your ikigai regularly. They would bring in immense happiness and would help you in overlooking small and meaningless issues that we tend to focus on too at times.
12. Make the choice to be happy, Dear SAHMs
Your happiness lies inside you. So stop looking around to find it. Make a choice to be happy no matter what circumstances you are living in. And know all this stress and chaos is temporary and you will come out of it. The life starts getting better the moment you decide to be happy and grateful for all you have.
Anyway, the kids are gonna outgrow all the ruckus that they are creating presently, it is just a matter of time. Knowing this & living with this consciousness helps ease the life out.
13. Belong to your Tribe & sail through the mess Dear SAHMs
Have like-minded moms who are in the same life stage, or be a part of a tribe/community helps ease out the burden too. you have something to share and somethings to listen. You learn and grow each day as an individual as a part of the community.
So I would suggest, look out for your tribe and participate and interact with fellow members. There are a lot of online community of moms that are really helpful too. I would like to invite you to be a part of my community of Moms – Mom Chipper. Join Here.
14. Step outdoors each day
This is one tip that really helped me. Even on days, I didn’t have any work to do outside of the home, I used to step out even if to the grocery store. Stepping out of home is simply a change of reference and results in the change of mood every time. So try doing this when you feeling stressed or overwhelmed. Sometimes all it takes is just a stroll in the neighborhood.
15. As a SAHM, make sure to eat healthy
However, time-pressed you are, always, and always focus on taking the right diet. An occasional splurging on calorie-dense food or a takeaway meal from a restaurant is ok, however, this should not be a routine. Because you are what you eat and what you eat has a direct impact on your health.
16. Pre-plan your meals
Work on Weekly meal planning for your family. On one hand, you get clarity on the nutrition you are feeding kids, on the other, you really save a lot of time and energy on thinking what to cook each day. It is also helpful in doing your grocery shopping as well.
While preparing the meal plans, take care of all family members’ preferences and nutritional requirements and you are sorted for a week.
17. Take frequent breaks
Motherhood is a challenging job. So factor in taking frequent time outs from motherhood and it really helps in maintaining your sanity.
18. Automate things
Automate things that you can and it helps in freeing up of a lot of mind space. It could mean making kids wear set clothes on set days, cooking set meals on set days, and even automating your cleaning schedule.
19. Stay away from Toxic People
This is one of the best survival tips that I can offer to SAHM or to any individual. Please stay away from Toxic & manipulative people. They suck your energy and drain your wellbeing like nothing else in your life.
20. Lay down some House Rules
Rules and routines always help in streamlining things and processes and are very beneficial if done and managed properly even in a household setting. So lay down and communicate those rules to the entire family and see your life getting streamlined and more in control.
21. Work Towards Financial independence
This one is an important tip for all SAHM. Agreed you are at home taking care of your kids, however, for your own financial security, it is always a good idea to work part-time or look for work from home options and work towards your financial independence. I am coming up with a huge repository of SAHM work from home Jobs on my blog so stay tuned if you are looking for something like this.
22. Choose your Battles Wisely
Life as a SAHM is challenging. While some people understand and live through that there is a large section of society who just can’t accept this fact. For them, it’ s a fun and easy job to just stay at home and overlook kids. It is a great idea to ignore proving to the whole world and choose your battles wisely. Because every discussion argument or fight that we get involved in, does take a part of our energy with itself.
In the end, I would just like to say that being a SAHM is a journey of love affection and growth for a mom. When focussed on the right things it can be a cherish-able experience of a lifetime. So live each moment of your stay at home mom’s journey with utmost joy and care for yourself and your family too.