Just Getting Things Done

Helping overwhelmed and exhausted moms break free from the chaos and feel like themselves again.

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Moms: Eliminate Your To-Do List in 4 Mins

Even if you're exhausted after a full day at work and have no energy to play with your kids. Get my FREE Empowered Mom's Guide to Getting Things Done, a simple 2-part strategy you can apply automatically to get your To-Do List out of your head and done.
- Stop feeling like you're failing as a wife and mom even if you can't remember the last time you mopped the kitchen floor.
- Find the energy to get things done even when your toddler wakes you up at 3:31 am and you don't want to get out of bed in the morning.
- Take back control of your life even though you only have 3 waking hours a day at home with your kids.

 
 

Going Back to Work After Maternity Leave – 1 Week To Go

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As a working mom, returning to work after maternity leave is a time of major changes and major emotions. There are so many thoughts and feelings that go through my head, I wanted to chronicle it because, well, it may never happen again. I hope my journey can provide some comfort to other women that are going through the same thing.

Going Back to Work After Maternity Leave - 1 Week To Go
Clara on my lap our last day home together

The weekend

Over the weekend I said more than once, “I don’t want to go back to work.” But it’s not as simple as that statement makes it seem. I don’t want to go back to work because right now I get to stay home all day and snuggle my sweet baby. I don’t think I’m going to care at all about work. It’s not going to seem important compared to my baby.

I also know that I can’t stay home with (just) the baby forever. We have two other kids and we couldn’t keep sending them to daycare if I wasn’t working. I wouldn’t want to. But I also know that I wouldn’t want to stay home with all three kids every day.

I don’t really like saying that, because in some ways it makes me feel bad. I feel like I have to justify it by saying they’ve been in daycare and they’re used to spending all day with other kids their age in an environment that is tailored to them. Our house isn’t like that. I also just don’t think I’d be great at it. I love my kids so much and I think they’re amazing and beautiful. I know myself, though, and at some point that just wouldn’t be enough for me. [Read more…] about Going Back to Work After Maternity Leave – 1 Week To Go

How Do Working Moms Get It All Done?

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Working Moms Get It All Done - Working Mom
© Meredith Moran Photography www.meredithkmoran.com

I remember when I went back to work after my first daughter, Emma, was born. I was overwhelmed with questions. How do I focus on work when I left my baby with someone else? How do I know if I did the right thing by coming back to work? How am I supposed to remember everything? Am I a bad mom because I’m excited to only be responsible for myself for the next 8 hours?

So I did what anyone does these days when they have a question. I turned to Google.

One of the biggest questions I had was “How do working moms get it all done?”

So I googled that and “How do working moms do it all?” The search results were filled with articles telling me that I couldn’t do it all. They said things like “just accept that you’ll have dirty dishes” or that “your laundry will never be done.” They told me I would just have to lower my standards. That was the only way I would be able to get by as a working mom.

But that didn’t work for me. What if it makes me happy to cook dinner every night and to make sure we don’t ever have piles of dirty laundry laying around the house? What if mountains of dirty dishes would make me unhappy? As a working mom, what am I supposed to do then?

There was no good answer that I could find.

[Read more…] about How Do Working Moms Get It All Done?

Reflections on Mental Clutter

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Reflecting on Mental Clutter

I think mental clutter is a lot like physical clutter. Something lying around in an inconvenient place that requires some action by you. It starts with the thoughts that fly through your head all day. You know the ones.

  • I have to make a well-check appointment for my little one.
  • I need to remember to bring my computer home from work today.
  • I need to call my mom.
  • I signed up for a conference at school, I wonder when that is.
  • I really need new shoes.
  • My purse is a mess, I should clean it out.
  • The kids got flu shots but I haven’t yet.
  • And on and on.

If you’ve read my guide or some of my other articles, you know my strategy when I have those thoughts is to act on them right away. That way I’m not adding to the mental clutter. If I don’t do them or schedule them, they will just be in my mind until I finally take care of them. Like the physical clutter, I may not notice it but it’s there. When I try to think about it, it doesn’t immediately come to mind. It just hangs out there in the back of my mind causing stress. [Read more…] about Reflections on Mental Clutter

Be More Productive At Home and Still Spend Quality Time With Your Kids

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Be More Productive At Home and Still Spend Quality Time With Your KidsThe 5 strategies I’ve implemented to get more done at home and still spend quality time with my kids.

I’ve spent a lot of time recently working on my time management and I’ve come up with 5 strategies that really help me get stuff done while still spending quality time with my girls. You’ll probably recognize a couple of them because they are basically my foundation. But a couple of them surprised me and I’ve been told they surprised others too.

You can read the whole article over here on Lifehack.

4 Reasons You Need a Minimalist Wardrobe

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Minimalist wardrobe

A few months ago I was in a place where I felt like I was barely making it through the day-to-day. Every day I would come home from work, get the girls from daycare and make dinner. By the time we sat down to eat, I would say to myself, “I don’t have the energy to” whatever it was I had to do that night. I felt like I could barely make it through the girls’ bedtime.

I thought to change anything I needed to do more, but the idea of doing more stressed me out. It seemed like it would take too much effort to change. Then somehow I found Courtney Carver again, and I started reading her blog Be More With Less. I had heard of Courtney before, but it had been a while since I had thought of her. I read about her minimalist fashion challenge Project 333 and bought the microcourse. [Read more…] about 4 Reasons You Need a Minimalist Wardrobe