I want to tell you a secret.
It’s something about my personality, a key element. It’s either my greatest strength or it’s my defining weakness.
If we all agree it’s my greatest strength, then I would say my secret is that I’m an incredibly efficient person.
But if it’s in fact my defining weakness, then my secret would be this. I’m an incredibly lazy person.
Efficiency plays into my indolence. I’m always looking for short cuts, ways to do a good job faster, the steps that can be skipped, the help you can find. Mostly it’s all in an effort to sneak in an afternoon nap spend more time with my children.
Here are my picks of the top services to make a working mum’s life a bit easier.
Stop shopping.
I hate grocery shopping, with a passion. It sucks out a couple of hours of your weekend, you have to fight to park the car, you have to do battle with the hoards to get a deli ticket. No. Just no.
Get your groceries delivered.
A little less of this and a little more naps. Image: iStock.
Outsource your school supply shopping.
Officeworks, god love them, have this genius service where they will pick and pack your kids school list for you for free. Plus, you get the lowest prices guaranteed on every school list item.
You submit your list in-store or online at officeworks.com.au/schoollistservice (no prizes for guessing that I submit online), the excellent staff will pack it all up for you for free and then contact you when it’s ready to collect.
Unfortunately, you’ll still have to stick the contact on the workbooks.
Leave all the hard decisions to someone else. Image: iStock.
No more sticking contact on school workbooks.
Wait. You guys. No, you WON’T have to stick the contact on the workbooks. You can Airtasker that job out. And thank god for that, because how much of a pain is it trying to get sticky contact on workbooks with NO AIRBUBBLES? Yes. That’s right. Basically impossible.
This is something you make someone else’s problem.
Someone else's problem now. Image: iStock.
Stop organising.
Six months ago, I did I crazy thing. At least, that’s what I thought it was at the time. I pulled every item of clothing and jewellery out of my wardrobe, dumped it all on my bed and invited a perfect stranger over to my house to inspect it all. Hannah, from The Clothing Cleanse held up every single item of clothing I owned (‘cept my knickers… I do have some shame) and helped me to decide to keep, donate or chuck. Then, the stuff we decided I should keep, she helped me organise in my wardrobe.
Well… more to the point, she gently told me how to organise my wardrobe and did it for me. Bless her. I now have a perfectly tidy wardrobe full of clothes I actually wear and I’ve managed to keep it organised.
Outsource your cleaning.
If you can, get a cleaner. Nothing fancy. Just someone for two hours every fortnight to do your floors, kitchen and bathroom. If you work full time (or even if you only work part time) weekends are your time, and your family time.
Weekends are not for scrubbing your ensuite loo. You should definitely outsource that.
Ain't nobody got time for that. Image: iStock.
Stop cooking.
If you’re REALLY not into shopping, you could just stop cooking and order some ready-made meals. There are a bunch of services that will cook fresh food into proper square meals and then drop them at your home for you to heat and serve at your convenience. Youfoodz and Lite 'n' Easy are national services.
For our Sydney friends, I recommend Dinner Ladies and in Melbourne, I quite like Let Lulu.
How do you outsource your life tasks?
Top Comments
When did family time become lazy time? Studies show that families who work together to do things in the home are tighter units. Why can't the kids help you cook a meal? When I was a kid my mum would sit with my sister and me and we'd cover books together. We'd cut out subject appropriate pictures and stick them on the front. We baked and gardened together. And yes - my mother worked long hours in a mixed business she owned with another wife and mother in a country town. She wanted to spend her time with us teaching us how to become self sufficient and boy! did she do a good job.