13 Effective Time Management Tips For Busy Moms

Effective time management tips and strategies for busy moms who want to improve their time management skills and get more work done in less time. Get FREE productivity planner printable for your daily, weekly and monthly schedules and goal tracker to track your goals.

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Do you struggle with managing your time effectively?

Being a working mom or a stay at home mom who works from home, you have so many responsibilities – from work responsibilities to mom duties and managing your home but not enough time in a day to get all the work done.

Here are some time management tips for busy moms that can be implemented into your daily routine so you can effectively manage your time and get more work done in less time. These simple time management tips and strategies can help you be in more control of your time.

One of the things I struggled with since returning to work after having my son was how to manage my time. I felt I was not being productive enough with my time and was always being overwhelmed by the many tasks I had on my to-do list.

As time went by, I have learned to implement some of these tips so I can always be on top of my tasks and not constantly feel overwhelmed.

If I can do this, I know you can too. 

It is easy for things to spiral out of control and get chaotic if you don’t manage your time effectively.

Well, I believe if you implement some of these strategies and techniques into your daily routine, you can become more productive and go on to create some “mummy time” for yourself.

Download FREE Productivity Planner Printables below

1. Write Things Down

Writing things down has been a huge time saver for me. There have been so many times I have had to miss a vital appointment or forgot to make that important phone call because I didn’t have them written time.

Writing things even the little things down like – do the laundry will not only save you time but also free up your mind from trying to remember things. Use a daily planner to make a daily to-do list.

You can also use Productivity Planner printable which includes a daily, weekly and monthly printable.

2. Set Goals

Learn how to set SMART goals and break down your goals into smaller goals.

Have a short, medium and long-term goals, and with every activity you do, you need to ask yourself if what you are doing is getting you closer to accomplishing your goals.

Setting goals will enable you to be more focused and motivated, and it will give you some direction of what you want to achieve for the day, week or month.

3. Assess Your Time 

Assess how you spend your time. Look carefully into the activities that take up the most of your time and assess the importance of those activities. It is common for individuals to have things on their to-do list that is not important.

And it is common to classify tasks as essential or necessary, but with a closer look, there are not important. You want to make sure you are spending your time on the critical and urgent tasks.

As I mentioned earlier, learn to write things down. Make a list of the things you would usually do and eliminate those activities that are not important but are taking up all of your time.

4. Get Organized

Much time can go to waste due to lack of organization. Having a cluttered environment and mind will make you less productive, and it will cause you to jump from one task to another leaving them incomplete.

Come up with an efficient system on how to organize and handle your tasks. Make sure you group like-task together.

Having an organized environment can tremendously save you much time and not always be in a situation where you are always looking for items because you can’t remember it’s last known location. Take some time an organize, and this could be arranging your kitchen or organizing your workspace.

“For every minute spent in organizing, an hour is earned.

– Benjamin Franklin.”

5. Prioritize Task

Prioritizing task is an essential time management skill, and it is something one can struggle in getting it right because it is easy to have trivial tasks on to-do lists. Some tasks may seem like it is very urgent and essential, but if you take a closer look, you would realize how unurgent and unimportant those tasks are.

Before you can begin to prioritize, you need to have your goals set and the list of tasks. Prioritizing is making sure you are doing the right things in the correct order. So you want to focus on prioritizing those crucial tasks first.

A simple prioritization task you can have is by grouping your tasks into categories. These could include – those tasks you can complete immediately and that long-term activity that may take you several days or months to complete.

This simple strategy can help you get organized and improve your time management skills.

6. Plan and Schedule Your day

Planning and scheduling my day has become a must for me. It helps me stay on top of my task, and I can easily track what I do on a daily basis. When you have so much on your to-do list, things can quickly spiral out of control hence It is essential you always plan and schedule your day. 

Sometimes it may not go as planned, and that is ok. Have a schedule that is flexible that you can easily adjust if other things crop up. Having a daily, weekly or monthly plan will help you put things in order which will help you in managing your time effectively. 

Make a list of things that need to be completed and then schedule those task to each day of the week. Have a daily plan in place so that you know what you need to do. You can use a daily planner or click below to download a FREE daily, weekly and monthly planner printable to schedule your day.

I find it much easier using a physical planner because just seeing it gives me that reminder that I need to write something down as opposed to using an online version however if you prefer to use an online planner that should still work as long as you are scheduling your day.

There are some excellent online productivity tools such as Trello that you can use as well.
Getting into the habit of making a plan and scheduling your day will help you to be in more control of your time.

“You need a plan to build a house. To build a life, it is even more important to have a plan or goal”

– Zig Ziglar.

7. Have a Routine

Having a daily routine is also a great time management tip for busy moms that will help you to manage your time. Morning routines can give you that momentum you need to start your day right.

Identify those tasks you need to do in the morning and those tasks you need to do in the evening before bed. Your morning routine could merely be waking up early, meditating or exercising, work on your projects and have a good breakfast before rushing out the door.

For me, my nighttime routine involves getting my work bag and my toddler’s bag ready for the next morning, laying out the clothes ready to wear in the morning and getting any lunch pack ready. Cleaning out the kitchen sink and getting the milk bottles prepared for use in the morning.

Getting into a routine will need some practice, and it can take a minimum of about 21 days to form a new habit. 

Practice! Practice! Practice!

8. Meal Plan

Have you ever thought of how much time it takes you just to come up with a dinner menu and after the long process of trying to decide what to eat, you realize that you don’t have all the items you need?

Planning your meals is a great way to save time. It eliminates the time you have to waste asking yourself the question of “what is for dinner” because, with meal planning, you plan your meal for the whole week or month.

Meal planning takes away some of the stress that comes with making dinner for the family. It is a great way to manage your time because you already know what you need to cook in advance and it also saves you money and avoids unnecessary spending.

I wrote a post on how to meal plan for beginners if you want to learn how to meal plan for a week. 

9. Shop Online

When you are a busy mama, you barely have time for yourself, making regular trips to the supermarket waste a lot of your time. Also, shopping with kids can cause you to be frazzled since you have to keep an eye on them while carrying shopping basket constantly.

A great way to save time is by shopping for your grocery online and having it delivered to you. It keeps you from making a trip to the shop. That time spent shopping can be used to complete that personal project or to write that blog post. 

There are sometimes when you may still be required to make a trip to shop if your favorite shop does not provide delivery service, but if you meal plan, you already have a list of items you need to purchase which saves you time. 

10. Use Slow Cooker

Using a slow cooker to make dinner meals is a great way to save time. There is so much ease when using a slow cooker because the only thing you need to do is prep the ingredients, put into the slow cooker and off you go.

Slow cooker requires minimal attention from you, and you can use up that time to do other activities on your to-do list.

11. Wake Up Early

I used to be a night owl until I decided to make a change and switch to an early riser and I can’t begin to tell you how great it has been. I write my blog post early in the morning because that is the time I am most efficient. 

If you are a busy mom or a working mom and you want to be more productive, waking up early before your little one is a great way to get some work done without any distractions.

When you wake up early, you have no or minimal distractions so you can be more productive and do more work with just a few hours than when you are trying to pull an all-nighter.

Being an early riser is an excellent time management strategy, and you can get more work done in a short amount of time. However, if you prefer working late, that is still great.

“Early to bed and early to rise makes a man healthy, wealthy and wise”

– Ben Franklin

12. Make Use of Commute Time

Commute time is also a great way to maximize your time and do some work. I spend my commute time reading on self-development books. 

You can use your commute time to get some more work done or even make some phone calls and catch up with friends and family, so when you get home, you can focus on other tasks.

You can work on your planner or do a meal plan and find recipes for your meal.
If you drive, you can listen to a podcast or an audiobook. You can use voice-to-text programs like Evernote and voice assistant when brainstorming ideas.

Making use of your commute time is an excellent time management tip for busy moms that will enable you to get more work done and tick those things off your to-do list.

13. Go the Extra Mile

Well, I am not asking you to run a mile. I am a busy mama, and cooking is not something I can do every day. If you love cooking every day that is great.

For busy moms who have their hands full, cooking in double is a great way to save time, so you don’t have to cook every day or every week. Whenever you cook, try cooking in double, making extras and put the extras in the freezer for those times you can’t make it into the kitchen.

So you now have 13 time management tips you can implement in your daily schedule. You don’t have to use all. I don’t use all these strategies at once. So pick the ones that are more appealing to you and apply. 

What are your favorite time management tips you use to save time and get more work done? 

Please let me know in the comment below.