Reprioritize so That Self-Care is at the Top of your Task List
Before our littles entered our lives, we had no one else’s immediate needs to consider but our own. We went to the bathroom in privacy, we popped out to a store no problem, and pondered over which movie we might watch on Saturday night.
But when our littles entered our lives everything regarding our immediate needs and schedule changed drastically. We are on call constantly unless there’s another person around that we trust and know to take care of them. We care about them the most we’ve EVER cared about anybody in the world and now we oversee ALL things involving their health, education, attention, and growth.
It’s A LOT of pressure and the demands that come with the care we provide for them gets piled on fast and hard. Our priorities change and sometimes our priorities involving our own self-care get messy, inconsistent or go straight out of the window.
What this Post will do for you!
This post is about reprioritizing the demands of being a SAHM so that you put self-care (in whatever form) up there at the top again. Because if you don’t prioritize self-care, there will be consequences that will affect the way you show up as a mother and as whatever other role you play in your family.
I’ll show you some tools to use when reprioritizing so that you can decide on where certain demands go in the hierarchy of demands.
Let's Start Reprioritizing!
There are countless tasks that come with being a SAHM. Sometimes it feels like these tasks just swirl around your head (or your house) in a chaotic manner and you just don’t know where to start, when to start and if you even want to start.
To get started on reprioritizing tasks, I’m going to ask you some questions about your tasks that I hope provoke the beginning or reprioritizing these tasks.
- What are the costs and payoffs of the task? (a little demonstration of this later on in this post)
- How often does the task have to be done?
- Are you delegating? To the kids or other caregiver?
- Do you have a self-care routine at all and, if so, what is it?
- How long does this self-care routine last?
- How often would you like the routine to take place?
- When does it have to happen? (time of day & day(s) of the week?
- Are your creating your own “emergency?” As in, this task must take place now! (when really it doesn’t)
- Are your placing demands on yourself that can be rearranged, and NO ONE will suffer from the change?
- In general, how can you make things easier for yourself?
Look at your answers carefully. After you’ve answered these questions, list your SAHM tasks in order of importance. After that, see if you can thin out a schedule (do laundry 2x a week instead of every day) or see if you can delegate (partner can do laundry 10 minutes at a time at night right before bed). Better yet, see if you can chuck the task out the window and never do it again
If you want to read more about managing your time as a SAHM read my post on that here!
You Need to Read This
Now let me move on to some things that I feel some moms need to hear about reprioritizing.
- It’s okay to let go of the laundry a bit or do it differently or to do it in bits and pieces.
- It’s okay if the kiddos are eating a frozen meal.
- It’s ok if you eat a frozen meal or leftovers all week long or order in
- It’s important that the kids CLEAN UP AFTER THEMSELVES as soon as they can WALK.
- It’s critical to communicate to your partner your FEELINGS and ENERGY levels due to tasks you keep up with
- It’s also critical to your mental health to communicate to your partner, kindly and logically, that the tasks need to be rearranged so that they aren’t ALL on you.
- It’s ok if the kiddos have just a bit more screen time than you’re comfortable with so that you can fit in some self-care time.
- Your partner may do things differently but THAT’S ok…you need to let him/her take care of things their own way and let it go.
On to Self-Care Taks!
I’m going to finally ask you to create a list of self-care tasks, what days of the week you want them to happen and how long each self-care task takes.
If these self-care tasks aren’t happening at all, then start the duration of time that they’ll take place at a very low number initially. Then as you stick to the habit of completing a self-care task, increase the duration of time that you spend completing the self-care task.
The Cost/Payoff of the Self-Care Task: A Neat Tool
There’s a tool that I want you to keep in mind when making decisions about rearranging tasks. The point of the tool is to evaluate the cost and payoff of each decision you make regarding carving out time for self-care. By using this tool you’re basically communicating to yourself the importance of the self-care task! It’s very helpful and I hope you give it a try😊
Cost and Payoff Comparison Table (1=less important to 5= very important)
Additional Screen time for Kiddo= 20-minute HIIT Exercise | |||
Cost | Level of Importance | Payoff | Level of Importance |
More TV time than usual for kiddo | 3 | Pride in accomplishment | 5 |
Less time to tend to morning tasks | 3 | Strength | 5 |
Less time to attend to kiddo | 4 | Happy chemicals/Mental health | 5 |
|
| Feeling proud about appearance | 4 |
Total: | 10 |
| 19 |
Here’s how the table works: you rate the cost of each circumstance that results from your decision to exercise.
So that you can exercise you put the TV on for your kiddo.
Ask yourself this:
What is the level of importance of consequence of exercising?
What is the level of importance of consequence of giving your kiddo more TV time?
At the end, add the numbers up and you’ll see how much MORE important it is for you to engage in one behavior vs another behavior. In other words, the importance of one behavior outweighs the importance of the other behavior.
In Conclusion
One last thing that, as a professional health coach that supports SAHMS in prioritizing self-care, it is critical is to look at your HOURLY schedule.
Time management is not formally taught to us EVER! It’s time we take a close look at what we do HOURLY so that we can be honest with ourselves.
Writing down what we do in a day once or twice will be immensely helpful in exposing our daily activities to ourselves.
After being able to SEE on paper what you do in a day, figure out if somewhere in there, you can re-prioritize self-care to the top of your list. Even if it’s 15 minutes twice a day!
How you feel, mentally and physically, is important not only for you but for all the roles that you want to show up as.
You deserve self-care. Finally, your children will observe this self-care and will model it! And what’s more important than modeling taking care of yourself for your kiddos so that they will do the same for themselves one day? Nothing is more important than that😊
In conclusion,
I hope this post was helpful for you! Please feel free to leave me feedback! I love to hear from my readers. Also, what other posts would you like to see on my blog?
Until next time,
Kristi
Written by Kristi, November 15, 2023
While I’m not in the mom “trench” anymore, I wish I had practiced these self care routines at the time. It is so important to teach self care and compassion. Those are not taught but learned by example. Thank you for sharing and caring enough to put this blog out for moms who needs the support.