These 10 Simple Working Mom Habits Save Me So Much Time

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As a working mom, I’ve realized there simply aren’t enough hours in the day anymore. Before becoming a mom, I could spend an hour getting ready in the morning, do all of our laundry on a Saturday, take a 60-minute workout class, deep clean the house every weekend, and somehow still feel like I had plenty of free time. Now? I run a successful business from home, have a baby in daycare, pump throughout the day, try to exercise regularly, take care of our home, spend time with my husband, walk a very energetic dog, and occasionally attempt to do absolutely nothing.

When I went back to work after having my son, one of my biggest priorities was protecting as much time with him as possible. I don’t want to spend the few hours between daycare pickup and bedtime folding three loads of laundry or cleaning a bathroom. So rather than trying to become more productive and somehow cram everything I used to do pre-baby into fewer hours, I’ve started simplifying areas of my life wherever I can.

None of these habits are groundbreaking…most of them save me five minutes here or 20 minutes there. But collectively, they’ve made my days run much more smoothly, which gives me more time for what I care about most: my family. Here are ten habits that save me a surprising amount of time as a working mom.

1. I Do a Quick Morning Reset

Every morning, I do essentially the same tiny reset. I make our bed, clear anything left on the kitchen counters, put away the throw blankets my husband and I used while watching TV the night before, and I open the blinds and windows when the weather allows. Then I unload the dishwasher from the night before and load any dishes that were left out. (My baby loves to crawl around the kitchen while I do this, and enjoy his silly reflection in the stainless steel appliances.)

That’s basically it…I’m not actually cleaning the house every morning; I’m just returning it to baseline. However, I’ve learned that keeping our house mildly picked up most of the time takes significantly less energy than letting everything accumulate until I’m annoyed by the mess. It also makes our home environment feel calmer, which is really important to me. I can tell the emotional difference it makes in me, my husband, and our baby. (I don’t think the dog really cares—he is basically Pigpen from Charlie Brown.)

2. I Simplified My Beauty Routine

My pre-baby beauty routine wasn’t particularly elaborate, but I’ve still managed to simplify a lot in this area. I only wash my hair every other day with this detox shampoo and this hair gloss from OUAI, and I’ve perfected a 10-minute curling routine topped off with this hair oil from Odele. On my face, this mascara from ILIA is the only makeup I enjoy wearing.

I also stopped getting my nails done. I used to love having salon-quality nails, but it became a recurring commitment I didn’t care enough about to prioritize anymore. Now I just take care of my natural nails at home using this glass nail care set, and occasionally using this nontoxic nail polish.

Despite these changes, I don’t really feel like I’ve sacrificed much. I still feel put together, and like myself…I just figured out which parts of my pre-baby beauty routine actually mattered to me, and stopped spending so much time on the rest.

3. I Shamelessly Repeat Outfits

I pretty much wear the same clothes all the time, but I truly never get bored of them. After creating a small postpartum capsule wardrobe for a two-month trip with my family, I realized how much time I had previously spent thinking about clothes: shopping for them, deciding what to wear, changing outfits depending on what I was doing, and owning things that didn’t actually fit my everyday life.

Now my wardrobe is so simple that I barely have to think about it. Most of my clothes can take me from daycare dropoff to working at my desk to a stroller walk to hanging out at home. I know everything fits, I know I’ll feel good in anything I pull out of the closet, and I can get dressed in about two minutes. I still like clothes, and I still want to feel cute. (I even still purchase new items every once in a while!) I just don’t need a completely different outfit every day to feel confident in what I’m wearing.

4. I Use Apple Reminders for Literally Everything

I’ve always received compliments for how organized I am, but my dirty little secret is that I must be organized because I actually have such an awful memory. It has gotten even worse since becoming a sleep-deprived new mom; I simply can’t trust myself to remember things anymore. So the second I realize I need to do something, I put it in my Apple Reminders app.

• One-off task? Reminder.
• Recurring bill (that for some reason isn’t set to autopay)? Reminder.
• Random thing I need to do three months from now? “Hey Siri, reminder please!”

This saves me time because I’m not constantly mentally reviewing everything I need to do…it goes into the app, and out of my brain. It also keeps me from forgetting things that would create more work later, like missing an important deadline or forgetting to pay a bill. My phone remembers it so I don’t have to.

5. My Husband and I Share a Digital Shopping List

Since I rely on the Apple Reminders app so much, my husband and I created a shared Reminders list for basically anything we need to buy: groceries, household essentials, toiletries, baby items, dog stuff, etc. The second one of us notices we’re running low on something, we add it to the shared list.

That means I don’t have to realize we’re out of dog food the day after we did our Costco haul. And if my husband stops at Whole Foods on his drive home from work, he can see everything I’ve added to the list without calling me to ask what we need. It’s ridiculously simple, but it prevents a surprising number of unnecessary trips to the store, and neither of us has to be the sole keeper of the household shopping list.

6. I Do a Small Load of Laundry Every Day

This might sound like more work, but it has made laundry feel like much less of a chore. Instead of letting everything pile up and spending part of the weekend doing load after load, I usually run one small load every day. Sometimes it’s just baby clothes and bedding, sometimes just towels, and sometimes just me and my husband’s stuff.

Since I’m constantly cycling through everything, we also don’t need a huge inventory of clothes, towels, baby bedding, or other household linens just to make it between laundry days. A small load takes a couple of minutes to start, and folding it later never feels particularly daunting. Sometimes I’ll bring the basket of clean laundry into my baby’s playroom, and explain everything I’m folding while he watches and plays with his toys. I love that I’m never spending a Saturday afternoon staring at a mountain of laundry when I’d rather be on a fun little adventure with my family.

7. I Run the Dishwasher Every Single Night

Every night, I load the dishwasher and run it. (Yes, even if it isn’t completely full.) Then every morning, I unload it during my quick reset. This means the things we use constantly (like our Chemex coffee maker, favorite mugs, baby bottles, and pump parts) are clean and ready when we need them, and I never have to hand-wash anything.

Could I technically wait until the dishwasher is packed to maximum capacity? Sure. Would that save a tiny amount of water or electricity, but make our daily routine significantly more annoying? Also yes. In this busy season of life, I’ll take the convenience for a few extra dollars in utilities every month.

8. I Do Short, Frequent Workouts

Before having a baby, I had much larger blocks of time for exercise. I could go to the gym and lift weights for 45 minutes to an hour, and I loved taking long hot yoga classes. Hopefully I eventually do find a way to bring some of those longer workouts back into my life, but right now, waiting for an uninterrupted hour to exercise would mean it never happened at all.

So even if I only have ten minutes, I’ll lift weights. Ten minutes doesn’t sound like much, but ten minutes multiple times per day, multiple days per week can add up to hours of healthy movement. This allows me to maintain my preference for an active lifestyle without requiring a huge block of time that simply doesn’t exist right now. I’m much more interested in consistently doing something than waiting for the perfect workout window.

9. I Walk the Dog While My Baby Naps

My first baby, our mini schnauzer, has a lot of energy. My human baby also needs daytime naps, and tends to sleep really well with movement.

Enter: the stroller walk.

Instead of finding separate time for a long dog walk and attempting a crib nap, we all go for a walk together. The baby sleeps, and the dog and I get exercise…everybody wins! 

My busy working mom schedule doesn’t allow me to devote a huge amount of time to multiple separate things, so I’ve gotten much better at identifying places where our family’s needs naturally overlap. 

10. I Budget for a Monthly Deep House Clean

This one comes with an important acknowledgment: being able to hire someone to clean our house is a privilege.

Before having my son, I spent three or four hours almost every weekend deep cleaning our house. Having a clean home is genuinely important to me, and I didn’t mind keeping up with it when I had the time. However, as a working mom, I just don’t have that time (or energy) anymore. My husband and I agreed to budget for a professional deep clean every month, and although I would love to afford that service even more often, it prevents our home from getting truly dirty or grimy. It’s an expense we’ve chosen because buying back a few hours of family time every month is worth it to us.

In between professional cleans, I find time about once a week to set a one-hour timer and clean as much as I can where the house needs the most attention. I wipe down the kitchen, clean our main bathroom, and vacuum the floors where my baby enjoys crawling around. When the timer goes off, I’m done. Knowing someone will eventually come through and handle the deeper cleaning keeps me from feeling like I need to spend half of every weekend maintaining the house.

I’m Not Actually Trying to Fit More Into My Day

The biggest change I’ve made since becoming a working mom isn’t trying to be more productive or find more hours in the day that don’t exist. Instead, I’ve accepted that I can’t do everything I used to do in the exact same way I used to do it. And to be honest, I don’t really want to.

• I would rather repeat an outfit than spend 20 minutes figuring out what to wear.
• I would rather pay someone to deep clean our house once a month than spend hours doing it myself.
• I would rather do a ten-minute workout than skip exercise completely because I couldn’t block out a full hour

None of these ten habits magically created more hours in the day, but they’ve helped me become much more intentional about where the hours I do have actually go. My priorities are my family, my health, and my business. Everything else can get a little more efficient.

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