2 Steps to Beat Working Mom Stress (plus a free weekly planner)

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One of my favorite activities at work is mentoring more junior colleagues (mostly women), especially those who are new moms dealing with working mom stress. I have seen many new moms beyond stressed; these women were suffering from borderline working mom depression. Before I had kids, I really had no idea how hard being a mother would be, let alone a working mother. I empathize with the new working mom and have it made it my mission to help her.

Why do I care so much about helping those suffering from working mom stress?

I reached a critical point of working mom stress three years ago. After a few days of feeling sick, I ended up in the ER barely able to hold a pen – let alone walk — because my muscles were in such pain. The ER doctor ran a bunch of tests and luckily it wasn’t anything serious, just a viral infection causing inflammation in most of the muscles in my body. As such, he told me “you simply need to go home and rest.” In short, I was suffering from such severe burnout, and he ordered me on bed rest for 3 days.

I left the ER at 11PM crying from frustration and limping in pain from my muscle infection. I was not sure how I was going to stay on top of everything if I stayed in bed for 7 hours a night, let alone 3 days.

On top of that, I felt like a bad mom. I had gotten so sick that I couldn’t even pick up and nurse my baby (I actually crawled across the floor to my younger one’s crib since I couldn’t walk, which basically made me realize I needed medical attention).

This experience made me realize that I needed to either leave my job, or figure out a way to do it all without landing in the ER again. As one who is Type A, I have yet to actually throw in the towel and leave my job. Instead, I have developed a variety of tips and tricks to get through the week. I enjoy sharing those with the women I mentor at work, and with you all on this blog.

**Dealing with Working Mom Stress?  Receive Mrs. Type A’s FREE WEEKLY Planner when you subscribe at top of this page (or the sidebar). I used this every week to get myself organized and now I’m on autopilot every week.***

Mrs. Type A’s Steps for dealing with Working Mom Stress:

1.  Set goals and prioritize

Just like at work, you need to identify what goals you want for yourself, your family, and your home. Otherwise, you will either try to do everything and fail (or end up in the ER!) or you will do nothing. Not setting goals is a one-way ticket to working mom stress.

I have weekly goals for things I want to accomplish during every work week. These are some of my “must haves” for the week:

Family

• Healthy breakfast every day
• Healthy dinners for the family 6 days a week (we eat out or order pizza the 7^th night)
• Pack lunch for kids 4 days/week

Me

• Work out 2x/week
• Bring healthy lunch to work 2 days/week

House

• Have clean common areas in the house (i.e., kitchen, family room, master bathroom, and kids bathrooms). This means that, most weeks, I do not prioritize having a clean laundry room, garage, guest room etc. If, for whatever reason, I want my laundry room clean (say, my mother-in-law is coming over mid-week), I will add that to the list, but 99% of the time, I let the laundry room go
• Do 2 loads of laundry before the weekend (so it doesn’t pile up and I’m stuck doing it all Sunday)

2.  Break the goals down and set a routine

Once you set your goals, determine a weekly plan to get there (Receive Mrs. Type A’s FREE WEEKLY Planner when you subscribe at top of the Sidebar on this page). I find cooking and cleaning during the week so daunting. Over the years, I have learned to break things like cooking dinner and laundry into more manageable pieces and – before I know it – I’ve done a load of laundry or dinner is ready. The idea is that you determine what small incremental tasks you can take so – over time — you make great progress.

Here are some of my tips on how to break down big tasks:

Cooking

• Extra cooking on Sunday (or another day of the week). I usually cook 2 meals on Sunday and often end up doubling each recipe. I end up freezing the extra meal, as well as any leftovers from the meal we eat and then serve later.

So, for example, tonight I made turkey burger patties and turkey meatballs. SO many of the same ingredients! I made 2 dishes in 30 minutes that will serve my family for 5 more nights; I basically achieved my week’s goal with just 1 cooking session.

Note: to get variety, I will do this every Sunday, and then choose from a stockpile of frozen foods throughout the week…so it’s not just the same 2 meals for a week.

• Cook dinner for the next night while you’re eating tonight.  This is a bit tough to explain, but basically you’re making dinner for the next night the night before.  There are a lot of shenanigans at dinner in our household.  Someone has to go to the bathroom 5 times, someone else claims the dinner is not edible because is not meatloaf but, rather, “yucky poo poo.”  Anyway, there’s a lot of dead-time that I use to make next night’s dinner.

So, for example, I want to serve spaghetti and meatballs on Thursday (4 nights from now). I made the meatballs tonight and put them in the freezer. Wednesday night, I will boil pasta and then put in the fridge. I will also take the frozen meatballs out of the freezer and put them in the fridge. This way, on Thursday at 6PM when I get home, all I will need to do is microwave the defrosted meatballs, pasta, and sauce for a few minutes before serving dinner.

Now, this isn’t how I cook for guests or for holidays. But, it certainly helps the other nights of the year!

Cleaning

• Clean 1 bathroom every day. During the week I like to keep 2 bathrooms clean (I also do not allow the kids or my husband to use the other 2 bathrooms during the week, so they are never that dirty).

On Mondays, I will do a light cleaning of the master bath (i.e., wipe down the counter, sinks basin, faucets, mirror and sweep the floor (usually using a robot vacuum like Roomba).       Then Tuesdays, the same for the kids, then back to the master on Wednesday…and so on. It takes me less than 1 minute. It certainly isn’t a “deep clean” but it keeps nastiness at bay until I can do a deeper cleaning (or, more likely, the cleaners come).

• Keep cleaning tools in the room. I have separate bathroom cleaner in each bathroom, along with a towel for cleaning. It helps a ton not to have to gather supplies.
• Robot vacuum. I use our Roomba every day. Every single day. I run it in a different room each day and it helps maintain a level of cleanliness throughout the house.

Laundry

If there is one thing I wish that would just go away, it would be laundry. I just don’t feel rewarded by it. I feel so happy when giving my family healthy food that tastes good, and helps them feel energized. But, laundry?! It’s just hard to get me motivated.

So, what do I do?

Or, rather, not do in this case…I do not fold and put laundry away…just don’t do it. I do loads based on person and then put them back in the basket. We just pull from the basket for the items during the week. I guess I also semi-outsource laundry since I do have cleaners that come every other week and fold what is still in baskets.

It’s a struggle to even get me focused on making sure there is clean laundry. So I break this down to smaller tasks like this:

• Gather clothes throughout the week and put directly into the washer.  I’ll usually end up putting them at the top of the stairs at night, then take down the next morning and put right into the washer before preparing breakfast.
• On Tuesdays and Thursdays, I run the washer as soon as I get home from work. Easy to do since the laundry is already gathered and in the washing machine!
• After dinner, I move it to the dryer
• Before bed, I take out and put in a basket and leave it there…pull out anything that is needed throughout the week

I find that, by the time the clean laundry out of the dryer, I don’t feel like I’ve even had to do any work; each of the tasks is so simple.

But Mrs. Type A, don’t clothes get wrinkled?

Yes, a little. Some things I’ll pull out of the basket (i.e., t-shirts) and set on the counter flat or will fold. But most items — underwear, socks, jeans, pajamas (if I let the kids wear them, see here) – are fine being wrinkled.

Is this weird? Maybe. Or, probably yes. It’s a tradeoff, I guess; don’t fold laundry or end up back in the ER?!

Did implementing these eliminate my working mom stress? No, not by any means. But it helped a lot; I haven’t been back to the ER! And it gives me a framework to add on when other things become a priority (i.e., if I need to keep the guest room clean because we have visitors during the week).

Those are some of my favorite tips. I certainly have more, but this should be enough to get you started! I’d love to hear your tips for handling working mom stress below!

One other suggestion…I do enjoy reading FlyLady’s website. She has a TON of tips on how to break down tasks and get things done. I got the idea of cleaning the bathrooms from her. Check her out here.

Receive Mrs. Type A’s FREE WEEKLY Planner when you subscribe at top of this page or the sidebar. I used this every week to get myself organized and now I’m on autopilot every week.