6 mom hacks for better, simpler living

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It’s easy to feel like as soon as you become a parent, you discover that there’s a whole world of rules you’re supposed to live by. What you can and cannot eat during pregnancy. What kind of birth you should have. When they should start solid foods. What kinds of foods you should be feeding your kids. How many play dates to schedule a week. When you should enroll them in preschool….the list is pretty much endless. And if you haven’t already figured it out – you can drive yourself crazy trying to do it all, be a perfect parent (newsflash – they don’t really exist!), and live up to everyone else’s expectations about the kind of parent you should be. I’m exhausted just thinking about it. The truth is that you can’t do it all. Or be it all. Every family and every child is different, so my best advice is always to pick and choose what works for your family. These are several mom hacks that I swear by that have made our lives healthier or simpler in some way. Number 6 has totally saved my sanity too.

This post is sponsored by Cascade.

1. Plan ahead for meals

I find that the weeks where I feel most on top of things are the weeks where I’ve got a handle on meal planning. When you’ve planned ahead, you’re able to do all your grocery shopping in one trip. This will not only save you time, but money too since you won’t have extra opportunities to add non-essential items to your cart. Or is that just me? Having your meals pre-planned for the week will also ensure that you’ll spend less money eating out and on quick, but expensive, ready-to-eat items at the store.

If you struggle with meal planning (I do!), you can sign up for a meal subscription box like HelloFresh. Or, I recently discovered this company called What’s Cookin’? Basically they take your family’s meal needs (how many times you cook a week, food likes and dislikes, etc.) and send you a meal plan over the weekend. You’ll get recipes, a meal calendar and a shopping list. It was so easy for me to transfer that shopping list over to my Kroger app for my pick up order. What I love about What’s Cookin’ is that I can shop the ingredients at the store of my choice, purchase organic if/when I want and they were great about working around picky eaters and Caleb’s food allergies.

2. Overhaul your cleaning supplies

Since having kids, I’ve become a big label reader. For food. For our body care products. The crib mattress and furniture. As a mom, it’s important to me to give a little thought to what our family is putting in, on and around our bodies. Obviously we can’t rid our lives of every chemical, but there are definitely some products that we can choose that I feel better about using around my family. The same goes for the cleaning products. I love a clean house, but I also want it to be safe for our family to be around. That’s why I’m always looking for opportunities to switch out existing products for better ones without compromising on quality.

For instance, Cascade recently launched a new line of dishwasher detergent called pure essentials. Caleb and I found it at Kroger the other day.

We’ve always used Cascade in our dishwasher because it’s always worked better than other brands we’ve tried. What I love about new Cascade pure essentials is that it has a simpler formula that delivers the level of clean we’re used to and trust from Cascade, but it’s infused with bio-based and thoughtfully-selected ingredients. It is free of phosphates and chlorine bleach. The pure essentials ActionPacs are also Cascade’s only dye-free liquid top. The formula is infused with essential oils for a light citrus fragrance in two scents: lemon essence and orange blossom. Our dishes are clean (even those stuck-on messes and baked-on foods), the silverware is sparkling and I love that we now have a product in our house that I can feel better about using.

Cascade pure essentials is now available at Kroger stores nationwide. From now until May 25th, you can get $1 off any Cascade pure essentials item (bag or tub) with this online coupon from Kroger.com. This is a great opportunity to try the product for yourself!

3. Make being active a family activity

Finding time to work out has been a struggle for me. In general, always, but now even more so as a parent. I’m learning to change my mindset on what working out actually looks like in our daily lives. Instead of trying to find time to hit the gym kid-free (which is never) or working out during nap time (again, lately never), I’m discovering ways to work out with the kids. My friend Lindsey over at Find Where You Fit teaches a Squats and Tots class that we love. There’s also organizations like Stroller Strides and Fit4Mom. Check around to see what’s offered locally near you. Since Liam is 5, he’s also super interested in working out with me and it doesn’t have to be anything incredibly organized. Sometimes we’ll just pull out a couple yoga mats and work through a video together. It’s not perfection, but we have fun doing it.

4. Ditch the disposable

Disposables may be convenient, but they’re not always the best solution – for your family or the environment. There’s some research out there about how plastic can impact human health. Most recently, we’ve been hearing about plastic’s impact on the planet. I was watching a show recently where researchers were trying to extract a plastic straw that had gotten stuck in a sea turtle’s nose. It was awful to watch and the turtle was clearly in pain, but it was an important visual that showed some of the direct impact our trash has on the environment around us.

Simple ways to eliminate disposable products include using reusable sandwich and snack bags like these, silicone straws or stainless steel ones, and opting for unpaper towels. For food storage, our family likes glass containers like these and silicone pouches like these from Modfamily. Another reason why some people turn to disposable products is for the easier cleanup. This is another reason why I love Cascade’s pure essentials – you don’t have to worry about the clean of these items because you can just run the dishwasher, no rinsing required.

5. Opt for classic and open-ended toys

My kids love toys – what kid doesn’t? Our favorites, though, are the classics, the wooden toys and ones that leave play time up to the imagination. More modern toys can be fun….until the plastic breaks. Or the noise they make is too loud and it’s hard for more than one person to play at a time. I’ve noticed that over time, we’re gravitating more towards, quieter, open-ended toys. Like these colorful rainbow stackers from Grimm’s or this wooden push toys from one of our favorite small shops:

If your child loves to build things, this wooden block set is perfect. Or you can head off on an adventure using a set of these. Another recent favorite toy in our house is this parachute from Pacific Play Tents, because we can use it inside and outside, and it has an endless amount of possibilities.

6. Find compromises

I used to think that I had to do everything myself. All the house things and all the kid things – while trying to hold down a part-time work-from-home job on top of it. And that’s so far from the truth. Whether you’re a stay-at-home mom, you run your own business or you work outside the home, it’s the same thing: You can’t always be everything to everyone all the time. There’s just not enough hours of the day. So just like a business in the working world….it’s okay to outsource wherever you need.

For our family, that started with some childcare one day a week. Someone else to watch my kids so that I could get work and other things done around the house. This past year, my husband took on a second job which he loves, but I’ve definitely felt the weight of it. So again, we looked for ways to outsource. The first thing I did was I started ordering my groceries online and picking them up to save a couple hours a week. More recently, I discovered the beauty of grocery delivery companies like Instacart (use code KBARNES5F41AD for $10 off your first order) for times I didn’t want to drive across town to the store. We also have plans to hire a house cleaner at some point.

What are some of your own mom hacks for making life easier and worry-free?