6 ways to reduce your load in a busy season
Some seasons are busier than others. In a busy season it is important to find ways of reducing your overall load. Here are 6 suggestions:
Meal planning
Meal planning can help in several ways during a busy season. It can reduce daily decisions on what to make, reduce the number of grocery shopping visits and make easy meals on particularly busy days.
Some quick and easy meals might include:
pizza
burgers
wraps
frozen meals
stir-fries with store brought sauce and frozen vegetables.
2. Setting realistic expectations
In a busy season we need to be practical about what we can do and what we cannot do. It is important to set realistic expectations. Perhaps decluttering the kitchen is not a good idea if you are doing long days at work and are catching up on everything in the weekend. But maybe sorting out one cupboard each week while making dinner or in the weekend is more achievable.
6 ways to reduce your load during a busy season
3. Hiring help or paying for services we normally do ourselves
Sometimes in a busy season we might need to buy a service or products. Examples might be:
hire someone to do the lawns and garden (or paying your teenagers to do it)
getting groceries delivered
using a meal service kit
buy ready-made meals to heat and eat
get a cleaner.
If hiring support is not an option - are there people who can assist. Does your mother always offer to help? Perhaps she could cook a meal for you once a week or pick up your grocery order. Can tasks be shared between the family members like laundry, preparing a meal.
4.Plan out time and tasks
Doing some planning for a busy season can help reduce the load. Examples include:
working out what is feasible to do and what is not
planning meals and housework
thinking about what tasks and goals are important to pursue and what will need to wait
planning routines to know what time you have and if it is time when you are likely to have energy or not.
5. Focus on what is important
Rather than have 5 goals during a busy season which will be impractical to achieve, perhaps have one or two that you know you can achieve.
Perhaps only focus on one project and one habit?
Perhaps break down the goals into smaller tasks and steps?
6. Stop doing some things or reduce what we do
There is no way around it, in a busy season we have to make smart choices about what we do and also what we don’t do. There might be some things that you need to stop doing in this season. For example, a hobby, until you get a bit more time.
Sometime we do household tasks more regularly than they need to be. Are there ones that can be done less frequently? Do you really need to dust each week? Can you spot vacuum and clean the floors rather than washing the floors each week.
Busy seasons are about making smart choices
Busy seasons may be easier with planning and making smart choices about where we put our energy. Sometimes we need to hire or accept help and sometimes we need to reduce or stop some tasks.
Sitting down for 10 minutes and brainstorming ways to reduce your load during the busy season might help.
