9 Simple + Actionable Homemaking Tips for Moms

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Creating a functional home with children isn’t always easy, but it can be done with these 9 Tried & True Homemaking Tips for Moms!

How to Survive as a Homemaker with Young Kids

Homemaking is a full-time job within itself, but when you add a few little people in the mix it can become even more demanding and overwhelming. Despite feeling pulled in multiple directions and sometimes burned out, you CAN create a functional (not perfect) home if you implement these 9 homemaking tips for moms.

9 Actionable Homemaking Tips:

1. Remember Your Focus

I have a friend whose home could absolutely be featured in Country Living or Better Homes & Gardens. Her decor is simple and elegant and I love it. I used to feel envious of how orderly and perfect her home seemed to be and then I realized that I wasn’t seeing everything. I know now that I was only seeing the home that had been prepared for company. She has two young kids and I am 100% positive now that she deals with the same hot mess moments and inconsistencies in her home that I have in mine.

Perfection isn’t the goal. Turn your focus to creating a Christ-centered, joyful, and functional home.

I have been convinced that no matter how efficient and organized your household is you will have days where the counters have crumbs on them and the floor has some unknown sticky substance splattered across it. Pictures might have dust on them and the bathroom sink probably has some toothpaste in it. Clean up as you can, but if your home isn’t picture perfect every day, don’t sweat it because mine isn’t either.

2. Give Your Family Grace

Your wonderful husband isn’t always going to remember to put his dirty laundry in the hamper.

If your husband is anything like mine, then you will find this to be true. He is an amazing man who provides for our family and makes sure that we feel his love unconditionally, but that laundry basket seems to always be in his blind spot.

I have handled this in several different ways. I have asked politely for him to use the basket, I have put the basket in the exact spot where he changes clothes instead of the bathroom, and I have gotten angry and totally refused to wash his clothes for a week. Each of these attempts brought temporary success, but nothing that lasted more than a weekI have finally found what works… acceptance and grace. I do a quick clean of our room each morning. Putting his clothes into the laundry basket has been added into that quick clean routine. This change in expectation keeps the clothes from piling up and it keeps me from being angry. It also keeps my husband in clean clothes;).

Your kids aren’t going to clean to your exact expectations every time.

My kids are expected to respect the things that they have and this includes putting said things away. Does that mean the toys and clothes are put exactly where they are supposed to be to keep this borderline OCD mama happy? I think you know the answer to that. Finding grace in motherhood can be a difficult task sometimes… Generally, I stay happy as long as they make an effort to keep their toys in the designated toy areas even if they aren’t organized the way that I like. I have found that downsizing the toy collection or setting up a toy rotation where everything has its own space helps keep the clutter at bay and makes clean-up time easier for everyone.

3. Establish Routines

One of the most important homemaking tips for moms is to create and establish routines and rhythms within your home. What tasks need to be completed in a functional home each day? What about weekly or monthly chores? Write all of these tasks down and place them onto a routine sheet to use as a daily guideline.

Keep your Weekly & Monthly Chores on separate sheets. Add a time slot in your Daily Routine for Weekly Chores and add a Monthly Chore on 1 or 2 days in your Weekly Chore list. For example–> I have “Weekly Chore” written in the Afternoon slot of my Daily Routine. This just means that I choose one Weekly Chore from the Weekly list to complete each afternoon. Monthly chores are completed on Fridays and Saturdays.

You can download these routine sheets the Household Management Notebook.

4. Create a Family Command Center

You can keep your routine and chore lists in a Family Command Center. Creating a command center has been a game changer for our family! We keep our Mission Statement, monthly calendar, memory verse, routine, chore charts, kids’ art, and unread mail in this spot so that it is easily accessible to the whole family. Mine isn’t the most picturesque yet, but it is functional 🙂

5. Plan Your Household Well

Plan Meals

Planning meals ahead of time is a game-changer when it comes to homemaking for moms with little bitty kiddos. Plan what weekly meals you want so you aren’t scrambling to come up with a dinner plan each day. You can take it a step further and prep these meals at the beginning of the week so all you have to do is warm them up before eating OR make a batch of freezer meals to last even longer.

Plan Your Housekeeping Chores

We covered this one pretty well in Homemaking Tip #3. Keeping household management lists can help you stay on top of your homemaking duties. You can keep these lists in a command center as mentioned above or you can keep them together in a binder. I do a little bit of both. My Daily Routine, Monthly/Weekly Chores, and Kids’ Chores are kept in the command center and the other sheets are held in my Household Management Binder.

6. Pinpoint the Not-So-Functional Areas of Your Home

Make a list of those trouble-making spots in your home.

Work down the list one item at a time until you figure out how to make each of theses spots more functional and efficient.

One of my trouble making areas was the tangle of cords under my work space. The cords were exposed under my desk and my kids loved to unplug them all day every day :/. I was constantly distracted while cleaning by children who were trying to shock themselves. My solution to this was topurchase a LectraLock cover & a power strip to keep little toddler fingers away from the danger of shock and to protect mommy from the stress of losing all of her data. This works so.much.better!

Shop within your home for solutions.

Some spaces can be refreshed by simply finding new uses for old items. For example, I had an unused storage cabinet in my mud room while my living room was covered in shoes. The cabinet was moved to the living room beside the door and to become the new home for our shoes. I don’t know why it took me so long to make that change! So shop your house a little to find solutions before shelling out cash.

A functional home is intentional and makes the most of each space. Another personal example–>I was so frustrated with my bathroom and bedroom because we had things everywhere. These were things that we used so I couldn’t just throw them out, but I couldn’t handle the clutter.

Finally, I figured out that my linen closet could be used for more than towels and dirty laundry! Our scale and potty seat fit in the bottom of the closet perfectly with the laundry hamper. Towels and rags are kept on the first shelf, jewelry and hair supplies on the next shelf, nail polish & baby products on the third shelf. Bye-bye clutter!! Hello functional home!

7. Delegate Tasks

This is probably the most difficult of all of these homemaking tips for me. It is difficult because doing tasks myself just seems easier than trying to teach my kids to do them, BUT it is worth it!

Give your kids their own age-appropriate chores. My 9 year old is responsible for the dishes, his room, and his bathroom each day. He also helps to wash the windows once/week and he assists in feeding the animals. The 3 & 2 year olds are learning to pick up their toys when they are finished playing and they “help” me sweep and and mop with their child-sized cleaning supplies.

8. Declutter!

Clutter isn’t functional. If you have things that aren’t being used or loved taking space in your home, donate or sell ASAP!

I fill multiple garbage bags with stuff from my home each month to donate and sell. Higher quality items get sold in a yard sale or in a consignment shop. Things that won’t sell quickly go straight to Goodwill or another local ministry.

A couple of good places to start your decluttering mission are the bathroom & the closet. The bathroom holds items that are less sentimental so they are easier to let go of and downsizing your clothing will minimize your laundry piles and that absolutely increases joy in motherhood! Am I right?

9. Take Care of Yourself

Self-care is essential for busy moms. Take some time to do something that you enjoy. You could invest some time in a hobby, a bubble bath, a nap, a hot drink and a good book. Spend time doing whatever it is that refills your cup. When you start caring for yourself, you’ll have the mental capacity to be a more graceful, forgiving, and peaceful mama. This tip could, quite possibly, be the most important of the homemaking tips for moms. If mama doesn’t take care of her spiritual, mental, emotional, and physical self, then she can’t take care of others as well as she is intended to.