Essential Relaxation Tips for Busy Moms

When you’re juggling a busy life with kids, husband, chores and housework, taking time out for relaxation is essential to manage stress and increase well-being. But what are the best ways to promote relaxation and get the most out of your ‘me time’? With these tips we look at the most effective ways for busy moms to get an opportunity to relax.

Make sure you get good sleep when you can sleep

In order to feel relaxed throughout the day, one needs to relax at night and get a good amount of high quality sleep. Making sure you have proper bedtimes for everyone in the family (including yourself!) and limit over stimulating activities in the evening helps the whole household to sleep better. But if you find yourself tossing and turning at night, you may need to adjust your sleeping environment, and that includes making sure your mattress and pillow are of high quality and suited to your needs.

The perfect mattress and pillow for you will depend on a few factors including your preferred sleeping position, the kind of material you prefer your mattress and pillow to be made of, and how hard or soft you like your sleeping surface. A consultant at a specialized bedding store can assist you in choosing the right pillow and mattress for you needs. Limiting noise and outside light are two other important factors to control in your sleeping environment to help you get a better sleep. A good sleep means you can wake up more relaxed and refreshed and ready to handle a busy day.

Enlist the help of others

When we’re really busy, we can often feel that we have to do everything ourselves and that we can’t ask for help. But getting help from others actually means you’re able to handle your tasks better, because you have the wisdom to see what really needs to be done by you personally, and what somebody else can help you with. By delegating tasks that can be given to others, and setting a good example for children by giving them responsibility, you can get a lot more work done with a lot less stress for you.

A good way to deal with this at home is to set weekly chores for everyone in the household and keep track of these using a chore chart or a star chart. If necessary you can design rewards for when certain tasks are complete in the right time frame. You don’t need to handle it all by yourself – we’re all just human after all! Although it might take time for everyone to adjust to their new routine, after a while you will find that enlisting the help of others helps you to relax, while all the work still gets done.

Don’t be too hard on yourself

Tying in to the previous point – don’t be too hard on yourself! We all try to do everything ourselves, and create high standards that are impossible to live up to. Sometimes we see others outside that we perceive as ‘doing better’ than us, but appearances can be very deceiving. Most of us are still learning everyday how to be more effective and efficient and do our work to the best of our ability. And that does include a lot of failure at times. It’s nothing at all to worry about.

If you’re feeling overworked and undervalued, the best thing you can do is to avoid being hard on yourself and instead do the opposite, be kind to yourself. Take time out to indulge in your favorite book or TV show, take a nap, play online games on sites like Arkadium, go for a jog or go to the salon, whatever it is that makes you happy and gives you a bit of a break. Chances are, you deserve it!

Don’t be afraid to spend money if it makes your life easier

When the budget’s tight, we often try to cut corners to save money wherever we can, but this might not always be the best way to handle things. Although it’s good to look for value and be frugal with spending, if you’re overworked and exhausted trying to scrimp and save in every area of life, it’s just not worth it for the money you save.

Sometimes good quality home equipment like a slow cooker or an efficient vacuum cleaner, or even a professional cleaner coming once a week, can save you loads of time, which in the end, is money. It’s important to weigh the costs and benefits of your actions to see if the net result is actually saving money, or just wasting opportunity.