Between school drop-offs, work deadlines, and trying to keep everyone fed, life as a busy mom can feel overwhelming. But the secret to a smoother, more joyful week? Planning ahead and making small, intentional changes that save time and reduce stress. After years of juggling it all, I’ve found 11 time saving hacks that help me stay organized, maximize my time, and create a week filled with more joy and less chaos.

As a mom of three, I know how quickly the week can spiral into chaos—school drop offs, volunteering, work deadlines, endless laundry…the list never ends. Throw in after school activities and sports and the schedule is jam packed. Over the years, I’ve learned that a little intention goes a long way. With the right mindset and routines, you can create a week that feels fulfilling instead of overwhelming. I know how much the feeling of overwhelm can lead to anxiety and depression, and quite honestly there’s nothing worse than being in a space where you’re not living your best life.

So I’m sharing my tried-and-true tips for a successful, joy-filled week.

1. Get in the habit of completing a Sunday reset

Sunday resets have become so popular on social media, especially on TikTok and YouTube, It’s like every other video on Sunday is someone sharing their reset. Honestly the videos are valid. Sunday resets are such a huge game changer. The key to a productive and stress-free week is starting with a plan. My kids know that when they wake up on Sunday mornings and that old school soul or gospel music is playing, it’s time to clean. I will say that since we’ve started going to church again it’s been a little challenging to keep up with our Sunday resets so we’re considering changing the time of day or the day altogether to fit our schedule better.

Either way, the concept remains the same. Set up a plan to go into your week with success. We’ve come up with a solid plan that works for our family. Everyone has their dedicated areas to clean and we set a timer for 1 hour. We clean what we can in that hour and move on with our day after that. Sometimes the hour isn’t always enough to get everything completed but that’s okay. We get ourselves to a good starting point for the week. Laundry is done, kitchen is clean and the bathrooms and living room is tidy. Those are the major places we try to knock out in our reset.

2. Have a weekly family meeting

I love a good family meeting. We have at least one every week but if I feel like things are getting too chaotic or there are things that we need to touch base on, I have no problem with scheduling an impromptu meeting. Every Sunday after our reset, we have our meetings. Every one comes to the meeting with talking points and things they want to share. It’s so important that everyone gets a chance to talk and feels heard. If you’re wanting to implement a family meeting into your family routine, here’s a few things to add to the agenda:

• Go over the schedule so everyone knows what’s happening
• Assign weekly chores
• Let everyone share something fun they want to do that week
• Share important upcoming family events like birthday parties, travel plans, etc

3. Plan your meals monthly

Instead of figuring out meals week by week, I plan an entire month’s worth of dinners. Rotate them each month to keep things simple. Not only does monthly meal planning help with saving time but it will allow your family to budget better as well. You’ll spend less time going to the grocery store and asking everyone what they want for dinner. Utilize services like grocery pickup to make life a little easier. You can do pickups on the way home from school drop off or pick up. I love doing this because then I can assign the task of unloading and putting the groceries away to my family.

Pro Tip: Keep a list of family-favorite meals so you don’t have to think too hard when planning.

4. Spend 15 minutes every evening tidying up

One things my family benefits from tremendously is routine. I can’t stress enough to other moms how important routines are. Structure and routine helps families function so much better in my opinion. There’s so much less conflict and tension in our home when we’re sticking to the routines we’ve created for ourselves. A daily 15 minute tidy session before we start winding down every night has been a huge game changer for us. Again, we set a 15 minute timer and everyone takes an area of the house. Our kids typically choose their rooms, my husband takes the living room and I tackle our bedroom. If those areas look good, we’ll choose another area like my office, the kitchen or the bathrooms.

We spend that 15 minutes throwing out any trash, putting laundry away, and doing simple decluttering. It makes such a huge difference in the spaces in our home. Plus it helps us cut down on the amount of deep cleaning we have to do. It’s one of the things that helps us keep our Sunday reset to an hour.

Turn on some soothing music, set a timer, and do a few simple tasks like these:

• Wipe down counters
• Pick up toys and clutter
• Load the dishwasher
• Vacuum
• Put away clean laundry

5. Implement a family chore chart

One thing I stand heavy on as a mom is that I’m not doing it all by myself. Our home is filled with not only love but able bodied people. My kids and husband are just as capable as I am, and they can use their time to take care of our home just as I do. I created a family chore chart to divide the daily tasks in our home. The chores for our kids are age appropriate. One of the things that I love about having a chore chart is that it teaches our kids responsibility but it also teaches them the importance of community and working together. The chore chart keeps everyone accountable. If our kids aren’t completing their chores, there are natural consequences that come with that.

6. Schedule out your days by time blocking

Back in the day when I still worked in corporate, I learned about the concept of time blocking from my boss. As a neurodivergent mom, time blocking has helped me out so much. I’m big on schedules and structure, and time blocking helped me with that. I schedule my day using time blocking, where I assign specific time slots to tasks. This prevents me from multitasking and makes me more productive. When I homeschooled the kids while I was working from home, time blocking was a huge lifesaver.

Now that both of my kids are in school full time, my schedule has changed a little of course but I still use time blocking to have successful days. Here’s a sample of what time blocking would look like for me on a typical day.

• 6 AM – 8:30 AM: Breakfast & drop offs
• 8:30 AM – 9 AM: Morning exercise
• 9 AM-12 PM: Work time
• 12 PM-1 PM: Lunch & reset (maybe an afternoon walk)
• 1 PM-3 PM: Errands & calls
• 3 PM – 4 PM: Pick ups
• 5 PM: Dinner

7. Create a family command center for maximum organization

A command center keeps everything in one place—schedules, meal plans, to-do lists, and school papers. I set up mine in the kitchen so everyone knows where to look. The kitchen is the perfect place because my family is in there multiple times a day so they can’t miss it. Our command center is a giant DIY dry erase board. We use a mail organizer to organize mail and any school papers that need to be filed away. It’s perfect for our family.

Grab supplies to DIY your own command center

8. Automate as much as you can

Automation is a literal life hack that every mom should take advantage of. The less you have to think about, the better! I try to automate as much as possible. You can automate everything like bill pay, reminders for things like birthdays and school events, and even recurring orders for household essentials.

9. Batch tasks to save time

As a content creator, batching tasks saves so much time. There are days that I dedicate specifically to creating content, editing, and admin work. It helps me to be less scrambled on a daily basis.

10. Wash a small load a day

By far my top time saving hack of all time is to wash a small laundry load a day. I feel like laundry is every mom’s Goliath. It can get out of control so quickly. Once I realized that it didn’t have to be as time consuming as it looks, my stress decreased. I wash a small load of laundry every day. By Friday, I’m done with laundry and I don’t have any laundry to do on the weekends. We’re only a family of 4 so we don’t have as much laundry as larger families but I think this would work for larger families as well.

I start by throwing a load of laundry into the washing machine in the morning when I wake up or at night before I go to bed. Our washing machine has a “delay end” setting so I can add our laundry to the machine and set it to finish the load right before we wake up in the morning. Once we’re up in the morning, I toss the load into the dryer and hit the road for school drop offs. When I come back from drop offs, the laundry is ready to be folded. If I have extra time then I will put away everyone’s clothes. Honestly though, folding is my limit and the clothes are waiting to greet everyone when they come home.

11. Remember to give yourself grace

At the end of the day, the goal isn’t to check every box. The goal is to feel present and create memories with your family. Life is short and it’s definitely too short to be stressed every day. Some days will be messy, and that’s okay. Take breaks when you need them, don’t neglect your self care routine, and enjoy every moment.