As a busy mom, juggling a never-ending to-do list can sometimes feel overwhelming. With countless tasks to complete each day, it can be challenging to find the time and energy to get everything done.
That’s where batching comes in – a technique that can help you streamline your daily tasks, save time, and reduce stress. By grouping similar tasks and completing them in batches, you can improve your productivity and efficiency.
In this episode, we will discuss how batching can be a game-changer for busy moms and provide practical tips for implementing this technique into your daily routine. This episode will offer valuable insights and strategies to help you make the most of your time and get more done in less time.
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About Laura
Laura is a mama of ten. She is the founder of Mama Systems, a consulting business that helps mamas bring peace to their homes through systems.
Connect with Laura
Website: http://www.mamasystems.net
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/mamasystems.net
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/mamasystems
Podcast: https://www.mamasystems.net/podcast
My Peaceful Mama Breakthrough Program: https://www.mamasystems.net/PeacefulMamaBreakthrough
Links Mentioned in This Episode
Laura’s Batching Workshop: https://www.mamasystems.net/replay-batching
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Transcript of this Episode
Toni-Ann Mayembe
it’s only Tuesday and you’re finding that you’re struggling to keep up with the never ending to do lists between managing the house caring for the kids and work, it feels like there’s never enough hours in the day. But what if I told you there was a way to save time, reduce stress and make the most of your limited time? The answer is the magic of batching. batching is all about batching similar tasks together so that you can save time and reduce the mental load that comes with constantly switching between tasks. In this episode, we’re exploring how batching can be a game changer for busy moms, and provide practical tips and strategies. To help you implement this technique into your daily routine. We’ll discuss the benefits of batching how to identify tasks that can be batched, and offer real life examples of how busy moms can use batching to improve their productivity and reduce stress. Hey, there, my name is Tony. And I am the podcast host of real happy mom. And I’m Phil a busy mom, just like you. And real happy mom is here for busy working moms who need help with time management and achieving their big goals without pulling their hair out. And in this episode, my guest today, Laura will provide valuable insights and strategies to help you make the most of your time and get more done in less time with batching. Now Laura is a wife and a mother and the founder of mama systems, a consulting business that helps moms bring peace to their homes through systems. And by the end of this episode, you’ll have a system that will allow you to have more time with less stress, for detail that was totally overlooked on my part was that you had 10 kids and I was like, wait a minute, I gotta confirm is this true?
Laura
Yes, it’s really true.
Toni-Ann Mayembe
It’s really true. 10 kids, before I even get into our topic on batching, I just wanted to talk to you about that, because I was like, I have two kids. And I think that’s a lot. But you got 10. So God bless you. Because I know like you have to have systems in place in order to keep everything on track. Make sure everybody’s out good. And all that. So I just wanted to commend you on that one. Because I was like, wait a minute, wait a minute, no wonder she’s good at that.
Laura
I know. And it’s so fun to go right? When you when you see the order that comes from like in just the peace in your home and how productive you are and all the little benefits of having systems in your home. I think that I make up that anybody once they see that would be Oh, yeah, this is so fun. Right?
Toni-Ann Mayembe
Before we jump into our conversation, I just wanted to have you just share a little bit about you in what you do and who you serve.
Laura
We do have 10 kids. And one year, probably more like a six month period, we went from four kids to eight kids, we moved across the country to adopt a sibling number three right after we had our fifth biological. And what we didn’t know at the time was those three had special needs. And so it was like this special needs strangers just walked into our home. And then we were like supposed to be a family and everything’s supposed to be wonderful. Right? And it was it was wonderful. This is what we had hoped and prayed for for sure. But it was also kind of like whatever thoughts you’re having right now, that’s kind of how I felt at the moment of like, oh, my gosh, what did we do, we’ve got to get through the day, it’s complete survival mode. I remember seeing up against the back of the wall and thinking just going to make it a bedtime will be good, right? We had five little ones for and under all and diapers. And our oldest was six or seven at the time. And so it that’s a lot of kids to have under that age, right? Still a lot going on all the time. And so I finally was like, You know what, we’re going to do something because this isn’t working, I really thought that I had like motherhood down when we had four kids like, felt like I was doing a pretty good job being intentional with them, and spending time with them and keeping up with everything. And then somebody threw us into the deep end and handed us a baby, you know, it was just a lot. And so I started looking books, podcasts, blogs, all the things and nobody had a system that fit our family. Nobody had, hey, you have eight kids, and they’re all really little, and you homeschool, and some go to public school, and you have therapists in your home all day. And, and and like all these little exceptions that made our families so unique. Nobody had come up with anything. So decided, You know what, we just got to do it ourselves. And we’re going to start from scratch. And so the process that I walk through is now what I get to walk with other moments, sort of. And that’s a lot of just assessing what is going on in our lives, what we want to be going on, and figuring out how to eliminate the things that we don’t want and figure out how to prioritize the things that we do want
Toni-Ann Mayembe
up from just from me on the outside looking and like the only way that I could actually see this all working is if there’s like systems and things in place, and you definitely have that. And one thing that I know that I really wanted to hear you talk about is about batching and batching is something that I’ve talked about on the podcast before but I just wanted you to explain like what batching is and how it’s useful for you and especially for your family.
Laura
Yeah, so this has been one of my favorite systems and icon to very early on. That really just freed me up now Not so much, I mean, freed me up, but a lot of ways, but time and brain space brain space was the biggest one. And so I know that, like just talking about decision fatigue is no, we’re no strangers to that now I’m just kind of talking about it right. But just in case you don’t know, we make like 35,000 decisions a day. That’s a, and our brains get worn down. And the thing that I always love to talk about is, they did a study on these judges who did parole cases. And in the morning, they were 70% likely to give a person or parole and by the end of the day, only 10% Likely, I do feel that like at the beginning of the day, I’m like ready to go, I’m ready to be a great mom, I have all these quick plans in the day, I’m like, Oh, my gosh, just get in bed right now. Or I’m going to throw you in the pool, like, just go right now. So I just You can feel that right? You know that by the end of the day, you’re just done. And it’s not so much physical exhaustion, it’s more mental exhaustion. And so when we batch work our days, we put like tests together, and we do them in a certain time chunk. And so I have mine in in day chunks, and spells like a laundry day or kitchen day. And organizing them like that has really helped me wake up and know what I’m supposed to be doing. There’s like, no question about it. So when I wake up, and there’s all this stuff to do, I’m not thinking, oh, gosh, where do I start? What do I do? Like, I feel like that first overwhelm of just looking around and seeing all the things. I mean, that just weighs on us so much. And so if we can eliminate that piece, and then create order amongst our tasks, and it’s never gonna go perfectly, right, like, it’s never gonna go perfect. Somebody’s gonna get lice and are gonna have to wash everything. And it’s not going to be laundry day. And you know what, that’s okay. Like, it’s just going to happen, or so he’s going to get the stomach bug. I’ll be nice. So my words, yes. So life is just going to happen. But I love just having those basics of the Foundation, and the structure, so that we can try our darndest to get all those things done. And then the rest of the week, I don’t have to think about it. So when I completed my laundry on laundry day, I’m not thinking about till the next Thursday. Right? So have all my dinner prep done on kitchen day. Have kids helped me with that we delegated a lot of things on those days as well. is free to sup so much.
Toni-Ann Mayembe
How do you find that batching helps you with time management.
Laura
We think about like making dinner, and we have a recipe we’re like, Oh, chicken parmesan, how wonderful. Let’s make that. And I look at the recipe. I’m like, oh, we need chicken. And so then I go to the grocery store and come back and then like, oh, when we need I don’t even know what’s up Jim permatron. I picked that recipe and I’m like, butter, I don’t know. Yeah. Oh, we need butter. Let’s go back to the grocery store and come back. And like, just keep doing that. Like that doesn’t make sense. You would plan, go get stuff you need and come back and make your dinner. And I feel like I’m kitchen day especially where it’s like, it makes so much sense to me to chop all of our veggies at once because I pull another county board at one time. Getting all ready for the week. And this prevents me from having to do this every night of getting out the cutting board, getting all the stuff, putting all the weight, like it just makes sense to cut down on those little minutes of time. And that can frees up so much. And I don’t think we realize it because it is such a small amount of time. But then when it adds up. It’s huge and will allow you to do so many more things that will give you life and allow you to be present with your people more so.
Toni-Ann Mayembe
Yeah, no, I totally agree. Because I used to say like I don’t meal prep. I don’t do that. Like that’s not my my damn and I would always defer to my guests on that. But I really have committed to meal prepping at least my kids lunches because my husband, he really wants to make sure that they have like good nutritious lunches, even though sometimes my lunches aren’t that nutritious. But anyways, he wants to make sure that they have good lunches. So I will spend Sunday and I will make their lunches for the entire week. And it just feels so good to just wake up in the morning and just put their lunches together and boom, I’m done. Like I don’t have to cook I don’t have to like cut things up like you’re saying like everything is already and it literally only takes me like just a couple hours versus me taking like two hours every day to prepare like dinner and lunch for the kids it it really does cut back. So I love that you gave the preparing a meal example because that is definitely something that I’ve learned firsthand on.
Laura
Yeah, one of the things that we in the past, we’ve always batched our kids lunches and done like a ton of peanut butter jelly sandwiches and stuck them in the freezer. And then every night they pack their lunch. This year, we’ve moved over to like a container situation that has like a sandwich container and then to others, right and like just having enough for every kid to have their five lunches made. And it’s kind of an assembly line where we just fill in the little holes and it goes by so fast. And then I have one that’s a little more difficult. Who simply must make his lunch every day and you’re doing that yourself. But it takes him so long to do it. I’m like Why? Why am I doing this like this is so fast and efficient. And like seeing those contrasts of things of like him spending as much time on his one lunch, opposed to me making five people’s lunches all at one time. Like it’s equal time. It just doesn’t make sense.
Toni-Ann Mayembe
You mentioned kitchen and then you also mentioned meal prep. So what about like some other extraneous things like how would you know where to put them on your different batch days?
Laura
So when I’m walking this through with clients will often look at all the things that they’re doing on a regular basis. And then those are the things we kind of want to sort of just kind of logical order. So meal planning, you may think would be kitchen day, but really, you want to plan your meals. So then you have food delivered the next day, and then can either meal prep that day or the following day, right? Because you have to plan and create the plan, and then get the supplies and then execute. And so just thinking through things in a very like, first this than this than this, right? I would not want to do laundry in the middle of the week, like if our kids had uniforms, right? I wouldn’t want to be like scrambling around doing all the uniform. So I would probably save that till Friday when they’re all dirty. And just do them all at once and get them ready for Monday, right? Trying to think what else I love to have our house clean over the weekend. Like I like the the freshness of that. And so we have our cleaning day on Friday. I’m not a perfectionist, but it’s just imagination, like our kids pick up on a daily basis, they have chores and things like that. So our house is pretty picked up. But the deep cleaning stuff that takes the time work to pull them off. You know, all those things that don’t get spent on one time chunk.
Toni-Ann Mayembe
Now, have you ever encountered a task that couldn’t really go into one of your batch days? That made sense? Or how do you approach it if you have something that just feels kind of totally off?
Laura
Yeah, I, I really struggle with appointments, we have a lot of appointments in our lives. And so it it’s lovely to have an errand day. And I have a day for like scheduling this appointments, which is my office day. But then having everyone else’s schedule revolve around me, I have not quite figured out yet. And so that always seems to trip me up, you know, like, I would like to have all my doctor’s appointments on Friday, and then half the places are closed on Friday, you know. So it, I think that’s the biggest thing that’s other people’s schedules and getting them to cooperate with mine is always the problem. So now that I stay home, and work from home, I mean, I’ve I guess I’ve always stayed home, but just working from home, and I’m here at my desk, a lot of the times, I’ve kind of batch things in a way that makes sense for like going and doing something and then coming back, going and finishing that task. So on my weekdays, I’ve come up with all of the tasks I need to accomplish that day. And it’s more my mindset of like, okay, I’m thinking about one of my desires to start a fetal alcohol spectrum disorder club clinic. That’s what my three kiddos have. And there’s nothing in Texas, absolute nothing. And it’s ridiculous. And so I’m making stuff up and trying to start a clinic, I don’t know what I’m doing. But on Monday, that’s my day to focus on that. And so I’m making calls, setting up meetings, trying to fundraise like all of those things where my mind is just kind of in that space happens on Monday, right? And so it may not be that I’m sitting at the computer all the time doing XYZ. But it’s just kind of like, Hey, I’m thinking about this today, what am I doing, like, just having my trains of thought kind of be along? all on the same train, if you will?
Toni-Ann Mayembe
Now, I know you touched on, like some of the disruptions or unexpected life events happening. But how would you say like for moms who are like getting started with the batching process? How would you like, advise us on handling those who life events that pop up?
Laura
Yeah, deal with what comes up, and then stick with your matching days, I think that I think it’s really easy to have a hard day or a hard week where you know, the pipes bust and everything goes awry. I feel like this happens all the time with my clients. So it’s like, Okay, I’ve got all this down. They’re like, yeah, and our pipes busted. And now we have put our house in the market. And I’ll be like, oh gosh, well, this is going to work, just we’ll come back to it. So just having that in place in the first place is huge. Like all the prep work is already done for you. And so when you fall off the wagon, just hop back on. You know, I think it’s that simple. And I think we overcomplicated of like oh, maybe it wasn’t working or I wasn’t whatever, maybe I’m not this kind of person. But I think that I make up when people say that they’re not systems kind of people that they like to fly by the seat of their pants. And I love that I think that’s amazing and wonderful. However, I would like to encourage them to try something like batching in a way that you’re making those decisions anyway, you’re doing all those tasks anyway. And using your thinking brain, this is a great way to be the most productive with your time. So that you can have time for other things. Although like boring things, you can be productive and get them done, knock them out and have a plan for them. You really
Toni-Ann Mayembe
highlighted your different days that you have to do certain tasks. Do you ever use any like tools or software to help you with the batching? Or is this something that you just have become second nature for you that it just flows?
Laura
It just kind of flows and I know that they have I know that there’s something for everything so I’m sure there’s something out there that’s amazing and great. I just like Having a chart on my desk, so I know what’s going on. Pretty simple. So let’s print it out. And I’ll look at it. And that’s how long though.
Toni-Ann Mayembe
So your chart, I take it, do you have your chart on your on your desk with you now? Oh, okay, nice. So, daily checklist, I like that.
Laura
I think that when we have it written out exactly what we’re supposed to do, again, that takes away the decision fatigue if like, even if I don’t have to do these things. So even if I don’t have to fill out anything for our adoption agency this month, amazing. Or this week, I look at it like, okay, now I don’t need to perfect. But I know I’ve touched on all the things because there’ll be several months. Oh, shoot, I’m supposed to do whatever that task is that I always forget to do, because it’s so sporadic. So this really just helps me stay on track with all the different things that you keep track of.
Toni-Ann Mayembe
Okay, nice. Nice. I really like that. And I like it is it is it laminated? Did I see that it was laminated. So you just reuse that one. And it’s laminated. I take it that with your checklists that you have you made it customized for exactly what you need for your family. If we wanted to get something similar to like what you have, as far as that checklist, like I know, you mentioned in the beginning, like just sitting down and like writing down like all the things that you have to do. And then from there, you can start to group things into the different days. Is that how you would go about doing it?
Laura
That is and actually I could share with you I have a batch working. doing batch working class next week, I’ll that every other month, I have a little cheat sheet that has you list everything out and then you can kind of walk along and put things in their specific days.
Toni-Ann Mayembe
Nice, nice. Now I hope you have gained some valuable insights and practical tips on how to implement batching into your daily routine as a busy mom. Remember, batching is a simple yet effective technique that can help you streamline your task, save time and reduce stress. By grouping similar tasks together, you can improve your productivity and make the most of your limited time. Whether it’s preparing meals, doing laundry, or managing your work task. There are endless possibilities for batching. But before we go, Laura has some encouragement for you aren’t getting started with batching.
Laura
I think just giving yourself grace is always my encouragement because it’s going to feel like you have this beautiful thing. And you’re excited about it. And it sounds wonderful, and you’re ready to make it happen. And then those life things happen and or maybe you have a bad day and don’t get done what you’re supposed to get done. And I think instead of beating yourself down and trying to cram it all into the next day, just giving yourself grace and looping back around and the next week.
Toni-Ann Mayembe
Now I hope you have enjoyed this episode as much as I have. If you are willing to give batching a try. Make sure you check out Laura’s workshop. The links are in the show notes. If you want to get the show notes head on over to Real happy mom.com/ 206 That’s it for this week. Take care and with lots of love
