If you’re whizzing through your days in a blur of exhaustion, you need a break. Here are 30 self-care ideas for stay-at-home moms to help put the joy back into motherhood...
The term self-care is often accompanied by a beauty spa image, but that’s not everyone’s ideal and it’s not realistic for many moms. Instead, decide what self-care means for you.
Ask yourself what you would do if someone could look after your kids for two hours.
My ideal self-care session is being able to paint or draw while listening to one of my favourite podcasts with a face mask on (multi-tasking self-care here).
Here are more realistic self-care ideas for moms...
- Meet up with a friend for a long scenic walk
- Go clothes shopping – for yourself
- Have uninterrupted reading time, preferably in bed
- Watch a movie alone
- Start a sewing or knitting project
- Try a new recipe
- Declutter and organise your wardrobe
- Do some gardening
- Buy yourself flowers
- Workout
- Write a letter or email to a friend or family member faraway
- Take photographs in nature or of your family
- Create a vision board
- Dance
- Write a blog post
- Go for a walk
- Do something you used to love as a kid but haven’t done in years, like rollerblading, skating boarding, riding a bicycle, horse-riding, skipping, flying a kite or hula-hooping
- Make something out of clay or paper-mâché
- Go to the library alone and get out books for yourself
- Have a video call with a friend or family member
- Get your haircut (or give yourself a pandemic DIY haircut – click here for great tutorials)
- Listen to a podcast
- Pray or meditate
- Organise a safe (masked) playdate with a mom friend so you can chat while the kids play
- Try a new hobby or learn something new by following a YouTube tutorial
- Stretch
- Draw or paint
- Give yourself a foot or facial massage
- Listen to an audiobook
- Journal
How to make the time for self-care
If you can get someone to watch your kids regularly for a few hours – enjoy it - but if that’s not possible, there are a few options for time-strapped moms.
- Get up before your kids
- Stay up later than them
- Take advantage of your child/children’s scheduled nap/quiet time/independent play or TV time
You might be a morning person, but I’m a night owl so if I want to work on my blog (which is one of my self-care passion projects), I tend to do it at night.
If you feel like you don’t have the time, steal it back from the things that keep you busy but unfulfilled.
For example, if you don’t enjoy cooking, try meal planning and cooking in bulk so you don’t have to cook every single night. When doing the laundry, fold clothes straight off the line so you don’t need to iron them.
Another way to steal time is to pair unavoidable boring chores with something enriching – like unloading the dishwasher while listening to a podcast.
And finally, stop picking up after your kids and start giving them chores. My 4-year-old knows that he has to do his simple chores and complete a 30 – 45 minute independent play before he can watch TV.
Some periods of motherhood are intense, and despite your best intentions, you don’t get much time for yourself.
For me, art and writing is self-care, but I can’t do either very well when I’m exhausted. When you don’t have the energy for ‘ideal’ self-care, make sure you give yourself a few micro-self care moments. It could be putting on your comfiest clothes, giving yourself a quick facial massage, drawing for five minutes while your kid eats a snack in the park (that’s one of mine) or listening to an encouraging podcast while tackling unavoidable housework.
Being a mom is awesome, but I’m realising that it’s even better when we can hold onto the best of who we were before kids...and self-care is a way to do that. After all, good moms are good to themselves.
PS. You might like to read To the mom who lost her job, How do you find me-time as a mother? and How to work from home with a kid
Photo by Priscilla Du Preez
No comments:
Post a Comment