No two Mums are the same but I’m sure that one thing we can all agree on, united as mothers, is that there is never enough hours in a day and there is usually always something to be done,  right?

Everyone also has different priorities in life which can be influenced by many factors including the needs of your child, age/s of your child/ren, employment, support….the list could go on!

We have compiled our top 5 tips to help keep your days organised and productive.

• Start your day earlier

You’re probably thinking that you wish you could have more sleep, so why would you want to actually be up any earlier? Being up earlier allows you have uninterrupted time to yourself. Even if its just to have a coffee and get yourself ready for the day. This will allow for the morning to run more smoothly and you can focus your attention to doing other things you normally wouldn’t have time for.

• Ask for help and accept it

We sometimes like to think we can just do it all, while running ourselves into the ground, but realistically all this is doing is just exhausting all your energy and leaving yourself a frazzled mess. It also doesn’t leave you much time to do anything for yourself or just enjoy time together because you always have a to do list in the back of your mind.

Asking and accepting help is not easy to do also, sometimes we feel bad that we just can’t keep up because we set this high expectation that we “should” be able to do it all. We certainly aren’t robots and asking for help is nothing to be ashamed of.

Learning to ask for help should be considered a skill we are able to do, or make an effort to learn to do. After all what advice do we give our children when they are struggling with something….to ask us for help, ironic hey?

• Write things down

There are probably two type people in this world. People who like lists and people who don’t.

The truth of the matter is that creating lists can aid in the productivity and organisation of your workload while also giving us a visual reminder of things you need to achieve, and ticking off those things feels pretty darn satisfying too. This is why sometimes its successful for children to have a chore chart or visual reminders too.

If lists aren’t your thing you can find other ways to write things down that may be helpful. Things like, sticky notes, a whiteboard on the wall or fridge, calendar or diary and even just the notes section of your mobile phone.

If you wanted to go next level, you could also leave notes for your husband too, because more often than not they need reminders as well. If you can sync your phone notes to his I’m sure he would look forward to every notification. But really having everyone in the household on the same page, makes life a little easier too.

• Find balance (embrace the chaos)

We all know that feeling when you clean a room and it feels like your kids are following your every move to intentionally just undo it all. By the end of the day you probably feel like you haven’t achieved much at all and sometimes you even wonder why you bothered in the first place.

There are ways you can reduce this by teaching children responsibility for their belongings and creating chores to reduce the workload, but truth be told you’ll probably never escape this feeling so sometimes you just need to embrace that this may now just be a part of your life.

Finding a balance in your workload is necessary if you want to keep any kind of sanity and this balance may come in many forms from delegating what things are most important to do first and what things can go with less attention to even finding a new way to organise and achieve these things.

• Make chores more interesting and fun

No one likes chores right, unless you are Monica from Friends! So why not take a task you have no choice but to do and make it a little more fun? No one ever complained about having too much fun!

You can start by even just popping on some music while you do a few things as that alone can greatly improve your mood.

If your children are old enough you can use some strategies to entice them to help while also having a bit of fun – things like sticker charts, earning a special treat or even a movie night, award for helper of the week or some pocket money, kids love money!

Cleaning against the clock or setting yourself a timer to achieve as much as you can in that amount of time can also be a little motivator while also achieving more than you normally would in that time frame, this is something you can do with the kids also.

We hope that there is something on this list that will help you feel more organised. Let us know in the comments if you have some handy organising tips of your own.