My kids are 7 and 2, and I’m looking at going back to work in the next 1-3 years. But as I think about the details, even if I wait for the little one to be in kindergarten, I’m not sure how I’ll cram in everything I need to do.
Required activities for us would include:
Getting kids to school
Both parents get to work
Both parents exercise
Dinner gets made
It just seems overwhelming! Staying at home with a small child is no picnic, but I do get the wonderful opportunity to work out from 9-11, do some housework or paperwork during nap time, and get dinner started around 4pm most days. How on earth do y’all squeeze all of that stuff into the time you’re not working?
At the same time, I don’t think I could work part time, because I would need to make enough money to pay for child care during vacations, teacher work days, and so on. By the time both kids are in school, I could probably do enough frugal stuff at home during the day to save almost as much as I would net working a part time job!
So, if both parents are working full time, how do you manage?
Well two hour workouts are a bye-bye.
Two-hour dinner preps are also not likely. There’s a reason frozen chicken tenders and crock pots are popular with parents.
After that it’s a matter of getting used to never being able to completely be on top of anything.
I work out an hour, most nights, after dinner. When the kids were smaller, I left all but the most basic housework until the weekend. I can get dinner on the table in a half hour to 45 minutes (George Forman is your friend). Kids get dropped off on the way to work (or in my case, take the bus themselves now that they’re older) and picked up on the way home.
The main thing that suffers in my life is housework. Thank God for teenagers, though; I couldn’t do it without my household minions.
Crockpot meals or meals that don’t take a lot of time.
Both parents have to help. And it helps if you have extra help. When the kids were little and needed a lot of supervision, we had groceries delivered and a housekeeper. When you are talking about going back, your youngest will be more independent.
Exercise at home - we have a treadmill in the basement. Or with the kids - bike, walk, play ball.
Have the kids help - my son started mowing the lawn at nine or ten. My daughter is in charge of dishes. She does floors and bathrooms too.
Our house looks like a pit. And we sometimes bicker over it. We’re (hopefully) going to be hiring a cleaning lady soon to take care of the house for us, but in the meantime, we try to make the most of our weekends by cleaning for an hour or two every Saturday & Sunday. Also, I cook all our meals for 4-5 days on the weekends so all I have to do is shove them into the microwave and maybe make a vegetable side.
Compared to the household duties and childcare, pickups and dropoffs are negligible inconveniences. We’re lucky enough that daycare and preschool are in the same building and more or less on the path to work, so it’s just an extra 20-30minutes out of our way.
The roughest part is that there is a LOT of pressure on me - both kids are very attached to me, which is good, but I have children hanging on me when I wake up and when I get home, which leaves me a bit touched out and talked out at the end of the day. I also do most of the meal planning and cooking, which is pretty labor-intensive, plus I do much of the cleaning in the kitchen. Unfortunately, the stress that results from doing all that sometimes spills over into our relationship. It doesn’t help that the baby still wakes 3-4 times a night, so I rarely get over 4 hours of sleep. My husband gets up with her most of the time, but I’m still pretty stretched. Oh, and as far as the work out, I exercise about 30-35 minutes most days. I have to have a walk in the evening or Bad Things happen.
If I were to give advice, I’d say that you should make sure that your husband is supportive and hire help if you can, especially if you’re going back full time, even if it’s just for the first few months.
I’m a single parent who works full time and I don’t understand how parents can not get it all done. Really, it’s pretty easy. I wake up at 6:00, work out for half an hour, shower, shave, get dressed, and make breakfast (usually eggs, cottage cheese, and some kind of fruit). My two-and-a-half-year-old is up by 7:00. We eat breakfast and are out the door by 7:30, and that’s with him insisting on dressing himself. He gets dropped off at daycare and I’m at work by 8:00.
I use my lunch hour to relax a little and read a book. I’m off at 5:00. If the weather’s nice we stop by the park for a little while, otherwise we go home a play for a bit there. We start dinner between 6:00 and 6:30. He’s very involved with dinner time. He sits on the counter and does whatever prep work he can. He’s great at breaking the stems off the asparagus, washing vegetables, mashing potatoes, etc and he LOVES helping! I always prepare a meal (i.e. no microwave meals or chicken nuggets) but I never plan a meal that takes more than half an hour of actual cooking time, and most nights dinner is done in 15 minutes or less (see below). We eat when dinner is ready and we start bedtime around 7:45. Bedtime includes a quick bath, teeth brushing, reading 2-3 books, and singing a song or two. He’s in bed by 8:30 every night.
The night time is the most crucial part. Immediately after he goes to bed I spend the next hour or two doing all the prep work for the next day. I cut up fruit for the morning and make and pack lunches. I look over the next night’s dinner and do as much slicing, chopping, mixing, and stirring as I can possibly do, leaving out activities that I know he can do so that he’s got something to keep him busy while I’m actually cooking. The house is clean before I go to bed, to include laundry and dishes. Nothing sits until the next day or else it piles up very quickly and I’ve got twice as much work to do the next night. I’m usually in bed between 11:00 and midnight. Sometimes I get a little relaxing time, sometimes I don’t. That’s what weekends and lunch hours are for. Our routine relies on three simple facts:
I don’t get much sleep during the week
Everything that can be done while he’s sleeping is done before I go to bed.
Fun and relaxation is reserved for the weekends or the rare occasions when his grandparents take him.
I have one daughter, 7. I pay about 1/4 of my salary for after school care. I pick her up a bit before 6, and we go home. I make quick healthy dinners out of my Robin Miller Quick Fix Meals or Hungry Girl 123 cookbooks while she does her homework. Then we eat, she plays, bathes, and is off to bed about 8:30. Then I clear the kitchen and I do indoor fitness activities (I like EA Active for the Wii), and then I have a couple hours of R&R for myself before bed. Laundry and cleaning get done on the weekends, along with fun family stuff or a trip to Grandma’s for her and fun adult stuff for my partner and I. The house does not stay as nice as it would if I were home all day, but it’s sanitary enough.
My mom went back to work when her youngest (me) started kindergarten. Her disadvantage was that my dad was a long haul truck driver and was never home. She managed with twice as many kids as you’ve got, though I can’t imagine how.
When I was a single parent I worked full time, went to school 3/4 time, and still maintained a decent relationship with my only child at the time who was between the ages of 3 and 6 years old. I did that with the help of my parents and good neighbors who would get him on/off the bus as needed.
I know “electronic babysitters” are really frowned upon (I know, I do it too) but if you’re allowing any TV time, use that time to be productive yourself. Alex, who is 7, gets 20 minutes of game time a day. I can get a lot done in those 20 minutes.
I also like to take the prep time out of cooking when possible. I like to spend the time once a week to chop onions or peppers or chicken or whatever rather than waiting until it’s time to cook to do it.
This doesn’t work for everybody, but I like to schedule things. If I say I’ll do laundry “when I have time” I’ll never, ever get to it. Rather, I say “I’m up an hour before everybody else. I’m going to wash laundry then.” Or I block out 30 minutes before I start dinner to clean the bathroom and vacuum the hallways. I wind up being way more productive this way and I still have a ton of free time.
You can do it! It’ll be an adjustment, but it IS possible.
Awesome post, I missed it while I was typing mine.
I like this and I don’t understand people who say “The house is a mess, I clean on weekends.” If you clean every day, you don’t HAVE TO clean on weekends! I clean all day every single day. Five minutes here, ten minutes there. My apartment is ridiculous and days off are pure enjoyment. Yeah, I’m still picking up, but I can’t imagine spending a day off cleaning.
Oh, oh! One of my favorite tips, but it won’t work for kids that still need bath time supervision: Alex primarily takes showers these days but still likes baths so if I need extra time for whatever reason, instead of having to blow him off I make it fun and cool for him by being like “Oh yeah, you get to take a SUPER LONG bath tonight! YAY!” And he’s always, always amped about it. That gives me a good 30-40 minutes that might otherwise be full of “Mom, watch this!” or “Mom, I need…” or “Mom, let’s do…” He’s content and I get some peace and quiet for a minute. Win-win.
I’ve raised TheKid on my own since she was 10 months old. My nephew recently asked me how I did it, as he and his wife were exhausted with their newborn. My response was “You just do.” You don’t really have a choice.
When she was little, breakfasts were on the fly. Granola bars, dry cereal, reheated waffles, grapes - easy to eat in the car if necessary. When we lived out in the country it was not uncommon to grab dinner on the way home, or dinner was crockpotted all day. When we moved back into the cites, dinners became simple stuff - nothing fancy.
My main rule for cleaning the house - I hated coming home to a dirty house, but I also hated spending my “me” time cleaning. We’d walk in the door, change clothes, spend 15 minutes picking up the apartment / quick vaccuum if necessary / toys put away.
She always liked taking long baths. I would use that to clean the kitchen, do laundry, make phone calls. When she moved up to showers, they moved to earlier in the evening. Ten minutes in the shower allowed me to make calls or do a cursory clean of the kitchen. She then became recruited into helping with laundry.
My “me” time has always been after she went to bed. That was computer time. Time to sew. Time to veg out. No, I don’t work out. Now that she’s 16, I still cannot go to bed until her room is dark.
I think you need to remember that your husband and 7-year old can and should be able to do quite a bit. I’m the youngest of 5, both parents worked (my mother stopped working fulltime as a school teacher when I came along) and my mother had 5 kids onder the age of 6. My older sibs were washing dishes as soon as they could reach the sink while standing on a chair. We learned how to iron our own school uniforms, and follow a note with prep instructions to start meals.
A family is a working unit, and if everyone isn’t pitching in, there’s a problem.
I was a single parent from when my kids were 3 and 6 until they were 5 and 8, and I have been working full time since they were 8 and 11. They are now 10 and 13.
When I was a single parent, I relied a lot on quick breakfasts we could eat on the go. The older would go to the bus stop down the block and I dropped the younger off at daycare on my way to work. Younger got a lunch at daycare and older son and I took our lunches with us, packed that morning. I usually got up around 6:30, took a shower, then woke the kids up to get dressed. Older was out the door by 7:15 and younger and I were off to work/daycare by 7:30.
In the evenings, I got off work at 5 and picked up the older at after school care (my lifesaver) and then younger at daycare. We got home around 5:40. One night a week, we ate out – usually somewhere with free kids’ meals, heh – our favorite was the Pizza Hut buffet and something they looked forward to all week. Otherwise, we went home and prepped something quick and ate by 6:30. Bathtime and bedtime was by 9, at which point I relaxed, read, or did a little housework. Since we had a small place, it was easier to keep up with it as I went along.
Now, we have a 3 bedroom house and clean mostly on weekends. I try to toss in a load of laundry or load the dishwasher before work. Younger child goes to daycamp with the husband dropping her off 3x a week and takes a lunch for that. Older stays home and does a few chores a day (usually vaccuum, trash, or laundry) which helps greatly. Really, like others have said, you just do it, because if you stop to question it, you will never get it done.
Absolutely agree! I really don’t get it when people say they never have time to clean during the week. Seriously, how long does it take to clean? I manage to keep my house neat and orderly every day with five minutes here and ten minutes there. I can have the kitchen completely clean after breakfast in the time it takes my son to put on his shoes. Doing it every day doesn’t make it feel like such a daunting task, and frees up the entire weekend for going to the park and the zoo and whatever other fun stuff we want to do.
I see it like the story about the grasshopper and the ant. The work has to get done. Do it now so you can spend your relaxing time not having to worry about it.
This. Kids have been taught how to load and unload the dishwasher, the washer/dryer, and in a pinch there is crap frozen food in the freezer we can microwave. Sometimes I make food ahead and have it frozen already so we can just heat up a meal, and my husband grills a lot since we live in a warm climate.
There are also times the house looks like shit. For a while both my husband and I were working 7 day weeks and things just didn’t get done to our satisfaction. When we got a break, we caught up.
Well, my wife and I took three kids (2,6,10) to Korea while I was on active duty. My wife worked in Camp Redcloud, and we both went to school part time. I guess we managed because we had a lot more energy back then + we hired a cleaning lady and used the on post nursery.
I get all my work done during the week so that we go into the weekend with a clean house. We also spend probably 75% of the weekend away from the house. We go to the park, or the beach, the zoo, berry picking, set up play groups with friend, etc. We always go shopping at the farmer’s market every Saturday morning and grocery shopping on Sunday afternoon. If the weather is bad, we’ve got an IKEA to walk through and a huge mall close by with a giant in-door play structure and I can just sit on a bench while he plays.
That’s part of the reason why I don’t understand the working on the weekends thing. When you save work for the weekend, you sacrifice two days of fun for two or three hours at a time at night, and time when your child is likely sleeping and can’t enjoy it with you. However, if you spend those hours during the week cleaning, then you and your child(ren) have the entire weekend to do whatever you want without having to worry about the mess waiting for you at home.
My point is - those things you describe, getting out of the house, going to the beach, go shopping … for some of us, those things are work. I don’t count anything that I do in company of a kid as relaxation time. Even sitting on a bench watching them play is in some sense “work” because I have to have at least part of my attention on the kids (and, not like they’re going to let me actually sit on a bench for more than five minutes while there’s swings to be pushed and chasing to be done anyway)
My husband has finally got his workmates trained out of referring to his two days a week on home duties as his “holidays”. It’s the days in paid work that are the holidays. You get to sit down and not get up again until you have decided to! You get to start a task and keep doing the same thing for the next hour!
Anyway, good for you for finding a schedule that works for you. At Year 7 of kids, I’m still figuring it out. But it DEFINITELY involves collapsing in a heap at 8pm when the last kid has gone to bed.
I’m going back to work (part time initially, but full in a few months) in October when my daughter will be almost a year old. My attitude is like yours - I want to do all the work during the week, so that the ‘relaxation’ can be over the weekend so we can spent that time enjoying ourselves as a family with very similar activities to those you mention (which is why I wonder if we live in the same town!). And yes, that won’t be completely checking out like I would had been pre-kids, but I don’t regard the time spent playing with her as work, although being switched on 100% is definitely something that’s required.
I will be getting a cleaner in every week or two to do the deeper cleaning (figure that I’m missing out on enough of her life when I’m at work, I want to focus on her when I’m not), but we clean as we go already, using nap times for laundry, tiding and grocery shopping, encourage solo play so I can get things done (and for her own benefit) and do a different major chore for each day of the week so it’s part of the routine. Once she’s in bed I do any final tidy, fold laundry, pack the nappy bag, etc.
I’ll also commute by bike to work (30 min each way), so that gets the workout done.
I can’t think of a way to say this that doesn’t sound condescending…but I guess I just don’t consider time spent with my son as work. Pushing a swing may not be my favorite activity, but making him smile is much more rewarding for me than sitting on the couch and watching TV.
I don’t live in Australia. I’m in a time zone 16 hours behind you. Sounds like we’ve got the same mindset though. Having a child is definitely a big life change, but parenting became a lot more enjoyable when I realized that “us” time is so much better than “me” time.
Sounds like we’ve got the same mindset though. Having a child is definitely a big life change, but parenting became a lot more enjoyable when I realized that “us” time is so much better than “me” time.