Image by: Russell Trow
As a mum, you can never have too many hours in the day. In fact, life would be a lot easier if there were at least three more to spare in the daily 24 hour scheme of things.
School-runs, kid’s clubs, visits from friends, visits to friends, food shopping, attempts to make sure not every dinner originates from the freezer, house cleaning– no wonder you feel like there’s never any time to do anything!
But there is some time you can reclaim, those few minutes it takes for the kettle to boil for a cuppa is precious time – and you can use it to your advantage.
That is, if you know how…
1) Write a shopping list. Forgot the pasta for the pasta bake tonight? Nevermore! Keep a list on the go, and add to it whenever you get two minutes.
2) Load the dishwasher. No one knows why, but stuff always seems to accumulate next to the sink or above the dishwasher without actually making it into the actual dishwasher. No more mountains of dishes to load just before bed.
3) Water your houseplants. Because it only takes a few minutes, and, let’s face it, we all have a few ropey-looking herbs on the kitchen window-sill which generally only get water when they’re looking decidedly dead.
4) Wipe the milk shelf in the fridge -with antibacterial spray, because a side effect of getting the kids to get their own cereal is a milk-encrustation.
5) Check the fridge for out of date food. Because you generally only realise that food is out of date when you need to use it. Especially eggs. Especially right when you’re trying to make a cake in less than an hour before guests arrive for your little one’s birthday…
6) Wipe the kitchen surfaces down. For some reason, there are always crumbs. Or sugar granules. Even if no one’s eaten anything remotely crumby or sugary in the last 24 hours.
7) Move anything that doesn’t belong in the kitchen out of there. Toys, random items of clothing, school reward charts… they all end up in the kitchen somehow.
8) Put the oven gloves and tea towels in to wash. Wash them on the hottest, because I bet the last time you washed your oven gloves was six months ago when you got stew all over them, and they are now once again coated with oils and extraneous bits of food…
9) Go through your spice/herb rack. Didn’t you buy that Garam Masala on your trip to India before the kids were even conceived…? And I think the last time you used tarragon was four years ago, before you learnt that you can’t cook posh food (/Nigella recipes).
10) Put your feet up. Because even though it’s 6.30am, you’ve already made the packed lunches, hovered the living room, put a load of washing on, cleaned the toilet, and made everyone’s beds, so Lord knows you deserve it!
What useful things do you do while you wait for the kettle to boil?
Estelle Page is a mum of two with limited time on her hands – with two young tearaways to look after, she likes to utilise every spare second she has. This means doing stuff even when she’s waiting for the kettle to boil and then writing blogs for Carrot Rewards about it.