Hustle Sanely

316: 5 Habits Making Your Life Way Harder as a Mom (and what to do instead of them)

• Jess Massey

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Are you tired in a way you can't quite name? Feeling like your days are more draining than they should be? It might not be motherhood itself...it might be a few quiet habits that are sneaking up on you 🫠👀

In this episode, I'm calling out 5 things I stopped doing to stay sane as a mom (and honestly, most of these apply to non-moms too!)

In this episode, we cover:

  • 5 habits to ditch to make your life easier as a mom
  • 5 habits to do instead of the ones we're ditching

| RESOURCES | 

SPEAKER_00

Being a mom can be hard. Honestly, being a person in general can be hard. But I do think that we can do certain things to make it less hard. And if that's the case, then that means there are things that we can do to make it harder, right? Sometimes without even realizing these like seemingly small things are actually stealing our sanity. So today I am calling out some of the things that you might be doing, and I know about these because I used to do them that are making your life harder. We're gonna talk about five things that I stopped doing to stay sane as a mom. And most of these things are applicable to non-moms too. So even if you're not a mom, stick around because you will still get some little golden nuggets out of this episode. Okay. A few months ago, I looked down at my lunch and I am not even joking you. I was eating the leftover crust from my daughter's peanut butter and jelly sandwich and a cheese stick that I grabbed out of the fridge as my lunch. I was literally hunched over the kitchen counter like a little gremlin, eating scraps. And I genuinely thought, like, okay, this is good enough for my lunch. Like, check, done. I ate today. Like, that's what I was fueling my body with, you guys. Crust from my daughter's sandwich and a cheese stick. That is not okay, but I had convinced myself that it was. And if you're laughing at me right now, it's probably because you've had some sort of version of that moment as well. And that is where today's episode comes in, all right? We are not talking about these big dramatic habits, but we're more so focusing on the small, quiet ones that sneak up on us, the ones that we don't even realize are making our lives harder until we change them. And then we think, oh, that is so much better. So today I'm gonna talk you through five habits that were quietly working against me as a mom. And of course, I'm gonna share the shifts that help me make a difference with these habits, right? So some are mindset-based, some of them are more systems focused, and one of them even involves bed sheets. So if you are in a season where things feel harder than they should, where you're tired in a way that you can't quite name, where your days just feel more draining than they need to be, this episode might have something for you. Welcome or welcome back to the Hustle Sandly podcast. I hope you're taking care of yourself. This is your digital classroom for learning how to break up with burnout and build a peacefully productive life. If you're so tired of feeling like you're running on E and you're stretched so thin, grab your notebook and let's get to class. The bell has rung, so let's learn today's lesson together. Here are the five habits that are making your life harder that you need to stop doing right now. Number one, winging mealtime, specifically yours. Habit number one that was making my life harder, neglecting my own nutrition and just kind of winging it when it comes to feeding myself. I know that sounds basic. I know that you know that you need to eat, right? Like we all know that, but there is a very specific version of this that I think a lot of moms kind of fall into. You make breakfast for your kid, you make lunch for your kid, you're cleaning up after lunch, and you realize you're hungry and you just sort of graze whatever is left, a handful of crackers, the other half of that sandwich, maybe it's the crust, like me, whatever got left on their plate becomes your lunch. And somehow you're registering this as, okay, I ate. It doesn't register as like, oh, I actually just ate toddlers rejected lunch pieces as my meal for the day. That's what I was doing. And it impacted my energy in the afternoon, my focus in the afternoon, and my mood in the afternoons. I kept wondering why I was hitting a wall every day at 3 p.m. and why I wanted to eat the entire kitchen after Everly went to bed. And part of that answer was I hadn't actually fed myself that day. I didn't properly fuel myself that day. So here is the shift that I made. You probably know what I'm gonna say, but I'm gonna say it anyway. I started eating meals, okay? And here's what I did to help me with that. I made a mini rotating menu for my lunches because honestly, breakfast isn't that hard for me, and dinner isn't that hard for me because my husband cooks both of those for me. Okay. So lunch is where I tend to struggle. So I'll tell you straight up, I don't enjoy meal prepping and I don't enjoy meal planning. I don't like having to eat one thing for lunch all week. I like options. I'm a mood eater, okay? I'm a mood reader when it comes to my books, and I'm a mood eater when it comes to my food. So here's what I did: I made a board on Pinterest called Real Life Lunches, and I pinned pictures of snack plates and yogurt bowls that I knew I could easily replicate and other simple recipes that took minimal time and effort to prepare. Right now I have five rotating lunches. Number one is tuna salad. Not like a tuna on salad, but like tuna salad. You know what I'm saying? You know what I'm saying? So I make two servings of this at a time, either on Sunday or Monday, and I eat it with almond flour crackers and carrots like two days a week. Second thing that I have on my rotating little lunch menu is a snack plate. Typically, the kinds of things that I have on my snack plates, boiled egg, sweet peppers, like cut in half with cottage cheese on top, and then hot honey drizzled. It is so good. My mouth is literally watering, talking about that. A handful of pistachios or walnuts, some cheese, cucumbers with French onion Greek yogurt dip. I share that on Instagram all the time. I love to add pickles. I love adding strawberries, blueberries, mango, like whatever fruit we have. I obviously mix this up based on whatever we have on hand. But my goal with my snack plates is to have at least 20 to 25 grams of protein and then a little bit of healthy fats on there because that's what keeps me full, and then some sort of fiber going on. So that is my second little rotating menu option is a snack plate. Third thing is a yogurt bowl. A yogurt bowl never does me wrong. I can always count on a yogurt bowl. These are perfect for when you have like more of a sweet tooth for lunch. So I like to use plain Greek yogurt. I use the Faye brand. I don't know if that's how you say it. It's F-A-G-E. So I'll get a serving of that yogurt and then I'll mix in blueberries, strawberries, a tangerine. I love adding a tangerine in my yogurt bowls. It is so good. A little bit of granola and then honey drizzled on top since it is like the non-flavored Greek yogurt. So good. The fourth meal that I have on my rotating lunch menu right now is a buffalo chicken salad. This one is actually a salad with chicken on it. Okay. I am obsessed with buffalo dressing. I will put a picture of it up on the screen. It is so good. So I'll just have like a little salad, like romaine. I personally like romaine salad. Don't come for me. I know that it's like not super nutritious, but I don't care. It's my favorite. So I'll do some romaine. I'll do some either leftover chicken from dinner, or I do love throwing the just bear chicken nuggets in the air fryer for 10 minutes and using those sometimes, especially if I'm making chicken nuggets for Everly, anyways. I am not above eating a chicken nugget for lunch, okay? They are so good. They honestly taste like Chick-fil-A chicken nuggets. We love them in this household. So I'll put that together for a salad. Use that buffalo dressing. It takes me like 10 minutes or less to make this, and it is so good. Cause I'll just like make the salad while the chicken is in the air fryer. You know what I'm saying? So the last thing that I have on my rotating lunch menu is dinner leftovers. Keep it simple, okay? If we had something for dinner that is quick to reheat for lunch and I'm in the mood for it, I'll do that. So to sum this one up, you basically just need to have a list of a few go-to lunches that you like and save them somewhere that you can easily look at them, whether it's a note on your phone, a board on Pinterest, like whatever, so that you can quickly reference and rotate through them throughout the week. That way, lunch can stop being a decision that you make while you're hunched over the sink so hangry, and you're just like eating crumbs off your kid's plate. It's actually nice because now I make my lunch while I'm making my daughter's lunch, and then I'll sit down and I'll eat with her. And I'm like, wow, look at us go. Like we're eating like a real person, right? And plus you're spending quality time with your kid and like sitting at the table and eating a meal with them. Like, why wouldn't you want to do that, right? So, habit number two that is making your life way harder as a mom, you're waiting for self-care to show up on your calendar. Listen, self-care is not ever going to magically just find its way onto your schedule. I am speaking from experience. Also, a little sidebar with this one, and I'm very passionate about this. Practical self-care is self-care. Things like working out, choosing to read in the evening instead of sitting on the couch and scrolling, eating actual meals, like we just talked about, being consistent with your skincare routine. These are all forms of self-care. I found that I had to change how I was kind of defining self-care when I became a mom. I had a version of self-care in my head that was, you know, very aesthetic, candles, baths, really long, uninterrupted morning routines. And none of that was fitting into my actual life once I became a mom, right? When I started thinking about self-care as practical, it changed everything. A workout is self-care. A walk is self-care. Getting enough sleep for the love of God is self-care. Eating lunch, like I mentioned in the last habit, that is self-care. Getting dressed for the day, self-care. Y'all, these are not glamorous. They're not necessarily like these Instagram-worthy routines and habits, but they are things that actually keep me functional. The candles and bubble bath version of self-care is amazing when it actually happens, but it cannot be the only definition of self-care because then it's too easy to skip it. Waiting for this huge, unbroken block of time to do some self-care isn't always in the cards when you're a mom. You don't have to be all or nothing when it comes to self-care, especially if you're in a season with babies and toddlers. A little self-care sprinkle here and there, that's what adds up. Okay, sidebar over, back to the actual habit here. Like I said, self-care is not going to magically find its way onto your schedule. You've got to treat self-care like an appointment, a scheduled block planned in advance and protected the same way that you would protect a work meeting or a doctor appointment for your kids, right? So we have to stop treating taking care of ourselves as extra, something that we get to do when the to-do list is done, if we still have the energy left to do it. Self-care is what gives us the energy, okay? When I am practically taking care of myself, my capacity expands. I'm more patient, I'm more fun. I am just all around better to be around for myself, for my husband, for my daughter, literally for everyone. So when you sit down to do your weekly prep meeting, because I know we are all following the Hustle Stanley Planning system and doing weekly prep meetings, schedule in your workouts, walks, your windown time in the evenings, your bedtime, your meal prep time, because all of that is self-care, okay? If you're waiting for self-care to just appear in your week, it's not going to. I'm telling you right now, it is not going to. You have to put it there. And you get to define what self-care looks like for you in your current season of motherhood/slash life. Habit number three that was making my life way harder, trying to hold everything in my head. If you're the person in your household who holds all the information in your head, like the dentist appointments, the school events, the thing that you need to grab from the store, the birthday party next weekend, the thing that your husband is supposed to schedule, but he hasn't yet, and you're kind of keeping tabs on that. This is for you, okay? The mental load is real. And one of the sneakiest ways that it drains you is that it's invisible. No one sees you remembering things. No one acknowledges the cognitive overhead of being the family's kind of like operating system, right? You're just doing it constantly in the background while also doing everything else. And here is what I want to say clearly: you don't have to be the only one holding it. The shift that made the biggest difference for me is simple a shared Google Calendar with my husband. So everything goes in it. His schedule, my schedule, our daughter's schedule, appointments, events, task deadlines, all of it. It's shared. So everything is visible to both of us. Neither one of us is the keeper of information anymore. It lives somewhere outside of our heads. And I know shared calendars are not like this revolutionary new idea, but I am shocked by how many moms I talk to who are still like the sole holder of the family's logistical information. When the mental load is one-sided, that's when resentment builds. Externalizing the information means you're not carrying it alone. And that makes such a big difference mentally, okay? If your partner isn't a planner, go to the podcast, the Hustle Standy Podcast, and listen to episode 189. It's literally called What to Do When Your Partner Isn't a Planner. Mine, my husband is not a natural planner either. I had to teach him how to be one for the betterment of our family. We actually just launched a Google Calendar Masterclass last month, back in May, where I walk you through exactly how I set up my Google Calendar and our family shared Google Calendar. Y'all have been asking me for this for so long, and I finally made it happen during our little podcast break. So I taught this Google Calendar system that I use to my very type B husband. And you guys, he has been using it successfully and consistently for over a year. Over a year. It is like I feel like the heavens have opened up, the angels are singing because my husband has stuck to a planning system and it has made my life so much easier. Okay. Before teaching him how to use Google Calendar to hold all of his tasks and events, he was so overwhelmed by trying to keep track of everything in his brain. And that's why things kept falling through the cracks, right? So we built out his Google Cal and now he actually knows what's coming and he remembers important tasks and he doesn't feel constantly behind. He doesn't have to ask me, like, hey, can I do this on this day? Like he just opens up the calendar and he can see what's going on, where our free time is, what tasks are coming up. It is glorious. It's been so good for his stress levels and honestly, mine too. So if you are not using a shared Google Calendar and you're trying to hold everything up in your brain, you're hurting yourself. You're hurting yourself and you're making your life harder. Y'all, over 150 people have already taken the Google Calendar Masterclass and I've only had it out for a month. Like that's incredible. I will link it down below if you're like, okay, okay, okay, please teach me how to use Google Calendar. It's under a hundred bucks, but trying to keep everything in your head is making your life way harder. You have to use some sort of system. Even if you're like, girl, I don't want to use Google Calendar, don't. Okay, use your own system. That's fine. You just have to have some sort of system where everything isn't living in your brain, like it's living somewhere where it's not gonna be forgotten about or slip through the cracks. So a little sidebar to this one. So like a habit 3.5, if you will, is having some sort of visual schedule for your kids so they can also see like what is coming up that day and what they need to do without asking you 45 times. Obviously, my daughter's three. She's not using the shared family Google Calendar yet, okay? Maybe in a couple years. But right now, I feel like having a visual schedule for your kids is another less thing that you have to keep in your head. Like I said, my daughter's three. We just introduced a routine chart that tells her what she's doing in the morning, afternoon, and evening each day. We keep it up on the fridge, and it's been so great seeing her reference that. It's like building her independence and also saving me from answering the same questions 45 times every single day. I'll post a picture on the screen of the one that we use. And of course, I will link it down below for you guys as well. It comes with over 125 little task cards that you can change out, and you can add in your own too. Like it's totally customizable, so you can add in cards that are specific to your family. So it takes me like two to three minutes the night before to set these up for the next day, and it's very much worth the brain space that it saves me from answering the same routine questions every single day. It's good for me, it's good for my daughter. So highly recommend having some sort of visual daily routine system for your kids. Habit number four that is making your life harder as a mom is having only one set of sheets per bed. Hear me out, okay? Stick with me on this one. I know this one is a little bit weird. I almost didn't include it because it does sound silly, but it's so practical. So I'm including it. It has literally changed my home reset days. Like it makes the home reset routine so much smoother. So here's how the old routine used to work it would be home reset day. I strip the beds, I put the sheets in the washer, and then I continue with my day. I move them into the dryer. They sit in the dryer, and then it's time for Everly's nap, and her crib is sheetless. I am frantically trying to like grab sheets out of the dryer and fight to get them on her bed as quickly as possible so I don't miss her magical I'll still nap if you lay me down right now window. Y'all know what I'm talking about. If you're a toddler mom whose toddler is kind of like inching toward being done with naps. Anyway, I forget about our bed sheets in the dryer since I was frantically trying to get Everly's bed made before her nap. And then it's 10:30 at night. I'm tired. I'm trying to go to bed. And I remember, oh my gosh, our sheets are still in the dryer. And then I'm so annoyed that I wind up sleeping on the couch so that I don't have to make the bed when I'm so tired. Okay. Not the vibe. So last year I bought a second set of sheets for each bed in our house, which is only two beds. And now when I strip the beds on reset day, I immediately put the clean set on. The sheets that I'm stripping off go in the washer, they go in the dryer, and then they get folded and put away. And I have zero urgency around it because there are already clean sheets on the bed. I cannot tell you how many times I have ended a day just getting into a freshly made bed without a single moment of any sort of sheet-related stress. Okay. It sounds ridiculous, but it has been a genuinely meaningful quality of life improvement. So this habit is here to represent a whole category of changes, okay? The one-time low effort fixes that remove a recurring source of low-grade friction from your life. So sometimes hustling sanely and living a peacefully productive life just means spending $100 to stop annoying your future self. Look around your life. I promise there is a version of the sheets problem somewhere in your life. And that brings us to habit number five that is making your life way harder as a mom. And that is following the same routines that you had before you were a mom or trying to follow them. This is like trying to fit a square peg into a round hole. It doesn't work. It's not supposed to work. Okay. This one is less about a specific practice and more about the whole belief system that I had to let go of when it came to my routines. Before I had my daughter, I had routines that I was really proud of. I had a morning routine that felt intentional and grounding, a workout rhythm that felt easy to be consistent with, a workday structure that felt productive and clear. And then I became a mom. And these things stopped feeling good. They stopped working for me. When I couldn't do them the way that I used to, I was internalizing it as failure. The routines worked before, now they don't. So something must be wrong with me. Like that's what I was telling myself. But here's what was actually happening. My life had fundamentally changed. Hello, I had a kid. I became a mom. My time, my capacity, my energy, my schedule, it all looked completely different. And I was trying to run a completely different life through the same operating system that I built for a different version of myself. That doesn't work. Not because I was failing, but because the system was not designed for the new season that I was in. So the shift that helped me the most here was learning to let fragmented habits count. So what I mean by that, a 30-minute workout taking 60 minutes because of interruptions is still a workout. Folding half a load of laundry in the morning and the other half at night is still getting the job done. The all or nothing thinking, the belief that if I can't do it the way I used to, it doesn't count. That was the thing that was making everything harder for me. You don't have to rebuild the exact routine you had before. You have to build one that works for who you are now in the season that you're actually in with the life you're actually living. Your current season has constraints that your pre-mom life didn't. That's not a problem to be solved, you guys. It's a reality to be designed around. Fragmented, imperfect, smaller than you'd like habits still add up. They still count. And releasing the old standard, the one that you built in a completely different chapter of your life, is one of the most freeing things that you can do. Y'all know what we say around here. Our schedules and routines are tools, not chains. So make sure that your schedules and routines are supporting your season of motherhood. All right, y'all, that wraps up today's lesson. But what good is learning something if you don't apply it to your life? We are all about taking action and implementation here in the Hostel Stanley classroom. It is time for me to assign your homework so that you can actually go out and create a peacefully productive life. So this week's homework, what I want you to do before our next class, step one, there's a couple steps here, so bear with me, okay? Step one, buy an extra set of bed sheets for each bed in your home. They don't have to be fancy, they don't have to be expensive, okay? Step number two, choose one other of these habits to try out this week. So if you're indecisive and you're like, I don't know, I don't know which one to pick, I'll choose your second one for you. Have a weekly prep meeting for next week and schedule your movement for each day of the week. Whether it's a, I don't know, Pilates class, a walk with a friend, weightlifting session at home while your toddler plays with magnetiles next to you. Get your movement on your calendar for next week because that is practical self-care. Okay, class is officially dismissed. It is time for some extra credit, aka me filling you in on all the things happening in the Hustle Stanley community right now. First and foremost, you guys, 15 days until the doors to Hustle Stanley study hall open for. Our summer semester. I cannot wait, okay? Because our summer semester topic, golden, golden. It is all about regulating our nervous systems. We are gonna be designing habits and routines to support emotional regulation. You can't tell me that you don't need that because we all need that, okay? You can learn more about study hall and join the wait list at jessicamassey.com/slash study hall. And also a little side note about study hall summer semester is when planners go on sale because the summer semester in Study Hall is July, August, and September. Anyone in Hustle Stanley Study Hall gets to shop early in September when we launched the 2027 planners. So uh I haven't announced this anywhere yet, but I'm just you know what? Let me let me just tell you now. We have ordered way less inventory than we have in years past because things are getting more expensive and we pay for all of our inventory out of pocket. And so to just be transparent, we can't afford to buy as much as we have in the past because prices are going up. So the amount of inventory that we are gonna have for our 2027 planners is much more limited compared to past years. So if you want to guarantee that you get a 2027 peacefully productive planner, my recommendation to you is to join Hustle Stanley Study Hall. Of course, you're gonna love it in Study Hall, but you're also gonna guarantee that you get the planner that you want for 2027. Okay. So, second thing, if you're not already on our email list, what are you doing? What are you even doing? You gotta get on there, Bestie. Okay, we send out a weekly email every Saturday called Slowdown Saturday with some peaceful productivity inspo. There's a journal prompt, there's an affirmation. The emails themselves are stunning. I don't design them. My best friend, she works with me at Hustle Sainly, and she is so creative and so good at that kind of stuff. She puts together our weekly emails and they're a vibe, okay? And they're free to get. Like, what are you doing if you're not getting our weekly email? I will put the link down below that you need to join our email list so that you can get our cozy, fun little email delivered to your inbox every Saturday morning. But anyway, I think that's it. Thank y'all so much for coming to class with me today. I will talk to you in the next episode, and of course, I hope you have the best day ever.