Behind the scenes: my typical Saturday as a 5-kids-chasing, business-and-homeschooling mom!

Here’s what your weekend prep day could look like next month!

Because what I teach you is how to get less on your plate – even as a mom running a business – and no matter how many kids you have in the house. And you’re going to do it by the power of delegation.

Sneak peek: by the time we all descend on the kitchen, Mister 6-Year-Old is all done and accomplished, I’m ready to get out plates and maple syrup, my husband’s going to start cooking, and Waffle Boy #1 is somewhere toilet scrubbing.

So here’s what a typical Saturday cleaning-and-errand-running (oh, and don’t forget the 7-person food prepping!) at our house looks like....

You’ve got this!

Alyssa

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Transcript

This is the Unbusy Mom, and today I’m sharing behind the scenes: here’s a peek inside my typical Saturday as a 5-kids-chasing, business-and-homeschooling mom!

Want a peek inside my life as a 5-kids-chasing, online business, homeschooling mom? Of what YOUR weekend prep day could look like next month! (Or next year if you’ve still got littles only in your brood!)

Because what I teach you is how to get LESS on your plate – even as a mom running a business – and no matter HOW many kids you have in the house. And you’re going to do it by the power of delegation.

So.

Here’s what a typical Saturday cleaning-and-errand-running (oh, and don’t forget the 7-person food prepping!) at our house looks like.

First, when do we get up. At this stage of life, with no nursing babies, we get to enjoy that mythical weekend sleep-in (since Sunday has a church alarm).

So after enjoying a slow wake-up, we usually only get out of bed when we hear a tap on the door saying “waffles are ready.” Let me go back and explain this.

Our Saturday tradition has been doing a big waffle breakfast for the family ever since we got married, so of course that means someone has to stir *up* the waffles. (Cooking 8 giant 4-square waffles for this big a family is no joke! You need the largest mixing bowl, etcetera etcetera….)

So once our kids got old enough, I asked one of my enterprising cooks (probably when he was about 8) if he’d like to start mixing up the waffle batter while I ran around in the kitchen getting everything else set out. 

Which was a big help to *my* experience of a leisurely morning breakfast - now everyone’s not waiting on me to stir the batter!

Eventually, however, said kid got enterprising and decided that *he’d* rather get a head start on his other chores of the day (Saturday is our cleaning day) and wanted to hand off *his* food prep chore to the next one down.

So, all without our assistance (or knowledge!), he started training his younger brother how to gather ingredients, what order to put things in, and all that stuff. (Mind you, this brother didn’t even know how to read yet.)

That done, Waffle Boy #1 happily went off to room pickup and bathroom cleaning, only popping in whenever his brother yelled over, “what’s next after the baking powder?” It was pretty funny.

So now, Mister 6-Year-Old stirs up the batter (he’s very proud of himself), and the 9-year-old scuttles off to do the heavy cleaning (‘cause he’s got the more mopping, toilet scrubbing, compost dumping kinds of chores). The ones that require a bit more muscle power.

Now, while all this batter mixing is going on, Eldest Child is up and about and getting ready for the day. She’s very methodical, responsible, and organized (kind of like me), so she has her cleaning routine and knows exactly how long it’s going to take her and precisely how much she can get done before “waffles are ready!” is called.

(At the time of recording, her job is to sweep the whole house - we don’t have any carpet - and do some food prepping chores.)

So by the time we all descend on the kitchen, Mister Waffle Mixer is all done and accomplished, I’m ready to get out plates and maple syrup, my husband’s going to start cooking, and the eldest is well on her way sweeping (while 9-year-old is somewhere toilet scrubbing).

(I should mention here that our next teen likes to sleep in, so *she* generally makes her appearance when waffles are done cooking. *Her* version of a nice Saturday is sleeping in, eating breakfast, and doing a few leisurely bathroom-cleaning chores or steak marinading until it’s naptime. Then she gets to relax again.)

Once waffles are over, everyone scatters back to their chores except my husband, who continues his lazy Saturday morning ritual by sipping coffee and reading the news. He takes his time about that one.

And about the time that he’s done, it’s grocery shopping time, which coincidentally motivates the 2 boys to finish up their room cleaning, wrap up the mopping and bathroom scrubbing, and be out the door with Daddy. (So they can pester him with questions like “what’s the structural integrity of that bridge” and “what caused the Great Depression.”)

The nice benefit of this late morning errands-with-Daddy routine is that the girls and I get a nice, quiet house to finish up *our* chores and food prepping in. Everyone likes it.

(Not completely quiet, mind you, because the 4-year-old’s around. She doesn’t need entertaining; her tongue does it for her!)

So then, by the time I’m done food prepping for the week and *I* get my read-the-news time, my oldest has been done with chores for a while and the next teen is halfway through *her* set of to-dos. 

It’s about this point that my husband gets home and it’s “all hands on deck” for unloading the groceries - because buying groceries for a family of 7 takes a lot of bags! (Even when it’s only half the stores - I do the other half earlier in the week.)

Then we either sit down for lunch (me and my husband, as he prefers to eat early - the kids eat an hour later), or go out on a date. I’ll tell you about the date version so you can see what it looks like (whether you’re there, too, or just hoping for when you have teenagers to babysit!)

We let Eldest know that we’re heading out, tell her what’s in the fridge for leftovers lunch, and trundle ourselves down to whichever ethnic hole-in-the-wall strikes our fancy for today.

And then, since we’ve got *2* teenagers and only 1 child napping anymore, we get to stay out past nap time if we want to (since they’ll handle the “time to go bed now! close your door!” part of putting her down for nap).

So we can go for a walk, or go out for coffee, or just come back before naptime if we want to, and the kids have handled everything and fed themselves. (And by this time, Teen #2 is done with her chore list.)

At this point, it’s off to the grandparents for the kids (‘cause they like grandma’s paints and crafts and undersea videos, too - and milkshakes!), and my husband and I get an extra quiet house.

Which is when the real flop time and hobby time for the afternoon begins.

So, that’s our Saturday, and that’s what I get to do at this time of life. Because I have 4 kids who do a lot to help me, and a husband who doesn’t mind doing part of the grocery shopping (we hit like 3 different stores to get all the best deals, and they aren’t all in the same direction).

Listen, I *just* last month got to hand off the “prep all lunch smoothies for the week” task to my boys - because for some reason they think noisy machines and dive bombing bananas are fun.

Until then, it was *my* job to make 1-thousand-and-1 smoothies for all of us to drink. But I still did it, because I didn’t have all the *other* bathroom cleaning and vacuuming chores on my plate.

And I picked the best/most energetic day to do it.

That’s all that matters.

You do what you can with the help you’ve got, and motivate yourself to do the rest. And remember that one day - perhaps in just 2 years - you’ll be able to outsource your next-least-favorite chore. To your kids.

Let that motivate you to keep going, through the weeks and months of smoothie making or raw-steak-marinading (ooh! raw meat!) when you’re sick and tired of the housekeeping tasks.

Because mark my words, there *will* come a day when you no longer have to do it. You’ll be able to do the cooking & cleaning chores *you* love, like tortilla cooking for me or ingredient fetching or leftover packaging. 

(There’s something so satisfying about tidying up food, don’t you think?)

You just have to hold on till then. Even if you don’t have 5 kids and an army of helpers.

Your 2-year-old or your 5-year-old *will* be ready to assist you - for the 5-year-old, it’ll be just next year. You can’t wait.

What can you alter about your weekend prepping and house cleaning, right now? Even if it’s not EXACTLY where you want it to be long term?

Change is totally possible for you. Let’s do this.