How to Simplify Back-to-School for Overwhelmed Moms

Did you know sensory stress doesn't have its own special "stress bucket" in the brain? Stress=stress... The good news is that simplifying other things helps improve your resilience with overstimulation too!

In this episode, we break down some tried and true ways to simlify life as we head "back to school," regardless of how you educate your kids.

• home maintenance
• meals
• car-time
• ...plus some of my favorite tools (new and old)

Listen along as we break things down into super practical steps and decide what NOT to do so that we can be present and enjoy our kids (most of the time).

What would you add to the list?
Join the conversation on Instagram @sensationalmoms

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Transcript

 Welcome back to the Sensational Moms podcast. I'm your host Whitney, and if you are looking at back to school and already starting to get stressed, then this episode is for you. 'cause we are talking about how to simplify back to school, whether you homeschool or not, and we're talking about that in relation to everything that is not school related, like home life, car time.

And everything in between. So if that's you, if you tend to be overstimulated and overwhelmed easily, then today's episode is just for you. Before we get started, if you're new around here, let me introduce myself. I'm Whitney. I'm a pediatric occupational therapist turned sensory coach for mom. And if you feel touched out and talked out by your kids easily, I help you find joy and connection.

We do this by helping you understand your unique nervous system as well as the needs of others in your family. We do that through one-on-one coaching online workshops and this podcast, I'm so glad that you're here. Let's jump right in. So as I was thinking about this episode, I made a list and realized that it can be pretty easily broken down into three areas, car time, as my kids have gotten older, meals and housework.

And there are a few other little random things. I won't lie. I'm getting a little busy this time of year, just like you probably are. So this is a little stream of consciousness, so hang in there with me. I think that you'll find some things to try that would be really valuable. You might be wondering how does this relate to feeling overstimulated as a mom?

Well. It's related because feeling dysregulated due to overstimulation by being touched out and talked out is a stress response, and your brain doesn't have a separate special bucket for sensory stress. No. Your brain has a general way of handling stress and we can't always control. Our environment as moms, right?

When it comes to feeling touched out and talked out by those who are around us. But we can look at stress in other areas of our life and that is what we're going to do today. Okay? I know I've said it before, but now I mean it. Let's jump right into those tips. The first time that I realized that. School prep wasn't the hardest part of summer and getting ready, I realized that a lot of it was meal related.

So the first thing that I did, this was probably my second or maybe my third year into homeschooling, was start making freezer meals in preparation for fall. So the first year I did that, I, you know, looked up all of these. Unique types of recipes to try for freezer meals. And I'm not gonna lie, it was super complicated.

I had a hard time following through with it. Some of it ended up being recipes that my kids didn't even like. So since then I have. Found an easier way for me to actually do the thing, which is just doubling what I cook or what I prep for about a month before we start back to school. So even if that's as simple as, you know, chopping extra onion and putting it in the freezer when I'm already chopping one, go ahead and chop two.

Or if I'm browning ground beef for tacos, I might brown twice the amount and put it in the freezer for a tricky day. I might take that a step further and actually just double my taco recipe that I made and stick that in the freezer. So this works much more easily because I'm not having to add something extra or different to what I'm already doing when I would like to enjoy the tail end of summer with my kids doing something other than sweating in my already hot kitchen with recipes that they might not actually eat.

So there you go. Number one. Uh, double your dinner prep for about a month if your budget can handle that. And if not, just do it when you can or be mindful about freezing leftovers. Tip number two, that is meal related. I. I don't know about you, but I had no idea how much of my life would be spent planning and executing meals as a mom.

And when we're with our kids all day, most days of the week, that ends up just being extra because it's not just dinner, it's breakfast, lunch, and dinner. So I. I've recently started simplifying things in these two ways as well. I don't reinvent the meal plan wheel every month anymore. I sat down and made a list of the recipes that we eat in our family instead of looking at other novel meal plans online.

And instead of plugging them into specific days of the week like I used to, because it rarely actually worked out that way. Um, I just have a list, kind of like a loop schedule, if you're familiar with that concept with schooling. And once we go down through that list, then we start over again. I make sure that we have a list of staple ingredients in our freezer and in our pantry, and I just replenish our fresh things about every two weeks.

So we live kind of far from the grocery store, but uh, not too terribly far. So we usually do one day of shopping when we're in town for music lessons, and I replenish fresh ingredients. At that time. So yeah, stop reinventing the wheel when it comes to meal planning, uh, if there is a sticky part of, of your life right now.

If you're in a season where even that is hard, then I have done e emails in the past and at least I have taken the cognitive load off of having to plan the meals. And you can even do grocery delivery if that service is your area or pickup. I think they used to partner with Walmart to do that. So, um, that's another way.

Even if you don't use it for long, you can use it for a season to get through a tricky spot, and it's still certainly cheaper than eating out. Last food related thing. Uh, back to the idea of not just doing one sit down meal a day, but three meals a day. I get decis decision fatigue really easily. So it's kind of like the loop schedule again for breakfast and lunch.

Uh. I either assign things that every Monday we always eat this, or every Tuesday we always eat this, or I just again, go down the list and make sure that I have the supplies for what we need in the pantry or the freezer. As my kids have gotten older, they've developed more of their opinions about what they do or don't feel like getting that day and.

You know what? They can go make it themselves as long as they know what is in there. And we also have a rule at home that if you make it for yourself, you have to ask anyone else in the house if they want it. That way we don't get lots of complaints last minute at the table, like, oh, I was really wanting that too.

No, just go ahead and ask on the forefront if anyone else also wants the thing. So that helps streamline breakfast and lunch as well. Let's move on to another fairly stressful part of homeschooling, which is the fact that if you are home more often, your house gets dirtier and there are more things to do, and you notice it more because you are home more.

Let's talk about housework and how to simplify that during the school year. Number one, I've just come to terms with the fact that most of my house will probably rarely, if ever, be clean at the same time. For the next, at least 10 years of my life, and here's what that means in practicality. I make a list of things that me and my family truly actually care about, or I don't know, things that I guess you could call matters of basic, uh, sanitation, right?

Like maybe we should clean the bathroom and here's what that means, because let me be honest, every time we clean the bathroom, we do not clean the floor. So when I say we're gonna clean the bathroom every week. Here is specifically what that means, and my kids and I are on the same page for how to do that.

There are other things that are just not going to be done on a regular basis. Like I just dusted my ceiling fan blades for the first time in, I don't know, at least a year. That is not on the regular list. Cleaning baseboards, definitely not on the regular list. I don't have any crawling kids and we have a sufficient garage for muddy stuff, so I'm gonna be honest with you, we don't even mop our kitchen floor as regularly as some of you probably do.

But I get clear on what really matters to us. And a lot of that has to do with visual tidiness because visual clutter can be a trigger for me. So we do have zones in our house, and each kid has their own zone that they're responsible for keeping tidy and basically clean, which again is pretty clear what that actually means for our family.

There are other ways that I keep it simple. I love that Cindy Rollins talks about this in her book, mere Motherhood. We definitely don't have a fancy chore rotation. We have table duties every night after dinner to help reset the kitchen. And my kids have the same duty for at least a year before we change.

We're not switching things up. If it works, it works. The same thing with zones. And you know what? Over the course of their childhood in my home, they'll eventually get exposed to other jobs, but we're not gonna make things complicated by changing it up on the regular. So yeah, we don't really do spring cleaning in our house because that's a crazy time of year schedule wise and outside in the garden and with the animals.

We'll do summer cleaning when we do those things that we kind of forgot actually existed during the year. And for things that do need to happen on a more regular basis. I might put that on a loop schedule, and I don't assign it to a specific day because rarely does the same day look like the same day, right?

It's gonna change and that helps us get around to everything eventually. In the meantime, wearing socks around the house keeps me from feeling the gross grit underneath my feet when I'm walking around the kitchen and it hasn't been mopped. Okay, getting personal here. I promise my house isn't a total mess.

Anyway. Another thing that tends to pile up for us is laundry, because we're home. There's more changes of clothing through the day, and one of the main ways that I've simplified that is with socks when my kids were younger and in similar size shoes. We just had a bunch of white socks. We never paired them and no one had their special socks until my kids were old enough to be able to handle having their special socks.

And I'll say that I kind of jumped the gun with that. One of my, or one of the grandparents, got my younger two kids, some really cute little, uh, animal and like seasonal socks and. I thought they would be old enough to handle it. They weren't. It ended up being a source of contention and it made laundry day, which no one really likes anyway when the kids do their own load of laundry, made it even harder.

So I. Um, we had those in a bag put away for a different season of life and we went back to gray socks for one kid, black socks for another kid, so that they weren't even fighting about like whose white sock was whose, Nope. Super simple. Gray is you, black is you. And I love summer because we don't really have to wear a lot of socks, but cooler weather is around the corner and socks will be coming back.

Speaking of laundry, um. This is a small thing, but when I switched to laundry pods, it really made my kids be a lot more self-sufficient with doing their laundry instead of making messes, pouring liquid detergent and that sort of thing. So we keep it in a safe place. My kids are old enough, but using laundry pods that are septic tank also really helped increase their independence and make the mountain of laundry keep moving instead of piling up.

Let's switch up things and talk a little bit about outside of the home, things that can be stressful when we go back to school. Car time can be overstimulating quickly with a lot of kids in the car, and I might not be my best self. Uh, there's a certain day of the week where between music lessons and grocery trips we're, we're out of the house over half the day and having a bunch of different kids with different sensory needs and me, I get overstimulated.

A lot of van time can be really challenging. So. This year I am gonna be more strategic about audiobook usage for all of us to listen to a book together. Um, in the past it's just kind of been like a last minute decision in the driveway looking at the library's app on my phone, um, and. Now that my kids' ages have spread out a bit more, it can be a little trickier to find a book that we all wanna listen to together.

So I'm gonna put a little bit more forethought into that for me and for the kids that aren't inter are, are not interested or really need more quiet even beyond that. They will use headphones in the car often. And we do have one of those Yoda players, if you've heard of those. Um, they kind of go in and out of favor with my kids, but having them in the car can be pretty helpful for those types of situations.

So audio books for the win, I'm gonna personally try to be a little bit more strategic with which books we listen to. And also speaking of clutter in the car, I am going to start having a box in my van of stuff that just goes back in because I have kids who have a hard time remembering that what comes in the van needs to go out of the van.

So I'm just gonna put that box front and center. Well, middle and center where they walk by so that everything can go in that box. And then once we get inside, they can sort it out from there. Along with other visual clutter sources in the van trash. Um, I'm pretty good about taking trash out of the van, but this is kind of a bad habit of mine.

I was just like, leave it, I'll leave it in the garage. I know, I know. That's gross. Anyway, I thought. I don't know. What is so hard about these last like 20 feet to actually get in the house to throw it away? I think it's because it's usually that we're in a rush, but I have solved that problem. We have a trash can in the garage now.

It has to have a lid 'cause we have critters. But I feel so smart having a garage trash can. I don't know if any of you have tried that, but for that quick last minute, oh my gosh, why did this trash get left and the van sort of dump. I'm keeping a trash can. In the garage. So to wrap things up, I wanna share with you four specific things that I use that I think are really gonna simplify the stress of our school.

Restart back and fall. Some of them I've used in the past. A couple of them are new. And I wonder if you've tried any of these things. If you have, check in with me on Instagram or Facebook and let me know what you think, because certainly what works for one person might not work for another. But, uh, we'll start off super basic.

Well, kind of basic. If you place grocery orders, um, on an app for a pickup. I'm kind of technologically challenged. I know, but it took me a while to figure out the order again, tab. So if you are an elder, millennial like me, and still getting used to this technology thing, um, order again has been super helpful.

When I'm placing grocery orders, it saved me a lot of time, and again, just not having to reinvent that wheel every week. And Yoda, I mentioned that earlier. We have some that are, gosh, are probably like two and a half years old and they have been game changers for my kids particularly. I've got one kid who before we started really addressing her auditory processing and sensitivity, she really relied on that Yoda, especially in the car.

She would remember it would take her card to listen to her book or her music in the headphones. And I can't tell you how much peace that brought us in that metal tin can on wheels. So it's a screen free option. It's um. The, the smaller one is, gosh, I think it used to be about 70 bucks. That might be about what it is now, and the quality of some of the cards aren't that great, but you can make your own, which I'm gonna be honest with you, with four kids.

I don't use that function as much as I would like, but there are some good classics on there that you could check out, and the music is fun as well. That just helps her be able to block out all of that background noise that can happen real fast in a van with other kids. Another thing that I use regularly, mainly because I forget to start the crockpot, is the Instapot.

Very often I take my crockpot recipe that I was supposed to start and didn't and put it in the Instapot, and many of our evening meals have been brought to you by Instapot. I am not. A huge fan of extra kitchen appliances, but I've used that thing so much over the years, and I know that there are still some moms who are on the fence about one more thing, but that one more thing has gotten lots of use in my home for that reason.

The last thing that I will share with you is the Skyview calendar. I am generally a low tech person. But when my husband switched from an Apple phone to an Android phone, we had to figure out the calendar thing, and I wanted to go back to having a family calendar on the wall for my kiddo who tends to be a little more anxious and has lots of questions about what's happening.

And I wanted to put a little bit of control. In this child's life about tasks that she might need help remembering without me telling her to remember it, because I can get a lot of pushback from that. So the Skyview calendar so far has been a big hit with my family. We've been using it for about a month now.

Hopefully it will last. I hope it lasts. It helps that you can also use it as a picture frame, and my kids enjoy. You know, picking which pictures on the app will show up on that screen by the door. Um, so it's been really helpful just to get everyone on the same page. The older that my kids get, the more activities that we have.

It also helps me be a little more, uh, consistent with meal planning and any questions that I can take away, uh, from my kids. Having to ask really helps keep me from getting overstimulated. Um. As well. So you know, if they wanna know what's for breakfast, lunch for dinner, um, I might have it on there. And when it's not, what's on there, then it gives my kids a chance to practice.

Having a bit of mental flexibility for the fact that, you know what, no, we didn't have blueberry pancakes this morning because we slept late because we had a rough night last night. It gives us a chance to practice that as well when things don't go according to plan. It also has a list function, and I as people who live kind of far out from town, we can't just like run to the store and all the time was just texting my husband, Hey, grab this, grab that, and.

Um, let's just say that's probably not great for his executive functioning as well, and so it, it really, it helps us like maximize our store trips as well. It keeps everybody on the same page. There's even a function where you can speak the list. Um, my kids can add stuff to the grocery list easily. My, I've got a daughter that bakes and she can let me know when she uses all my butter again.

So it really has cut down on those sort of like, Hey, mom, remember this, mom, do that. I just say, you know, go put it on Skyview. Go put it on Skyview. Go put it on the calendar. Put it on the list. You know, so I'm not having to be the walking computer that I can never be right. So whether you use Skyview or not, like I don't have a promo code or anything like that, um, whether you choose that way or not, I would just encourage you to look at ways that technology might simplify your life, especially if you're a homeschool family.

Um, who can tend to be like me where I'm like, oh, no, no. Technology. Um. Actually, you know what? There are some good uses of technology, um, to help you offload some of that information Holding that just fills up your brain without you even knowing it. So even if you don't use that, maybe find a different way that you can use tech to actually help you instead of getting in your way by sucking your time through stuff like, uh, the social media scroll.

So y'all. I just figured out I've been calling it the wrong thing this whole time. It's not skyview, it's skylight, and clearly you can see why I need something to help me with my executive functioning skills. Sometimes if you have any tech hacks, I would love to hear them. I would also love to hear what you think about these tips.

Maybe you have some tips of your own. Maybe you've tried some of these and they haven't worked. I would love to hear what you think. You can find sensational moms on Facebook. Join the group and jump in on the discussion. Let me know. You can also find me on Instagram. And before we close things out, I wanna let you know that I am going to be giving a workshop through a conference the week of July 21st.

The conference is totally online and it's called supporting your High Needs Learner at Home. Me and lots of other fantastic speakers are going to be giving encouragement for you and your family, whether you homeschool or not, so that you can start off your year feeling encouraged and equipped. I know that I'm looking forward to sharing information about self-regulation and how you can help your child develop their self-regulation, and how you can come up with a plan for support for yourself when you're in the middle of a frustrating moment.

But on top of that, I really am looking forward to attending for my own benefit and for the benefit of my kids as we start off this new year. Registration is super affordable. It's $15 for all of the workshops, some live and some prerecorded, so be sure to check that out. It's more than information, it's encouragement and community so that you can know that you are not alone in your unique homeschooling journey.

That's it for today. I hope that you have found some helpful information and that maybe you can start off this school year feeling a little less stressed about non-school things that can stress us as moms. Until next time, may you find connection even in the chaos.