Busy Mom Survival Mode: 10 Things Keeping Me Sane This April

April has been one of the busiest months we’ve had as a family and instead of trying to do it all, I’ve been leaning into a few simple things that are actually helping everything run smoother.

In this episode, I’m sharing the 10 things saving my life right now—from meal planning and simple dinners, to visible calendars, supportive kids, and even scheduling in takeout 🙌

If you’re in a busy season (or one is coming), this episode will help you simplify what matters and let go of what doesn’t.

We’re talking real life, real rhythms, and what it actually looks like to manage a full house without losing your mind 🤍

✨ Plus, I share about the biggest gift this month—a full home deep clean from Day Makers Cleaning—and why it made such a difference in this busy season.

If this episode encouraged you, I’d love for you to:
 🤍 Follow the podcast
 🤍 Leave a quick review
 🤍 Share it with a mom who’s in the thick of a busy season

And come hang out with me over on Instagram and Facebook → @kates.creative.kitchen

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:09

Hey, I'm Kate, mom of Seven, coffee lover, and believer in finding joy in every season of motherhood. This is Praise, Prayer, and Protein, where we talk faith, family, prove a living, and the real life mom hacks that make it all work. Let's dive in. Hey friends, and welcome back. Okay, this month is so crazy busy for our family. It is one of those months where every single day we're like, wait, where does everyone need to be again? That is just how April has been for us. So today I want to sit down very quickly and share with you 10 things that are literally saving my life this month. Because if you are in a really busy season or if you are heading into one really busy busy season with your family, maybe a few of these is going to help you too. So if you listened to episode, I don't know, number two possibly, I talked about our value system and it was all about how our family makes decisions. Um, how our family makes decisions, how we prioritize things in our family. We sit down for supper and we try to aim for four to five nights a week to be together. And usually everything we say yes to goes through that filter. This month it was a little bit crazy and we took a little bit of a pivot. We have one of our kids uh and two of his favorite sports were happening in this month at the same time. So we had to make a decision if we were going to push through for six weeks and be a little bit more chaotic and busier than we ever are, so that he could play both sports at the same time. And we decided um that we could make that work in addition to it being music festival month. Um, so this week, as this episode will air on Monday morning, uh, we will start music festival week. I have four kids in music festival. Two are singing and two are playing piano. Well, actually, I have three kids in music festival, two that sing and then two that play piano. We have a high school musical um rehearsals all the time because the big show is at the end of this week. Um, so our daughter has been in that, along with our other commitments that we have made and that we're committed to, like youth and CR. And of course, we are right in the middle. We're almost over the middle. I guess this week, today is week five of Alpha Marriage, five of seven weeks. So April suddenly just became really, really full, like so, so full. But instead of feeling all the overwhelmed by it, I tried to put a few things into place that will make it and have been making it feel very manageable. So I thought I would chat about those for when you have to enter a busy season that you can know. Oh, these are some practical things we can do going into that season. So the very first week of April, around uh Easter, I guess it was, I created um number one, my number one thing. And it was the fridge calendar. Usually I just keep everything in my own personal day planner, or we have Google calendars that Mike and I can both see. But this time around, I took everything from my planner, from our Google Calendar, also from our oldest son's calendar because he's also writing exams in this month and this season. So we need to know where he needs to be and cars and all that kind of stuff, and all of my random notes. And I made one big family calendar and stuck it on the fridge. Is it color-coded? Yes, it is. Is it clear so everyone can see it? Absolutely. That way, nobody is asking me where they need to be every day. We can just go and look at it and we can tell what vehicles need to go where and who needs to be where and what is happening. So that has been really, really helpful to have that calendar on the fridge so everybody can see where everybody is on any given day. The second calendar I printed out at the beginning of the month was my meal plan calendar. Of course, I meal plan every month and have been this year being more intentionable. Intentionable, intentional, more intentional for putting it on the fridge so that everybody can see it and see what meals are going to be on what nights. So that has always saved our months. But this way it has definitely saved our our month. Okay, the second calendar I printed off was our meal plan. I always put our meal plan on the fridge, but this time when I meal plan, I was I usually meal plan with my calendar. Um, but this time I had to the color-coordinated calendar, so I knew what days uh we needed really quick meals on and what days we could have uh meals that I was gonna be home, that I wasn't gonna be running to practice or to pick anybody up. And so that definitely changes everything. When you can learn to meal plan around your calendar, that helps so, so much. So I know which nights we're out, which nights are insane, and which nights need to have super easy meals. And then I put that meal plan on the calendar or on the fridge, I mean. Uh, number three that is saving me right now are three meals that are on repeat. We are in a six-week survival mode starting at Easter, and so I decided on these three meals that we would eat consistently every Sunday night because Micah and I are at the building hosting Alpha Marriage, our older kids are home to make supper for the little ones. So that is craft dinner night. On Monday nights, we are so busy because we have volleyball, and then our kids go to youth and another kid goes to football. It's a very quick turnaround. I want us to be able to come home and whoever's around to be able to sit at the table and eat a nice supper. So Monday nights have become spaghetti. Wednesday nights is also busy. We're out at piano, but then we have volleyball right at um after piano, and right after volleyball, we run into town to drop um a kid off at football for Micah to pick him up when football. And so then I have to rush home and get supper for everybody else. That night has become taco night. That's it. I stocked up this month on ground beef. Every time I see ground beef on sale, I just grab it. I cooked a double batch of spaghetti last Monday and froze half of it. So tonight I will take the spaghetti sauce out of the freezer. So tomorrow when I um I can just heat it up in a pot and cook some pasta. And now I do not have to think about those three nights and those three meals this month. That is a game changer. And of course, this isn't gonna happen, you know, for the rest of the year. It was only in a six to seven week period that our meals are gonna rotate like that. Number four is a dishes schedule. Finally, the kids have been asking for a dish schedule, hand dish schedule for a long time. They want to have a consistent day that they do the dishes instead of mom just saying, okay, tonight you're on, tonight you're on, tonight you're on. Because one kid always feels like I'm always calling their name, which I am a not. Um, but this month I printed out a third calendar um and wrote a dish schedule. That way I knew days that everyone was gonna be where they need home or you know, they weren't gonna be out, um, that they were gonna be home for that dish night. So everyone has a hand dish night. After supper, everybody helps clean up the kitchen, but one kid is left to the hand dishes. So this has definitely helped. It has saved a lot of time and a lot less fighting. And every kid now thinks it's fair. And even Micah and I are on the hand dish schedule for the weekends, of course, because who knows where the teenagers are on Friday and Saturday night. Number five is the kids being able to be outside. Is it always sunny and hot? No, it's somewhat cold. Sometimes it's rainy here in the spring, but the snow has melted. The basketball net is back out, and I forgot how much this helps to get the kids outside, moving, not destroying the house, and not playing mini hoops inside um all the time to drive me absolutely bonkers. So the getting outside and the basketball net, and of course, we just got the bikes out yesterday, has been so helpful and so um, it's just something I am loving right now in April. Number six, this is an actual dream. I can't even believe this is happening. I am recording on a Sunday afternoon, so you guys are gonna hear this bright and early tomorrow morning. But when this comes out, I have to tell you, I was gifted a deep clean from a local cleaning company called Daymaker's Cleaning. Honestly, I feel so giddy about it that there's going to be a team of women come here tomorrow morning and deep clean my entire house while I am at music festival and then out all afternoon watching volleyball games and taking the kids to youth and football and all that stuff. And I am going to come home to a sparkling clean floors mopped, um, walls cleaned, bedrooms tidied. Oh my gosh, house tomorrow. I am so excited because this month, where we have been so busy, so go, go, go, I have done the bare minimum to just keep our house tidy, but I'm so excited to have a really good deep spring clean. So if you're local, that is going to be in the show notes from Daymakers. And I love their motto when I met with the owner. It was like, I want to make your day. That's why they're called day makers. So they have made my day. They have made my month, actually. I am so thankful for them, and I cannot wait to come home to my house tomorrow. Number seven is um a little bit of a silly one, but I have loved thrifting this month and using my creativity. So music festival means costumes, and I have two boys that are um going to be doing musical theater pieces in the music festival, and then I also have them doing a duet and a trio. So they need um a few different costumes. And I have gone thrifting this month. I have been to the dollar store, I have had some do-it-yourself moments, and honestly, it has been so fun. It has been time consuming, it has been a lot of running around, but seeing it all come together, I just feel so proud of myself that I was able to look on Pinterest, take ideas, take pictures, go around to Value Village, to the grapevine consignment event, to Once Upon a Child, and find all these pieces to make their outfits and costumes come alive. And I can't wait to show you. So those are probably going to be posted on my Instagram sometime this week after they perform. So make sure you go check it out. Um, giving my horn a little doot doot. Number eight is spin classes for Valentine's Day. I asked Micah to buy me spin passes instead of anything else. And thank goodness he did because this month I can literally feel as we enter into music festival and just the craziness of scheduling and running around and just like the overwhelm, like the busyness. I'm not used to it. And so I feel a lot of anxiety rising up in my body. And to be able to go to spin and just get that out has been so amazing to me. I remember texting him last week and just being like, that felt so good. I could literally, I had so much anxiety in my body that I just needed to get it out in this type of workout setting. So I love it. I love the music, I love the movements, I love the energy, and I always leave there just feeling so much better and light and just like whew, I got it all out. So those spin passes were the best gift, and they have been so, so helpful. Number nine that has been saving my life in this month or that I've been loving in April is our people. Um, I could not do a month like this without our extended family and some of our closest friends helping us run Alpha Marriage every Sunday night. It is a lot. It's an investment, it's something that we have committed to do and that we love to do. And getting to do it with our family and friends and even the kids honestly is one of the best parts of my week. Every Sunday, being able to see um our family and working in the kitchen together and serving together and praying for these couples together and just watching it all come to life has been so life-giving in April. And I am so thankful that um our family said yes um to running this type of ministry um with me. So I'm so thankful for that. I I just love Sunday nights. I I just love hanging out with our family. So it has been so life-giving for me. And number 10 um is our kids, especially the older ones. We had to have a real serious conversation, honest conversation when we went into this month talking about, hey, um, for this month, we are, you know, doing this. It's not our norm. Um, it's gonna take all of us working together. Can we step up and work together? Especially Sunday nights. Mike and I leave at four and we don't get back till nine. Um, so they really step up and and cook supper and clean up and put the kids to bed and pack lunches for Monday. They do so much for us. They have really stepped up and they have helped more. They have been more patient, they've been more supportive with each other. Um, they're cheering their brother on at volleyball. We are cheering the kids on who are musical and are at their music fest things. We're watching them, we're listening, we're listening to them practice. We're we're we've bought tickets to go see Jalen and her show. So it's just been really special to see. And I I love that our kids are stepping in and um filling in the gap in this season and really being helpful. It's been it's been so great. And last but not least, this is a little bonus that I am so excited for. That if you are in a busy season, you just need something to look forward to. And last year, after music festival, I had even more kids in music festival last year, I think four, definitely had four. Between they all do piano, they all do singing. So it's just a lot. It's a lot of venues, it's a lot of driving back and forth, it's a lot of sitting and listening to them and listening to them being judged. And um, if you've ever done music festival before, you know what I'm talking about. And if you've never done music festival before, you have no clue what I'm talking about. But last year, after we had finished and we had piles and piles of all the judging papers and reviews and all that stuff, Micah decided to get Chinese takeout for our family because I had just been so spent all week. It was just a big reward. And if you know us, you know our family loves Chinese food, but we usually only get it at Christmas because of course buying Chinese food for our family is not cheap. Um, so this year I put it on the calendar that after music festival is over, we are going to have Chinese takeout, which has been awesome to know that I do not have to cook that night. I don't have to think about it, and it is something to look forward to this week as we're doing all the driving, all the sitting, all the things. It's like the bonus thing that we get, and we're gonna enjoy it and feast, and it is going to be so delicious. I can't wait. And for any of you local, our favorite place to get Chinese takeout is KV Chinese. They have the best dinner for six. Somebody brought it when we had Malachi um as a meal for us, and we have never gone back. We love the lemon chicken. Um, anyway, so so good. I can go on and on about Chinese food. If you have a favorite Chinese food restaurant and you're local to me, let me know. I'd love to know. Or what your favorite Chinese dish is. Like, let's chat about Chinese food because it's so good. So, in closing, I gotta run. But those are 10 things that are saving my life in April. And if you're in a busy season too, I just want you to hear this. You don't need to do everything, you just need to do a few things that are gonna support you in that season. So if this has helped you even a little bit, please share it with a mom who you know who is busy in an in a really crazy season. And don't forget to follow the podcast wherever you're listening to it on Apple, on um Spotify, leave a review. Honestly, those help so much to get this podcast out to other moms. And be so brave to send this to a friend. I would love to just see my feed full of people recommending this podcast to other moms for advice and tips and tricks and encouragement because we are all in this together. The more we share, the more moms that we get to help. I am off to survive the rest of April. Here we go to Music Festival. If you want to see what my week is going to be like as a crazy music festival mom, make sure you are following along in the stories on Instagram. That's where I'll be, and I'll see you next week.