Get Mom Balanced and Get Mom-Balanced

This blog was created around the idea of helping and supporting moms and when we landed on the title “Get Mom Balanced” I knew it was just what we were looking for. I like to look at this in two ways:

Get Mom Balanced:

The idea is that we are here to help you (mom) get some balance in your life. Hopefully we can help you begin to clarify what balance means to you, become more balanced than you are currently, or have more days where you feel closer to balance. We hope to help you simplify, streamline and create habits and systems that allow you to get more balance in your life. As we talked about in the first post about what balance is (read it here), balance is something that you can work to create, and that is one of our biggest aims with the articles on this blog.

Get Mom-Balanced:

I think we’re creating a new term. We’re not in-balance or un-balanced, but we are trying to be mom-balanced, which is a different type of balance. Mom-balance is unique because we are so many things to so many people, we have a variety of roles and responsibilities, and within all of this there is also taking care of ourselves. Without self-care, we will likely have poor mom-balance. Also, my mom-balance will be different than your mom balance and chances are, we both notice changes day-to-day in what our mom-balance actually feels and looks like.

So, now what? How do we find and create balance? I think that is an on-going, probably never-ending process, especially when you have kids because our lives are not strictly our own. But that doesn’t mean we should give up. Putting a priority on getting mom-balanced helps to create balance in our families and within our kids’ lives. We can model for them what balance may look like and how we work to correct it when it is out of whack.

This week I encourage you to:

• Make a list of the areas of your life that are important to you: kids, spouse, exercise, work, play, healthy eating, etc. Also make a list of areas that are important to the functioning of your family, for example chores, grocery shopping, cleaning, chauffeuring, etc. This can be an overwhelming step because these lists can be quite long.
• At the end of the week, reflect on how much time you spent on each activity or task. Ask yourself if this feels like the right amount of time.
• If there are areas of importance that you feel like need more time, see where you may be able to cut back or become more efficient. (For example can you pick up all of the items you need at Target instead of going to Target and the grocery store. If not, can some of those items wait until next week to allow for you to spend more time playing with the kids). Remember that it can be okay to put certain tasks aside for a bit of time to allow room for others.
• The following week, try to make those adjustments (adding to the lists of responsibilities as needed) and see if that feels more balanced. Continue to adjust as needed and remember this is an ongoing process.

Remember that we can make choices to work toward balance or we can continue on with how life is going. It’s up to you!

Let us know how your quest for balance is going for you. What are your biggest challenges?