Constantly rushed, constantly too little time and too many things to do in the back of your mind? Especially when the care work in the family is mainly done by one person, the mental load can become a permanent stress test. We present four practical parenting tools that you can use to distribute care work more evenly and take some of the stress out of everyday family life.
When school starts again in many federal states these days, it’s mostly mothers who work in their heads every day (and sometimes even into the night) with endless to-do lists: getting school supplies, buying kids shoes the next size up, attend parents’ evenings. And then there are the things that come up every day anyway, like grocery shopping, laundry, or organizing play dates and hobbies for the kids — the list goes on and on. The mental burden of being solely responsible for all these invisible things that keep the family going has a name: mental burden.
And since it is common knowledge that problems that can be called what they are can be solved better, we have come up with some very practical ways to reduce mental stress in everyday family life. So that mothers can actually do their jobs on an equal footing or take time for themselves without the constant worry that the household will fall apart without them.
4 practical parenting tools to reduce the mental load in everyday family life
1. Make your to-dos visible
If all tasks and appointments that arise within a week in the family, visible on the refrigerator hanging, then this has two very decisive advantages: On the one hand, there is no pressure to keep it in the back of your mind, literally the mental load itself. On the other hand, everyone in the family knows about the upcoming tasks and no one he can rest on his laurels without having known anything. Especially when both parents are working in a couple relationship, clear communication of to-do’s is the be-all and end-all so that both can take over the family work equally.
A extensive and well-structured family planner It facilitates communication enormously, because not all to-dos have to be negotiated again and again, but can simply be written on the board or entered into the plan in Post-It form. AS merge the to-do lists in your head into one big common list, which then no longer appears so oppressive for its visibility. For example, one is useful for this magnetic whiteboard filmwhich can be attached to the fridge and written on week after week with the supplied markers.
Of course you can too Online tools like Trello or synchronized email calendar they help to better distribute tasks between them. It is important that the activities are visible to everyone involved. Because only this lifts the head of the person who otherwise feels responsible for himself.
2. Automate household chores
Not least was the invention of the electric washing machine as we know it today that enabled women to go to work in the 1960s. As the washing machine and other modern appliances have made household chores faster and easier for women, they have freed up time to engage in an activity outside the home. Of course, other inventions, such as the birth control pill, were much more important to this social upheaval, but would a woman ever think of looking for a job if she was busy doing the laundry from morning till night? For this reason: Any gadget or helping hand that can do the housework for you is an asset to home and peace of mind. Take one out for example robot vacuum cleaner dust mice in the apartment every day, no one has to feel bad about it and it’s one less chore haunting your head. You can find out which models are particularly suitable for families in our robot vacuum cleaner comparison.
The same goes, of course, for a reliable food processor that whips up healthy meals at the touch of a button, or a good dryer that saves you from having to hang out the laundry. Unfortunately, it will likely be some time before a human-like robot is available as an all-around household help.
3. Keep shopping lists together in list apps
Do we still have enough milk for our breakfast cereals? Is there enough bread for the rest of the school week? It’s thoughts like these that keep parents busy and can easily get lost on a busy weekday. The simplest remedy against this is this immediately capture thoughts. So they don’t go under and don’t stress themselves further. Best suited for this are shopping list apps where you Create lists based on different categories (e.g. grocery, pharmacy, kids birthday party). and you can share them with other people. This way everyone in the house knows what is missing and the burden of having to think of everything does not fall on just one person. The advantage a List apps as “Shopping List”, “Listonic” or “Bring!” is that they are available for free in the App Store and are always at hand with your smartphone. Help of course shopping lists but also in analog form – the same is true here: the main thing is clearly visible to everyone.
4. Clear your head with a system
The structure and system in the house helps against the chaos in the head. Are cooking and shopping stressors in everyday family life? Then create one for each week menu plan. Then you can shop more specifically and the eternal question “What should we eat?” he is not in the room every day.
The same goes for children’s clothing, for example. If your child is growing every month and is constantly in need of new mud pants, autumn, winter and transitional jackets, this is where we can help too a common system so that not only one person has to keep in mind. If you have more than one child, it’s helpful to sort and label the older child’s discarded clothes by height transparent storage boxes to store, which can then be taken out once each season to update the smallest child’s equipment and to note (on the shared shopping list) what new purchases need to be made. And even with only children, it’s easier for any parent to take stock if all shoes, jackets etc. they have a permanent place in the apartment and you don’t have to painstakingly search for them first. Again, boxes and Drawer organizer they help keep things organized and visible to all.
As for the order in the children’s room, give your child as much responsibility as possible. In a well-organized and age-appropriate Montessori children’s room, where the furniture is chosen so that your child can reach for the toys themselves he can, he can even learn to eliminate them himself. A jointly created cleaning playlist with your favorite children’s songs can increase motivation as much as a smart search request.
“The woman for life is not the girl for everything”
Above these very practical tools that parents can use to more evenly distribute the physical and mental workload in everyday family life, there is always the communication. Take the time to talk about what you need most in everyday life and how you can achieve it together. lists and plans They might not always be fun, but they set the stage for contentment that benefits everyone. And once that’s there, the fun comes naturally.
To find new and fair solutions for an eye-level relationship together with your partner, this is also recommended eye-opening book by Laura Fröhlich, who couldn’t have gotten better to the point: “The woman for life is not the girl for everything”.
