Do you get overwhelmed sometimes? Of course you do! If you struggle to keep house when you’re overwhelmed, you’re not alone. The key is to focus on the important things when this happens. Let’s walk through those important things so you can keep house when you’re overwhelmed without pulling your hair out.
We all get overwhelmed sometimes. We get sick, busy, and overly scheduled fairly frequently in our modern life. This is especially common during the holiday season when we have all of the normal life things on our plates plus the school events, the family and friend get-togethers, special traditions, gift shopping, and on and on and on. Unfortunately, when life gets busy we can’t just throw up our hands and stop keeping house (although wouldn’t that be nice!). But how do you keep house when you’re overwhelmed?
Grace
First, and perhaps most importantly, you must give yourself grace. You’re not a failure of a mom (or dad) or homemaker because you’re overwhelmed and you can’t get through all of the home tasks you would ideally like to do. I know it’s hard, but you must be kind to yourself. Instead of being upset about what you’re not doing, thank yourself for what you are doing.
Focus on Function
Now, what is it that you can be doing to keep house when you’re overwhelmed that won’t add to your overwhelm? Focus on what your house needs to function. What must get done so that you and your family can keep living life? For me, I need to make sure my kitchen is in decent order, laundry is done, and food is in the fridge and on the table. The toys can stay on the basement floor, the Tilex Fresh Shower can fend off grossness for a bit, and I don’t need to set aside time to do my 10 minutes of decluttering each day.
It’s ok to let these extra household tasks lapse for a brief period. When you feel like you can come up for air a bit, that’s when you can organize the toys, bust out the bleach and the scrub brush, and declutter your house so you have less stuff that feels like it needs to be dealt with the next time you feel overwhelmed.
If we can all agree that we need to focus on your kitchen, the laundry, and the food you feed your family when you need to keep house when you’re overwhelmed, it’s worth going through how we can streamline those priority tasks. As always, I have tips to share, which I hope will at least make keeping house when you’re overwhelmed seem doable.
How to Keep House When You’re Overwhelmed
Kitchen
The kitchen really is the heart of the home. If your family is like my family, you probably spend a huge portion of the time you’re home in your kitchen. That makes this a high priority to keep clean and ordered. Put away your stainless-steel cleaner and your oven scouring pads, we’re still doing the bare minimum when we are overwhelmed. But what is the bare minimum? For me, it’s dishes and counters.
Dishes
Out-of-control dishes are the quickest way to make your overwhelm double. Or even triple. If every time you walk in your kitchen you see a sink full of dirty (or clean!) dishes, your blood pressure will tick up a point or two. Because dishes have this immediate negative reaction, they are my first priority when I am trying to keep house when I’m overwhelmed.
I know that you know how to handle your dishes, but if you’re overwhelmed, it’s easy to forget, so let me walk you through it.
Use Your Dishwasher
If you have a dishwasher, maximize your use of this miracle machine when you’re trying to keep house when you’re overwhelmed. Anything that is safe to be washed in the dishwasher should just go right in. A dishwasher isn’t helpful unless you run it, so get yourself on a schedule to run your dishwasher every single night, whether it’s totally full or not.
Don't Wait to Hand Wash
Unfortunately, not all of your dishes can go in the dishwasher. It’s super annoying. That means you will likely have a handful of dishes you need to wash by hand every day. Don’t wait to take care of this hand washing! Go ahead and wash these pesky, uncooperative dishes at your earliest opportunity. These hand wash-only gems are typically the ones that shout at you the loudest when they’re stacked up by the sink. You probably already have enough shouting in your life, so you don’t need your dishes to add to the noise. Wash those puppies ASAP.
Stay on Top of the Dry Dishes
My kitchen character flaw is my dish drainer. I’m usually really good about loading and running the dishwasher and handwashing the annoying ones immediately, but then they go into the dish drainer to dry and stay there forever. Each time I wash more dishes, the pile gets bigger and bigger until it literally falls over and I have to choice but to deal with the dry dishes. Don’t be like me. Put away your dry dishes regularly so you don’t have to carve out time to put away an entire mountain’s worth of dishes at once. And now I’m thinking that this should have been my personal home stretch goal for this year. Maybe worthy of a new year’s resolution?
Counters
Kitchen counters get disgusting. This is especially true if you have children. That’s why my number two priority in the kitchen is to wipe and sanitize the counters. Wiping down the counters is something I do every night. It’s an easy habit to get into and it makes a world of difference. Not only does it help to make you feel like you have your life together when you are overwhelmed, but it can also save you time in the long run. If your counters are wiped down, you won’t have to spend time getting out the jelly from your shirt that transferred from the counter. I can’t be the only one who has jelly randomly all over everything, right?
Laundry
You need to clothe yourself and your family when you’re overwhelmed, so you don’t really have a choice but to stay on top of the laundry. If you live in a nudist colony, you can obviously skip this section.
Laundry often feels overwhelming, but it can feel especially so when you’re just generally overwhelmed with life. The natural reaction to this laundry overwhelm is to avoid it and let it pile up. Bad idea! A mountain of laundry blocking the door to your laundry room is a quick way to send you over the edge. Don’t let laundry be the reason for your breakdown.
One Load a Day
The easiest way to avoid a laundry-related descent into madness is to do one load of laundry a day from top to bottom. That means wash, dry, fold, and put away. Yes, put away. We all hate it, but you really don’t need piles of clean laundry everywhere when you’re trying to keep house when you’re overwhelmed.
If you have kids older than say 3 or 4, you can absolutely recruit them to help with this laundry task. My 5-year-old has always loved to help with the laundry, and now he’s actually kinda helpful. He can help fold and he’s pretty great at putting clothes away. A little age-appropriate child labor never hurt anyone!
Now, when you’re doing your laundry each day, don’t just pick up any old load willy nilly. Prioritize the load that most needs to be washed that day. Does your kid need his hockey jersey for practice tomorrow? Wash that load today. Is your husband running out of shirts to wear to work? That’s the load to choose. Now is not the time to be washing duvet covers or bathmats. You can catch up on those when your head is a little farther above water.
Food
Just like you need to have clean clothes to wear each day, you also need to eat. There is so much pressure to serve your family perfect meals and snacks every day, so I get that the prospect of feeding your family when you’re feeling overwhelmed can be extremely daunting. But it doesn’t have to be! Take that societal pressure you feel and throw it out the window. You can totally feed your family nutritious food without spending a ton of time in the kitchen that you don’t have to spare. Just keep it simple.
No-recipe dinners
My favorite way to feed my family simply and quickly is to heavily rely on my list of no-recipe dinners. These are no-brainer dinners that need a handful of ingredients that you probably have on hand and a minimal amount of time and effort to make. They’re all pretty kid-friendly too, so you shouldn’t encounter too much of a fight when you serve these dinners, which is an added bonus we can all appreciate.
Leftovers
Leftovers can be a savior when you’re overwhelmed. Sometimes you just can’t bother to stand in front of the stove and make a grilled cheese but you can push the buttons on a microwave. This is real life, folks, so don’t be ashamed. Just be prepared with a fridge that contains leftovers for when you need them. How to make sure you have leftovers available to you? When you do have time to cook a meal, double it. It’s as easy as that. Doubling the food you make doesn’t really add much time or effort to your task and you will absolutely thank yourself later when you have leftovers you can serve your always-hungry children.
Pre-packaged snacks
Look, I like my kids to have homemade, delicious snacks as much as the next girl. But I also know that there are lots of really good pre-packaged snack options out there that serve your snacking purposes just as well. I have a whole list of great snacks if you need inspiration, but some of my favorite pre-packaged snack options include already hard-boiled eggs, single-serve hummus containers, Lara bars, and meat sticks.
We get a lot of our pre-packaged snacks from Thrive Market. If you’re interested in trying Thrive Market, feel free to use my referral link to get 40% off your first order! (This isn’t an affiliate link, just the referral link they give everyone who has a membership. If you do sign up through my link, I’ll get some money to spend on snacks for my family.)
Other posts
If you’re looking for other ways to streamline your homemaking tasks, check out these posts:
I hope you now feel confident that you can keep house when you’re overwhelmed. You just have to be a little choosy about the tasks you prioritize. What are your priority tasks when you’re feeling overwhelmed? Let us know below or over on Instagram @sarainseason!