Working Parent Schedule Crunch

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Up your cleaning services so you aren't doing bathroom/kitchen cleaning on weekends.

Teach the 12yo to do laundry and have one night per week that they are responsible for getting their laundry done (whatever night that kid is not in sport/activity).

Apprentice the 7yo into laundry so that they do laundry under supervision on another weekenight.

Set up carpooling with other families in the sport or activities. See if you can't figure out a way to cut down the amount of running around that costs you. Ditto on your school drop-offs -- is there a family nearby ALSO doing two schools? Can you streamline so you swap kids and one family takes the ES kids and one family takes the MS kids?

I'd also try to flex things so you all eat dinner together. That might mean that Sport Kid gets a heavy snack and then leftovers, but the rest of the family sits down to dinner together.

School lunch (or at the least, teach 12 yo to make their own lunch).

12yr and 7yr both fold and put away their laundry, but they are too small to reach inside washer so can't do it end to end.

We carpool when we can, but we live on the edge of our school district, so people tend to passively exclude us from carpools (oops, sorry we are already full). Same with ES/MS -- there just aren't any kids where we live, part of why we dont want to drop sports etc.

They do pack their lunches mostly, except when we make hot lunch.

We are happy to see at least we are "normal" when we feel like we are so inept -- I think most of our DCs friends have SAH or PT working moms, so they have a very different lifestyle and seem so relaxed, have amazing looking homes, and just have more fun. I guess we just don't run into many other FT WOH parents in our area, for whatever reason. They aren't in SACC, they aren't on the sports teams, its kinda mystery!

Wait, what? Too small to reach into the washer? My kids were able to reach into the washer before they were 5. How does your 12 year old manage to do sports?

We have a DEEP top loader washer, I’m 5’5” and barely snag the items from the bottom on my tippie toes. And yeah the kids are short.

Get them one of those hand grabby things on a stick? It might even be fun for them to fish everything out.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Up your cleaning services so you aren't doing bathroom/kitchen cleaning on weekends.

Teach the 12yo to do laundry and have one night per week that they are responsible for getting their laundry done (whatever night that kid is not in sport/activity).

Apprentice the 7yo into laundry so that they do laundry under supervision on another weekenight.

Set up carpooling with other families in the sport or activities. See if you can't figure out a way to cut down the amount of running around that costs you. Ditto on your school drop-offs -- is there a family nearby ALSO doing two schools? Can you streamline so you swap kids and one family takes the ES kids and one family takes the MS kids?

I'd also try to flex things so you all eat dinner together. That might mean that Sport Kid gets a heavy snack and then leftovers, but the rest of the family sits down to dinner together.

School lunch (or at the least, teach 12 yo to make their own lunch).

12yr and 7yr both fold and put away their laundry, but they are too small to reach inside washer so can't do it end to end.

We carpool when we can, but we live on the edge of our school district, so people tend to passively exclude us from carpools (oops, sorry we are already full). Same with ES/MS -- there just aren't any kids where we live, part of why we dont want to drop sports etc.

They do pack their lunches mostly, except when we make hot lunch.

We are happy to see at least we are "normal" when we feel like we are so inept -- I think most of our DCs friends have SAH or PT working moms, so they have a very different lifestyle and seem so relaxed, have amazing looking homes, and just have more fun. I guess we just don't run into many other FT WOH parents in our area, for whatever reason. They aren't in SACC, they aren't on the sports teams, its kinda mystery!

Wait, what? Too small to reach into the washer? My kids were able to reach into the washer before they were 5. How does your 12 year old manage to do sports?

We have a DEEP top loader washer, I’m 5’5” and barely snag the items from the bottom on my tippie toes. And yeah the kids are short.

Get them one of those hand grabby things on a stick? It might even be fun for them to fish everything out.

We have a step stool next to the washer so my mom can reach the stuff in the bottom. We used to have a grabby thing but it walked away.

[Anonymous]

I don't understand why you guys don't just eat dinner at 6:30 when your dh is home though, and just feed the kid who has an activity earlier on those nights. I don't get that. 5 pm for dinner is crazy early.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I don't understand why you guys don't just eat dinner at 6:30 when your dh is home though, and just feed the kid who has an activity earlier on those nights. I don't get that. 5 pm for dinner is crazy early.

+1

[Anonymous]

Cook on weekends. Do a load of laundry every night/morning. How old are your kids because I taught my kids to bring dirty clothes to laundry room by age 6.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Cook on weekends. Do a load of laundry every night/morning. How old are your kids because I taught my kids to bring dirty clothes to laundry room by age 6.

Laundry is always clean. They load it fine and start it no problem. It’s getting it dry and folded which is bottleneck.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Cook on weekends. Do a load of laundry every night/morning. How old are your kids because I taught my kids to bring dirty clothes to laundry room by age 6.

Laundry is always clean. They load it fine and start it no problem. It’s getting it dry and folded which is bottleneck.

I haaaaaatttteeee folding laundry. Just ugh. We do have times where DS, 7, is pulling clean stuff out of the laundry basket because I just don't want to fold laundry. It is not all that often but it does happen. The clothes are clean so I don't feel that bad about it.

[Anonymous]

We don't clean our bathrooms and bedrooms every weekend. I just wipe the bathrooms down every weekend or more with Clorox wipes.

Our house is messy but we would just rather live life. Maids give it a thorough cleaning monthly.

Other than towels we don't fold clothes.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Cook on weekends. Do a load of laundry every night/morning. How old are your kids because I taught my kids to bring dirty clothes to laundry room by age 6.

Laundry is always clean. They load it fine and start it no problem. It’s getting it dry and folded which is bottleneck.

I haaaaaatttteeee folding laundry. Just ugh. We do have times where DS, 7, is pulling clean stuff out of the laundry basket because I just don't want to fold laundry. It is not all that often but it does happen. The clothes are clean so I don't feel that bad about it.

Use you head,! Fold clothes as you take them out of dryer. Folding and putting clothes away is something a 7 year old can do.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Cook on weekends. Do a load of laundry every night/morning. How old are your kids because I taught my kids to bring dirty clothes to laundry room by age 6.

Laundry is always clean. They load it fine and start it no problem. It’s getting it dry and folded which is bottleneck.

I haaaaaatttteeee folding laundry. Just ugh. We do have times where DS, 7, is pulling clean stuff out of the laundry basket because I just don't want to fold laundry. It is not all that often but it does happen. The clothes are clean so I don't feel that bad about it.

Use you head,! Fold clothes as you take them out of dryer. Folding and putting clothes away is something a 7 year old can do.

He puts them away and I have been thinking about teaching him to fold. Honestly, as long as his clothes are clean, I am not all that worried about folded or not.

[Anonymous]

OP, I'm not sure there's any magic formula here other than doing less. Workouts are great but if you traded your 30min workout at lunch 2x/wk for running a couple of errands, you might free up more weekend time. Same for your husband.

I also don't get the school pickups - if you have a 12yo, they are plenty old enough to come home alone and watch the younger kid for an hour or two. Do you really not have a school bus option? We do split shifts and didn't use aftercare for a variety of reasons, older kid babysitting has made life so much easier.

Finally 90 percent of all errands can be done via online shopping. Fighting traffic to get into a Target parking lot is a huge waste of time.

Your schedules are pretty normal; but you need to recognize that you're choosing to spend your non-work time on errands, school driving, and workouts. If you want to choose differently, you can.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:OP, I'm not sure there's any magic formula here other than doing less. Workouts are great but if you traded your 30min workout at lunch 2x/wk for running a couple of errands, you might free up more weekend time. Same for your husband.

I also don't get the school pickups - if you have a 12yo, they are plenty old enough to come home alone and watch the younger kid for an hour or two. Do you really not have a school bus option? We do split shifts and didn't use aftercare for a variety of reasons, older kid babysitting has made life so much easier.

Finally 90 percent of all errands can be done via online shopping. Fighting traffic to get into a Target parking lot is a huge waste of time.

Your schedules are pretty normal; but you need to recognize that you're choosing to spend your non-work time on errands, school driving, and workouts. If you want to choose differently, you can.

My work location has no shopping nearby, it’s a very economically depressed area, so no errand running is possible. DH has similar issue, but his last job did have an option then.

We never go to target, that is done all online. Grocery shopping we buy mostly fresh food so online doesn’t match well with that, errands tend to me more need to buy a new coat or return the 3 pairs of wrong sized shoes we ordered online (online hasn’t always worked, and taking to UPS store ends up being weekend chore).

Yes, we live on a busy street, and the school bus requires both kids crossing it as well as currently a construction zone as they are building a new apartment there, so lots of random people, trucks and such at all hours. If they were being dropped off on a leafy suburb street, we would be all over that!!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:OP, I'm not sure there's any magic formula here other than doing less. Workouts are great but if you traded your 30min workout at lunch 2x/wk for running a couple of errands, you might free up more weekend time. Same for your husband.

I also don't get the school pickups - if you have a 12yo, they are plenty old enough to come home alone and watch the younger kid for an hour or two. Do you really not have a school bus option? We do split shifts and didn't use aftercare for a variety of reasons, older kid babysitting has made life so much easier.

Finally 90 percent of all errands can be done via online shopping. Fighting traffic to get into a Target parking lot is a huge waste of time.

Your schedules are pretty normal; but you need to recognize that you're choosing to spend your non-work time on errands, school driving, and workouts. If you want to choose differently, you can.

Also, weekends are mostly cleaning heavy rather than errands, though DH spend half a day running back and forth to Home Depot as he try’s to fix the broken thing of the week.

[Anonymous]

It sounds like you have the life that many 2 working parents households have.

[Anonymous]

Yes, we live on a busy street, and the school bus requires both kids crossing it as well as currently a construction zone as they are building a new apartment there, so lots of random people, trucks and such at all hours. If they were being dropped off on a leafy suburb street, we would be all over that!!

Cmon OP, I live on a busy street in the midst of massive Purple Line construction and NIH traffic. It doesn't get busier than this. And no one drives their kids to school here. It's fine if you choose to give your 12yo door-to-door car service simply because you don't live on a "leafy surburb street" but recognize that this is a choice that makes the rest of your life more stressful. Everyone here is giving you reasonable suggestions for streamlining your schedule and you seem insistent that none are viable - my kid is too short! there's no trees on my street! Fine, keep things as they are, but then why post here?