Parenting Mindsets that bring you PEACE vs. STRESS

If you’re feeling stressed and overwhelmed, it may be time to take a look at your day-to- day mindset. These seven parenting mindsets can really change your overall mood from stressed out to peaceful.

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These life hacks will make your life feel much easier.

You’re much more likely to stop feeling like you’re running around the house like a chicken with its head cut off.

Change your parenting mindset to being “OK” with less stuff.

Decluttering… it’s the best way to ease stress.

This is the number one way to simplify your life is to massively declutter. It’s that simple.

If you have less stuff, you have less stress. The less stuff you have the less stuff you have to…

• organize
• put away
• around visually, and
• disrupting your vibe.

Also, your home environment is more peaceful and you’re doing less things to manage the things you bought. You’re also spending less money, etc.

Simply put, having less makes life easier.

It’s a parenting mindset that can be hard for some. Try to get yourself over the initial hurdle of getting rid of stuff. Then, life starts to feel so good.

Try this if you’re having a stressful day: take a trash bag around the house and throw a bunch of stuff away. It may seem strange, but it works for me.

Try this clothing hack to ease stress.

Try having just about 7 normal outfits (per season) per each kid (not including pajamas, church clothes).

With this, one load of laundry on the weekend and DONE!

Shoes are the same way. What I do is give each kid one pair of shoes for the season.

• There won’t be shoes all over the house and
• they will take care of them more because they have just the one pair.

Don’t do things that aren’t necessary.

Try eliminating doing things that aren’t totally necessary. Ironing for example. If your parenting mindset is to do everything 100% of the time, you will be stressed out.

So give yourself a break and do the things you love, but don’t do the things that you hate (if they aren’t necessary).

So… If you hate ironing, stop wearing clothes that require it and eliminate that chore.

Try this parenting mindset hack: macro-organize instead of micro-organize.

You may not need to micro-organize your sock drawer, all the books on the shelves, etc.

Now, micro-organizing may be satisfying but keeping up with this rigor of organization may be too much work. Especially if nobody else in the family loves it.

So, instead of color coordinating everything or putting labels on even the smallest things, develop a macro-organization plan.

• Use baskets for toys in the kids rooms or living room, etc.

If you don’t love to organize and want the kids to be able to put their toys right back away… use baskets and throw everything in there.

Do everything in the right order.

This particular parenting mindset is key to having agreeable children and don’t argue about every step of the way.

Doing everything in the right order means that we can’t necessarily move on to the next task until the thing before it is done.

This helps with so many things. It helps get…

• cooperation,
• prevent resistance,
• helps with transitions,
• when I know I’m going to ask them to do something they don’t want to do, and
• when I want them do have some buy in.

So, if you have some basic orders in the right order then things become easier to handle.

For example, you can have screen time after chores. Or, you can play in the pool after your room is clean.

Put things where kids can reach them.

Putting things such as:

• cups
• plates
• snacks in the pantry
• snacks in the fridge

where kids know how, when, and where to get them.

This was a big thing for me, especially because at one point I had 5 kids under 5 years old. I felt “wood-pecked”. They always needed something and so one day it just clicked.

Putting some things where they could reach was a game changer and helped them become more independent too.

In order to stop feeling so “wood pecked” try putting some things where they can independently do some things for themselves.

• Are there clothes too high in their closet (ones they can put on themselves)?
• Are there toys in their room that they always have to ask you to get down?

Start seeing what they can do on their own and allowing them to reach these things. They will in turn help them grow independently and in those life skills.

Read: 5 Ways We Accidentally Set Our Kids Up For Hardship

Make sure everything is right there when you’re eating dinner.

If dinner time makes you nuts because kids are always getting up and down. For us, we like to try to do a family dinnertime devotional. That’s hard to do when they are playing musical chairs…

Here is a tip- make sure you put it all on the table. Go ahead and put all the sauces, napkins, etc. on the table.

Now, we can practice the life skill of passing… and nobody is running around the table. You see, adapt this parenting mindset that life lessons can be learned whenever.

This point also can be used in other areas like sporting events, for example. If you are all going to the ballpark, have everything you need in one place.

This leads me to my last point:

Like group things together regardless of who they belong to.

An example of storing things together regardless of who they belong to are shoes. They could all be at the back door and not in each kids room.

Basically, if you have to scoop it up to go somewhere- put then together in an easy way. This is one little step that can be done in order to make things much easier. Things to group together are:

• shoes
• backpacks
• jackets
• supplies
• sporting equipment
• outside toys

If mama ain’t happy…

When you know you’re past the point and you’re just over it. You feel the stress taking over. I want to encourage you to just drop some stuff.

Drop some stuff that doesn’t really matter. Like ironing…

These types of things really go a long way in keeping you out of the flight or fight in the every day. Keep that stress out of your day to day.

And, before you know if you’re going weeks and you’re feeling better.

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