The challenge of achieving that often elusive work-life balance as a parent or carer is always there but it can be particularly tricky during the summer holidays.
To help make balancing our family and work lives a little easier, we asked parents across the country for their top ten ‘real life’, practical solutions to combining work and parenthood.
Read on for some useful work-life balance tips to help ease the pressure on working parents.
Make more food by batch cooking
When preparing meals like pasta, it doesn’t really take any more time to chop extra vegetables or weigh out more pasta. So why not make two or even three meals worth at the same time? This way you can freeze the ‘leftovers’ for quick meals at a later date – with virtually no extra effort!
Try doubling our family friendly veggie chilli recipe – it’s a great freezer-friendly meal for batch cooking.
Prepare meals at different times
We all have slightly different working patterns. For instance, you may have more time in the morning and less in the evening. In this case, why not follow the suggestion of one of our parents and use a slow cooker to prepare the evening meal in advance?
Slow cookers allow you to leave your meal cooking safely while you work during the day. You’ll even be able to prepare meals you often wouldn’t be able to cook in the time available when you get home from work!
Shop smart
Cooking and food preparation is time consuming and costly, which is why we’ve devoted so much of this list to it. One parent’s solution to help with this is to have a weekly meeting with their partner to plan the week’s meals in advance. If you do this, you’re less likely to buy extra food that’s not needed. That means less money spent, and often less food wasted!
If you don’t have a partner, making a weekly plan means you don’t have to make the decision of what to eat each evening. And if you do have a partner, you’ll both be aware of what you’re eating each night. This means one of you can pick up the slack with the cooking if you get home early, regardless of whose turn it is.
Use a shopping list app
One parent we spoke with says they have an app which lets them and their partner add things they need to a shared, online shopping list. This is useful when planning meals in advance (as above), but also means you can add items to the list whenever you notice they’re nearly finished.
If you’re a busy parent who picks up the shopping on the go, it means your list is always up to date. And (at least in theory) you’re less likely to impulse buy as you can speed shop for what you actually need! There are several free apps for both iPhone and Android. The standard notes app on many phones often allows you to add collaborators, so you might be able to use that instead.
Whatever your obligations, why not set a deadline each day when you’d like to turn off your phone and stop working – and make sure you’re not wearing your pyjamas when you do!
Don’t take your work phone to bed
There’s a reason so many of us are stressed at work… it’s because some of us never really leave! Worrying research clearly shows blurred work-life boundaries can impact energy levels and wellbeing. The parents we spoke with believe taking your work phone to bed causes anxiety, friction with your partner and lowers your productivity in the long run (due to fatigue).
Different jobs may have different requirements when it comes to working out of hours. Whatever your obligations, why not set a deadline each day when you’d like to turn off your phone and stop working – and make sure you’re not wearing your pyjamas when you do!
Also try to avoid picking up work emails on holiday – or at least agree a time when you can be contacted, and stick to it. If you make sure your out of office response is switched on, everyone knows you can’t be reached.
Get ahead by doing certain things the night before
If you’re wondering what you’re going to do with your evenings now you’re no longer checking your work phone, we’ve got good news for you! Many of the parents we spoke with agreed that a small amount of planning or preparation the night before can make a real difference in reducing stress levels brought on by our typically hectic morning routines.
Suggestions of things to do the night before include:
- Lay out the children’s clothes and school uniforms
- Make their sandwiches (and yours)
- Do reading practice with children before bed (instead of rushing it over breakfast when you’re tired and already multi-tasking)
- Get your work clothes ready
- Make sure you know where your keys, glasses, wallet and work security pass etc are. That way you won’t forget or have to hunt for them in the morning!
- Prepare any documents or travel cases for work
Arrange a childcare swap
If you’re struggling to arrange work around the holidays and have friends with children of a similar age to your own, try pooling your resources. For instance, see if you can take alternate days off so you can look after each other’s children on the days you’re not working.
An added bonus is that the children will no doubt love the novelty of playing together, especially at each other’s houses.
Set up a family calendar
Modern families are rarely simple. Between work commitments, out of school clubs, activities, play dates and shopping, it’s sometimes hard to keep track of what’s going on. One thing that lots of parents told us really works was setting up a simple family calendar, so everyone could clearly see what was going on.
It doesn’t matter whether you prefer a good old fashioned paper calendar stuck on the fridge, or an online one you can sync across devices and notifies you when your partner adds something. What’s important is having a definitive list somewhere that works for your family.
Consider flexible working
Flexible working can be useful in achieving a good work-life balance. It allows you to do things like collect your children from nursery or school, as well as attend appointments and events that only take place during working hours. Different types of flexible working are available, including job sharing, working from home, part time working, compressed hours or flexitime.
You’re entitled to request flexible working from the first day of a job. Although your employer has a duty to consider your application, they can reject it for several reasons – for instance whether you can continue to get the work done effectively. So it’s worth thinking about how the arrangement might benefit your employer too.
You can find more information about flexible working on the government website.
Buy back time from work
One practice that’s becoming more and more common – particularly in organisations like the NHS and local councils – is allowing workers to ‘buy’ additional annual leave from their employer. Terms may differ from one organisation to the next, but typically involves paying back your hourly rate to your employer for the number of extra hours (or days) you’d like to take.
This can be especially useful for families where time and not money is their principal pressure. However, be aware that even where organisations allow it, the maximum number of extra hours you can take is capped (typically around 2 weeks or so). If this is something you’d like to consider, we’d recommend speaking with your HR department.
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