Welcome to the Mumstoppable blog, in which we will be talking about the load of motherhood. The Juggle is real, but I’m going to help you deal with it. And, if you're here to listen to the podcast episode of the same topic - catch it here:

Now, next week I’m going to go fully Christmas on you all, as we’ll be talking about how to survive the Christmas overwhelm, so this week we’re gearing up to that with tales of elves and Christmas magic, and we’ll be sprinkling a bit of Santa’s magic dust on The Juggle when I go through 7 steps for dealing with The Juggle as part of our coaching corner segment later on. So stay tuned for all of that!

Before that, though, let’s talk about The Juggle and what the heck that actually means for us mums. So, having a quick google of the word juggle in relation to motherhood will land you with a load of sites that talk about juggling things like:

• Motherhood in terms of caring for a child, with

• Having a successful career

• Being a wife

• Housework, including (for a lot of mums) being the primary chef and housekeeper

• Having hobbies

• Self-care like exercise, eating well, etc

• Having a social life

Now I realise not every mum will relate to everything on that list, and also there will be things I’ve missed, but the point is that society has put an expectation on us as women to have to be able to DO ALL THE THINGS ALL THE TIME. And on top of that, as I alluded to just now, there is the invisible load. The things that often fall to the mum by default - things like arranging playdates, knowing when family birthdays and special events are, being in charge of meal planning and food shopping and keeping the family eating a healthy diet, sorting out when to meet family members, sorting childcare over the holidays, being the default parent that the school calls when one of the kids is ill and needs picking up (this happens ALL THE TIME in our house and it drives me nuts), etc etc etc. 

So, THE JUGGLE IS REAL. That is for sure. And it’s not going anywhere anytime soon. But how does it impact mums?

Well, I want to take this opportunity to revisit a stat that I mentioned briefly in last week’s podcast. This one again comes from a recent study (called The Invisibility Report) published by the Peanut app, and says that 93% of UK mums feel unappreciated, unacknowledged or unseen. Now… is it any wonder we are feeling like that when we have SO much going on in our lives, which we are expected to multi-task to achieve, and yet get absolutely no credit or thanks for?

Now I’m going to put some colour around this issue with a funny, and Christmas related story which happened in the Mumstoppable house this week. For some unknown reason, when my kids were little, I decided I didn’t have quite enough on my plate as a fairly new mum at Christmas time, so I had the genius idea of joining the elf on a shelf craze… I blame Instagram for this, because all the set-ups looked so cute and fun and I imagined how happy my boys would be when they saw what mischief their little elves had gotten up to every night over the Christmas period. 

I am sure a lot of you feel my pain right now because we are currently about 8 years down the line with these sodding elves (my boys are 8.5 and nearly 10 now), and they are the absolute bane of my existence every December. I cannot tell you how utterly distraught I am when I go to unpack the Christmas decorations and see their smug little faces staring at me from the box I shoved them into the Christmas before… So, 8 years times 24 days of December that these little sods have been visiting us equals… ONE HUNDRED AND NINETY TWO nights of having to think about what we are going to do with these elves to entertain our already over-stimulated kids the next morning. And we rarely recycle the ideas, because I don’t think the kids would let us get away with it. ARGH!

Anyway, I digress. Last year, I found the mother of all hacks for elf on the shelf, and I’m not even saving it for the Coaching Corner tips section, because you need this in your life ASAP. If you have an elf on a shelf and you hate the mental load of having to come up with ideas each night in December as much as I do, get your phone out right now, go to Instagram and look up Porky Penguin. Then check out their feed of amazing elf on the shelf capers and, if you can afford a tenner, buy the “elf ideas” pack from their site here. Now, this is essentially a pack of cards with TWENTY FOUR ideas for elf activities. But not just that, you also get PROPS cards for each day, and a QR code to scan so that you can set it up properly. I am not kidding when I say this has been utterly life changing for me, Mamas! I first bought the pack last year and was so impressed that it is now my go-to purchase for easing The Juggle in the lead up to Christmas. 

This morning, for example, our cheeky little elves had peed into glasses, and had a prop card which looked like a lemonade stand sign, offering “ice cold lemonade, freshly pee’d for $1 per cup”. The kids LOVED it, and downed a cup each of elf wee immediately (and because it was apple juice, that’s one of their five a day sorted), and it took me all of about 3 minutes to set up. And I completely avoided the stress of having to think of an idea (goodbye mental load!) - which to me, is priceless.

So there’s a learning for you for a start - DO NOT BE ASHAMED TO TAKE SHORTCUTS to enable you to juggle the mental load. And also, please share these short cuts with other mums because I am almost certain they would all appreciate the tips! (Me included, so please email me at [email protected] with your best ones!)

Anyway, we digress as I’ve not even got to the invisible load part of the story yet… So, one night this week those cheeky little elves had set up a “tin can choir” of about 5 or 6 drinks cans, which had googly eyes on and which thus looked like they were singing Christmas songs with the elves conducting them. Now, the next morning the kids came downstairs to look for the elves and noticed these tin cans in the recycling bin. And their immediate reaction was “wow the elves even cleaned up after themselves!” and my husband agreed with a cheery “yeah kids, the elves just use their magic to clear up each night”. 

Now… I am a firm believer in magic and all but I was not having this because, like 93% of UK mums, I was feeling completely unacknowledged for this part of the invisible load… so I firmly told them all that, NO. The darling elves had in fact NOT cleared anything up. Neither had they cleared up the ketchup they squirted all over the kitchen the night before, and in fact it was dearest MUMMY who had cleared up for them. Just like there is no fairy that washes everyone’s clothes, and neither is there a troll who pops in each night to clear up the kitchen. And with that, I dropped the mic and retired to the lounge, feeling victorious. (Actually I went and put a wash on, but you get the drift).

And that leads me on to my quote of the week… which, I have to be honest with you, I found online and have no clue who said it. But it’s a goodun' so here we go:

Mama, you can do ANYTHING, but NOT EVERYTHING

This is SO important, because I think a lot of the stress from the invisible load for mums comes from the expectation we put on ourselves that we have to DO EVERYTHING all the time. And that if we don’t do everything, we are failures as mothers, as women and as individuals. 

But, Mamas, that isn’t the case! Because if we try to do everything all the time, we’re just going to burn out. And that will mean we can’t do ANYTHING until we recover. And that is bad news for our kids, our partners, our families, our friends and… us! So there is no shame whatsoever in NOT trying to do everything.

And that’s what I want to talk about in today’s...

Okay, so this is where the magic happens. We’ve been talking about the invisible load, or The Juggle, and this is a common topic that I find myself speaking with clients about, because as we’ve discussed, this is a real nightmare for mums (and actually not just mums, but women) everywhere. And it happens all year round, albeit it gets about a hundred times worse in the lead-up to Christmas.

Now, there are many ways to deal with The Juggle, and I’m sure we’ll cover off a lot of them over the coming weeks, but I want to start with prioritisation. Because, as we’ve discovered, we can do ANYTHING, but not EVERYTHING, and so it seems sensible to start with sorting out what it is that we want to do and, more importantly, what it is that we DON’T want to do. 

So my 7 steps for dealing with The Juggle are:

1. Acknowledge that you can do ANYTHING but not EVERYTHING, and try to be at peace with that. It is what it is, there are only so many hours in a day, and we need to accept that we just can’t do everything.

2. Write a list… Now, I LOVE a list, so this is my favourite step. But here is a tip within a tip… when you’re writing this list, make sure you put down ALL the things you need to do, but also ANYTHING that’s on your mind. The idea here is to make space in your brain and get it all out onto a piece of paper, or into the notes app of your phone or whatever.

3. Now we get to the fun part… shortlisting! I want you to go through your list and cross off, in pen!, anything that is out of your control, anything you are realistically not going to get to anytime soon, and anything that will sort itself out if you just leave it. I want you to aim to have at least halved your original list by doing this. BE RUTHLESS AND REMEMBER, WE CANNOT DO EVERYTHING!

4. Prioritise - this is where a lot of mums come unstuck. But that’s okay because I am here to help. Now, start by putting your listed items into categories as follows: URGENT & IMPORTANT (has to happen today), IMPORTANT, but not urgent (ideally would happen today, but it’s okay if it happens tomorrow or the day after), URGENT, but not important, and (my favourite category), neither urgent OR important. Anything in this last category gets struck off the list immediately, so get that pen back out and cross them off!

5. This leaves us with 4 categories, which we can tackle as follows: 

   1. Neither urgent or important - get that pen back out and strike these off the list! They are not being done, and that’s okay. 

   2. URGENT but not important - we are going to delegate these. Figure out who would be best placed to help with these - is it your kids? Your partner? Other family members or friends? ASK FOR HELP and do not feel guilty about it, Mama. You have enough on your plate, and people will likely enjoy being able to offer you support.

   3. IMPORTANT but not urgent - we’re going to schedule these in, so go through and number them according to the order you want to tackle them

   4. URGENT AND IMPORTANT - these are the ones we are going to tackle first, so again number them according to the order you want to tackle them

      

6. Right, that’s been a lot to take in, so before you do anything else… go and take a break and do something to replenish your energy

7. Then get stuck into your list, starting with delegating the URGENT but not important ones. Then tackle the URGENT AND IMPORTANT items, followed by the IMPORTANT but not urgent ones.

Blimey, that was a lot to cover off!

Now, before I move on, I want to shout out a big thank you to LUCY for getting in touch with some feedback about last week’s podcast episode. She rightly mentioned that the coaching challenge examples I gave may not have been particularly suited to, for example, single mums or mums who don’t have the luxury of going out minus the kids. Thank you so much for calling me out on this. It was completely unintentional, and the whole point of Mumstoppable is that it’s accessible to ALL mums, so thank you. It made me rethink how I talk about challenges and examples, and I tried to address your specific feedback with a post on Instagram (see below) which gave a load more examples for playdates with yourself which included some at-home activities that you could even do with kids in the house.

And speaking of the coaching challenge, that leaves us with this week’s activity, which, because we’ve just gone through that massive list of steps, I’m going to keep simple:

This week I want you to follow those 7 steps and use the prioritisation tool I taught you to fully prioritise your invisible load. By the end of the week, I want you to feel at ease with the fact that you can’t do everything, and I want you to embrace delegating some of your listed items to other people.

That brings us to the end of this week’s blog post! Thank you once again for joining me, and well done for spending the last 30 mins doing something just for you! 

Enjoy this week’s coaching challenge, and as always, I would LOVE to hear how you’re getting on with the coaching challenge, so please feel free to send me a quick email at [email protected] or find me on Instagram at @mumstoppable_ and send me a DM or leave a comment on one of my posts. 

Over the coming weeks I’ll be talking to you about challenges facing mums ranging from feeling lost and like you don’t know who you are anymore, to surviving overwhelm as a mum, to motherhood and the strains that puts on your relationships, to the struggle of returning to work. 

If you’ve liked what you’ve heard today, please do subscribe to the podcast or sign up to the newsletter here (you'll even get a FREE downloadable Self-Love Journal as a thank you!), and feel free to email me with any challenges you’re facing which you’d like me to cover off on upcoming sessions.

For now though, have an awesome rest of the week. And remember, I see you, Mama. You’ve got this. You are Mumstoppable!