8 Time-Saving Tips for Parents

Why will I need to save time as a parent?

Once you become a parent, you suddenly have an entire human you are responsible for in a completely different way than you are for a partner or even yourself. This little human relies solely on you to literally stay alive and do basic functions like eat, sleep, and stay clean. This can take a lot of time to manage both in-person and mentally.

If you have pets, you quickly realize that a baby is not like a dog that you can leave in a crate or at home for hours at a time. When your baby isn’t sleeping safely in their crib, someone needs to be with the baby at all times. This is a major drain on your free time. Not to mention extra laundry, washing bottles, changing diapers, bathing, clothing, etc.

Before kids, if you have a 40-hour-a-week job and sleep 8 hours a night, you will have about an average of 4-6 hours of free time each weekday. After a child, the majority of that time is spent parenting with maybe 1-2 hours per weekday left to yourself - that is if your baby is sleeping well and going to bed around 7-8 pm. If you are a stay-at-home parent, your free time is limited to naptimes and that brief window between your baby’s bedtime and your bedtime.

So this change makes saving time CRITICAL to your family’s mental health and your general ability to be able to get enough sleep, work, and your household tasks complete.

This is going to be a list of real tips that make a big impact on your time, not small hacks like putting a rubber band around the wipes so that wipes don’t stick together. Those hacks are great and fun, but add only incremental amounts to your time and convenience. We want tips here that really help you with the things that take the most amount of time from your day.

Time-Saving Hacks for Parents

Make Meals Easier

Pre-kids, meals were easy. You likely had the time to bake a whole lasagna every night while watching your favorite Netflix show if your heart desired. After kids, preparing meals feels like a huge time suck, and with more mouths to feed and dishes to clean, it becomes even more difficult. Add in trying to make sure the meals are nutritious and affordable and the burden gets even heavier.

Finding ways to streamline making meals is essential to saving time as a parent. Here are some ways to do this…

• Meal prep: batch creation of meals can be a great solution for some families. If putting in a couple of hours on the weekend to save time during the week seems like it would be helpful to you, then this could be an awesome solution. For others, this can seem like more of a burden and be a time suck for the weekends. Especially if you have a busy social life, this may not always be the most practical solution.

• Make one-pot, one-pan, one-dish meals: I particularly love meals where I can put everything on one baking sheet in the oven and it’s done. Not only are these usually ready within 30 minutes and have minimal prep, but they also reduce the number of dishes to clean. Win-win! Other good options for these are crock-pot or instant pot meals you can throw everything in the morning and slow cook it throughout the day. Smoothies are also really quick and easy as well as cold items like yogurt and cereal for easy morning meals.

• Order pre-made meals or quick meal kits: these are another great solution for saving time on meals but definitely come with a cost. The solutions where meals are already cooked are obviously the best for time-saving but the quick meal options (like home chef, hello fresh, blue apron) are also great if you want to mix it up. Just look for the ones that tend to use fewer dishes and have more one-pot/pan recipes.

• Get groceries delivered or order for pick up: Many grocery stores now offer pickup and delivery options for a fee and/or a tip. Even large wholesale stores like Costco and Sam’s Club are offering delivery. A commonly known option is the Instacart app, but you can often save money by doing delivery or pick up directly through your local grocery store. Some will even do pick-up orders for free or do free deliveries if you are able to order 24 hours in advance.

• Assign dishes: assign one cup, bowl, and plate to each person in your house and have each responsible for hand washing after every meal. This will save you from having a large load of dishes to run and put away every few days and lessens the burden on the one person who usually does this task.

• Handwash and dry large dishes: to save room in the dishwasher, hand wash pots, pans, and large items that take up a lot of space in the dishwasher. Go ahead and dry them and put them away as soon as you wash them. This gives you more time between washes and ensures the item is ready for use again the next day.

Make Laundry & Outfit Selections Easier

When you have a baby, you all of a sudden have a LOT more laundry to do, outfits to figure out, and clothes to buy. See our Baby Clothes Guide for tips on what you need. But how else do you reduce the load?

• Create a capsule wardrobe for both you and your baby: start with a group of colors for each of you - I like to go with 2-3 accent colors and 2 neutrals that all go with each other. Buy only what you need, create a uniform of timeless pieces that are high quality, and only buy items in the colors you’ve selected so that everything goes with everything. Buy a few extra items for daycare or messy days.

  • A great “uniform” for young babies is a solid-colored zipper footie PJ and dress it up with a cute bandana bib or hairband. No one will realize they are PJs when you add the bib or bow. Also, the bib protects the outfit from spit-up or milk spills so they last longer.

  • With this method, you can ideally pick any bottom and any top and they will work together! No need to plan outfits and saves a lot of time in the mornings. It’s also helpful for once your child is old enough to pick out their own outfits, no risk of them wearing something crazy to school.

• Pick out outfits for the week or at least the night before: if you have a uniform or capsule wardrobe and everything goes with each other, this may not be needed. But I like to lay out 5 bottoms, tops, bras, underwear, and pairs of socks in my closet every Sunday when I do laundry. It’s not full outfits but it’s a mix and match set that all go with each other so it’s easy to grab one of each in the morning and go.

• Wear clothes more than once before washing: if it’s not stretched out, smelly, or visibly dirty, you can wear them again! Do the smell test and a quick look over and put it back in the drawer or hang it back up to save the amount you have to launder every week.

• Only buy machine-washable clothing: this will save you a trip to the laundromat and save you money. It will also save you time hand washing any clothes. Lay-flat-to-dry clothing is acceptable but anything that is hand wash only or dry clean only is a time suck.

Automate Automate Automate

• Autopay your bills: most of your regular bills these days can be set up with autopay.

  • One of the easiest ways to do this and protect our bank account is to set up a second checking account that is just for paying bills. Set up an automatic transfer from your main checking account to your bill pay checking account for the amount you know you need to contribute each paycheck for bills. That way you know how much additional free spend money you have and won’t accidentally overdraw your account.

  • For example - if your total bills are $1000 each month and you get paid $1000 per paycheck on the 1st and the 15th each month - set up an automatic transfer on the 1st and the 15th that automatically transfers $500 into your bill pay account each paycheck. Be sure to add a little buffer in there in case some of your bills don’t have a fixed rate.

• Buy programmable home and baby products: these can be pricey but can save time by further automating tasks in your house that add up in time.

  • Examples:

    • A Roomba that will automatically vacuum your house on a schedule once a day,

    • The Hatch Baby Sound machine can be automatically programmed to turn on and off for your regular nap times

    • An Ecobee thermostat can program each room to certain temperatures at different times of the day

• Subscribe for regular deliveries: if you have products you buy online for delivery often and regularly, like dog food or vitamins, you can often set up a subscription to those items. Amazin has this feature and I believe some grocery shopping apps are starting to create automated deliveries too. There are more and more companies being launched that only work on a subscription basis like Prose hair care and Ritual. These can save you time and amazon can occasionally save you money but some of these models are more expensive.

• Use a baby tracker app: when your baby first comes home, you will most likely be tracking everything that happens with them like when they last ate, napped, or had a diaper change. There are a lot of great apps you can use to track these and it will save time when you and your partner or other caregivers are passing baby duties. An app allows that other person to check when they last ate or napped without having to spend the time with a conversation about it when all you need to do is sleep. These can also be very useful when going to baby checkups with your pediatrician. They will be asking about the number of dirty diapers in a day and how much they are eating etc.

  • Our favorite is the Huckleberry app because it has a beautiful interface, tracks everything and also predicts naps (once baby is a little older) and offers sleep consulting services.

  • A new one on the market that comes with a device to make this even easier is the Talli Baby Tracker.

• Use a synced to-do list: use an app with your partner so you can both set up grocery lists or other shopping or to-do lists for your household. This saves a lot of time with conversations and helps create a more equal balance in the house when one parent isn’t solely responsible for groceries.

Minimize your stuff

Simply put, the less stuff you have, the less there is to clean, manage, organize, etc. There is a lot to be said for the minimalist lifestyle when it comes to reducing stress.

• Cut toys with a lot of pieces (like legos) in half: so when your kid just dumps the bucket out on the ground and walks away (without playing with it), you have 20 pieces instead of 100 to gather back into the container.

• Again… capsule wardrobes: less clothing, less to fold and organize, less to pack up when they grow out of them = more time!

• Try a Montessori home: Montessori encourages being really thoughtful and intentional about the things your child uses, they recommend displaying only one toy per shelf for example.

• Get inspiration: read Marie Kondo books, watch the home edit, go to youtube and search “things I only have one of” or two of… there are a ton of great videos by minimalist bloggers on tips for how to minimize your things and even some targeted towards people with families.

Utilize kids awake time to get stuff done

We often clean and do other tasks while our kids are napping to be able to do it peacefully, but I’d recommend trying to clean while your kids are awake and with you. It teaches them that the house doesn’t clean itself and may even encourage them to help. This way you can also utilize the nap times for self-care or other tasks that arent safe to do while the baby is awake.

Take Shifts

I’m going to say something that might be controversial - you and your partner don’t always have to be together with your baby. You can take shifts on the weekends, trade-off bedtime and bathtime activities, trade-off daycare drop-offs and pick-ups, and then designate certain hours for family time together. This gives each of you time to yourself for whatever you need like self-care, errands, social time, and home tasks.

This can be difficult to do when one parent is breastfeeding or if you have more than one child but continue to think about how to separate times or duties so you each are optimizing your time.

Advantages are that it helps each of you bond with your child on an individual level, creates more of a balance so your child cant always favor one parent over the other, and helps you be more present and less distracted during the times you are spending with your baby.

Reduce Time Wasters & Distractions

• Be intentional about where you are spending your free time: if you have an hour a day of free time, where’s the best place to spend it? Is watching TV the best or would you have just as much fun but get more value from reading? Is browsing TikTok awesome or would doing some yoga relax your mind in the same way with an added benefit of exercise.

• Reduce your emails: unsubscribe from email newsletters and things coming from companies that you don’t read. It’s taking time for you to open and delete those! For the emails that you want to keep but don’t read often, create email rules to filter into folders so you can read them when you want/need them and they aren’t crowding your inbox. A great example of this is amazon delivery confirmations - I want to keep those so I can check on my deliveries but I don’t want them crowding my inbox so I like to filter those into their own folder.

• Set a timer for social media: if you are intentionally spending time browsing social media, set a timer so you don’t get sucked in and lose track. TikTok is one of those that are easy to spend hours on without realizing.

• Pop-up blocker: install a pop-up blocker or ad blocker into your internet browser to reduce distractions when online.

• Learn when it’s ok to say NO: have FOMO (fear of missing out)? Learn why and think about when it's okay to say no. Maybe your free time and some calm this weekend are more important than your neighbor’s friend’s kid’s birthday party. This goes for work as well. Is it something outside of your scope of work? Will it really be something that will drive value in your career? If not, then politely say no.

Outsource or get help where possible

Perhaps the biggest way to save time (but the most expensive) is to outsource housework. This can be in the form of house cleaners, laundry services, dog walkers, etc.

One way to determine if something is worth outsourcing vs. doing it yourself is to put a value on your free time. For example, if you determine your free time is worth $50 an hour. If a task takes 2 hours for you to do and someone else will charge $75 to do it for you, then maybe it’s worth outsourcing!

Also, consider if a task is something you like to do or not. If you enjoy walking your dog, then it brings value to you as well as taking up your time so it might not be worth it to outsource.

What else helps you save time in your household? comment below. Think someone else will benefit from this? Send them the link or share it on Facebook or Pinterest with the buttons below!

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