Mumsnet Talk

Empty the dishwasher before bed and lay out breakfast dishes etc the night before. Basically preparation is key to everything. If you can do it now and have time, do it now! Don't put things off, don't go upstairs empty handed. Clean the bathroom when the kids are in the bath, clean small amounts regularly. My house is never unclean, and not particularly messy as I keep on top of it.

If it builds up its a nightmare! Little and often and repeat.

I have a few for working mums:
Do as much as you can before bed. My must-do's are: has everyone got the right clothes/bags, make lunches, put on dishwasher and washing machine
If you commute by train/bus use that time. I have a small notebook in my bag and I use that time to plan my day: work to do list, shopping list, plan for when I get home
batch cook and freeze meals then each morning get a meal out of the freezer so it is ready as soon as I get home.
Don't try to be superwoman, you will crash so lower your standards!

Use the home routines iphone app - it's fab.

Train the children up nice and young

get up an hour earlier ?

Stop Tweeting, Facebooking and the rest of it (or if you can't manage that cut it down to one little look per day)

I'm sure I would gain an hour a day if I followed my own advice.

That said, I can hardly recommend no MN-ing, can I?

Surely doing extra jobs and preparation before bed is just redistributing the work? You're not making an "extra" hour, you're just filling a different hour, which is fine if you want to make time to sit and have a coffee in the morning rather than sitting relaxing before bed.
But to find "extra" time, you have to share out the work fairly, so that other people do their fair share . . .
Work expands to fill the time. If you want to make space in your day for an hour sitting reading / going to the gym / phoning a friend . . . . just do it. The housework will still be there when you're done, and the world is unlikely to end while you stop doing it for an hour.

Get off mumsnet - would give me a lot more than an hour a day !

Yes, I agree with stealthsqiggle - DW gets up an hour before anyone else and finds it makes all the difference - putting heating on, tidying up the sitting room, doing the previous evening's washing up, feeding cats, making coffee/packed lunches for kids and self, putting a load of washing on, putting out recycling, watering plants (in the summer) and generally having some personal space in which to wake up properly and cope with the family full on when they get up

Thank goodness I get the lie in ;-)

I go to bed at 9pm most nights, but then get up at 5am and have 2 hours to get loads done before I wake the kids up for school

I find I'm much more efficient in the mornings than at night, so jobs that would get done half-heartedly after the kids go to bed at night, get done in half the time before I wake them up in the morning

Batch cooking.

Yes scurry! I also do this

I have Thursday mornings off and do all my cooking for the weekend then. Sunday mornings I go to the market and then cook all the food I bought for the rest of the week.

It means all the food gets cooked whilst it's still fresh (i.e. no waste) and I just need to reheat a dish each night throughout the week at dinnertime!

Time management. Work out what you have to do, allocate time to do it. Don't procrastinate.

It's amazing how many of us say that we can't do something because we 'haven't got time', when in fact a lot of our time is wasted, or we're just sitting around doing nothing.

Be ruthless about delegating tasks - and about deciding if you actually need to do something. One of the things I've seen on MN which always makes me is people who wash things everyday like pyjamas/nighties. Or who change their bed sheets every day. Talk about making work for yourself!

Sell the children on ebay.

You can't make an extra hour, you can only be more efficient with the time you have so do whatever works for you be it getting up earlier (wouldn't work in my house, ds would hear me get up so then I'd end up with a shattered 5 year old) or just making youself do that washing up before you sit down for your cup of tea. If you sit down first you'll still be sitting there when it is time for the school run (or is that just me?).

Give up housework, you can get whole extra days, nevermind an hour...thin about it

How often do you tidy a room, only to look at it the next day and realise that it needs doing again? just don't bother the first time

Well surely you have to redistribute time to make any time as its actually impossible to have a 25 hour day.....hence the original question!

If you have a toddler ,borrow another one for a morning.
Then when your friend reciprocates you`ll have a whole morning to get on unimpeded(unless you also have a baby!)

Lower your standards.

That pile of clothes in the corner is no longer ironing, but clean washing.

Problem solved.

I'm going to try once a month cooking, you can find recipes online for preparing ingredients in freezer bags that you just chuck in the slow cooker.

I think the little and often is key but I do agree that if everyone else chipped in a little more it would be better.

i could save time by keeping off the computer but I enjoy mumsnet etc and it keeps me sane.

If you want an extra hour a day to do something, then just do it. You don't hear men fretting about where to get the time to go to the gym (for instance) from - they just do, and then let everything else sort out round that.

But I save a great deal of time by not ironing anything - things are hung up on hangers and dried over a dehumidifier, and only dh's work shirts need an iron.

I also don't get trapped into the time wasters of faffing about the 'perfect Christmas' etc. None of us in this house care about having 17 dishes on the table, colour co-ordination, blah blah, so we don't. On christmas eve, this means we go to the panto and christingle and relax

Cook two things at a time and freeze one of them.

Get off Mumsnet, Facebook, Twitter etc.

Have an active lifestyle - walk or cycle whenever you can - you will have more energy and won't have to spend an hour in a sweaty gym.

Make sure everyone in the family pitches in with housework.

Don't iron, except for really smart clothes that definitely need it. Avoid buying such clothes as much as possible.

PS I don't do any of the above (apart from the don't iron one) but I know I should!

Agree strongly with batch cooking - I always make six portions of Bolognese or tomato sauce for pasta, and freeze the portions we don't eat at the next meal.

Keep your house (kitchen and bathroom cupboards) well stocked and organised, so that you never run short of any basics but can find everything easily too.

Allocate specific routine times in the week for shopping, major laundry (sheets).

Internet shopping for everything saves hours trawling round the shops.

Agree totally with Bonsoirs internet shopping tip. Did a lot of my Christmas shopping on my phone while waiting for GP and hospital appointments and while DC were in the bath.

List making, in a notebook I carry round, saves me time too. Stops me forgetting things if I do go to the shops, knew who I had left to buy for at Christmas, which birthdays are coming up, what size curtains I need to replace if I see some in a charity shop etc, etc.