How do you cope with chores with young kids

[Tootiredrightnow]

I am on maternity leave with a newborn and a 3 yo toddler who attends preschool three times a week. Baby is feeding every hour/2 hours and cluster feeding in evening. DH works from home mostly and tries to help when he can. I am only sleeping 3-4 hours since baby was born. I don't know how to cope with household chores in this case, don't know how others do it. I am thinking of getting a cleaner once a week but house would need tidying up in between considering we have a toddler at home 4 days a week. Also, don't know what to do with cooking in long term. Right now we cook as and when we can. DH does laundry at night. DS will be attending preschool 5 days a week once his funded hours kick in from January. We give him packed lunch as there's no food available from preschool, only snacks. DS would be in preschool for this year and next year before Starting school and I go back to work in Sep 2025, baby starts nursery at the same time.
I am feeling bit lost, don't have extended family around to help, so we need to be very organised and think about a plan to make it all work.

Lower your standards! This is a tough time for you - it's ok if the house isn't perfect. Easy meals like pasta or beans on toast are fine for a few weeks

The baby will soon start feeding less frequently, and then you'll be able to do stuff with baby on a playmat or in a sling.

I'm in this position. Mainly DH is getting the housework done after putting our older one to bed, while I do the cluster feeding. Also lowered standards, like every evening he does the dishes and laundry and maybe finds one other thing that desperately needs doing like cleaning the toilet. But the place is messier than usual and we're okay with that. For dinners we've got a weekly schedule of really easy meals for the time being i.e. oven chips night, pasta jar sauce night, jacket potato night etc. We're expecting things to get easier when baby goes to bed earlier and needs fewer feeds etc.

Thanks for the advice. I know it will get easier but feels hard at the moment.

Do you have a freezer? Batch cooking was great for us during this time.

I sympathise! I have an 18m and we both work full time in the office and I find staying on top of house stuff just impossible, along with two dogs!
I try to have small things I keep on
Top off which helps;
Dishwasher emptied and refilled during breakfast
As washing dries it gets immediately sorted into baskets - this has been the biggest thing for me and washing was a nightmare.
If I'm leaving one room, I take something that shouldn't be there and like other people have said lower your standards!

If I didn't have level changes in our house then my next thing would be a robot vacuum!

I set up a weekly meal plan (I actually plan out 4-5 weeks) and an unchanging shopping list that takes minimal effort to order a couple of times a month for delivery. Then you know what's for dinner every night and you know the ingredients are all there. It really saves on brain space once you've got it all set up.

Weekly cleaner who is happy to do a bit of tidying as she goes (if not just clear the floors at least -throw everything into baskets and put on beds) and Gousto boxes. This is what we do! No thinking required.

We have a robovac for the ground floor.

Having a cleaner really helped
me when the DC were small. She originally came for 3 hours a week, prioritised the kitchen, bathroom and shower room and all the floors. And did whatever she could on top. As we started having more disposable income, she did more hours so that included some ironing and then changing the beds. It made a massive difference.

When the DC were old enough to sit in the bath unaided, I could do other things in the bathroom. So I could do things like fold a basket of laundered clothes, pair socks, make piles for each person etc. Or even clean the sink or something like that. When they got older, I’d be able to paint some polish into my nails or slather some body lotion on.

Very basic cooking or ready meals only. Only used pans that would go in the dishwasher. Made extra each time I cooked and froze it or kept it for the following evening.

I think a robot vacuum cleaner would have been a game changer back then!

I am thinking of getting ready and prepped meals from m&s food or deli section from other supermarket but I feel bit guilty about getting lots of processed food though I know it's stupid at this point to think this.

I handed baby and toddler to Dh as soon as he was home from work. Then I cooked dinner and did any obvious jobs that needed doing. We ate. Dh did bathtime while I sorted out kitchen after dinner. Dh did bedtime with older one and I fed baby. Then handed baby to him and went to sleep. Slept 8-10pm, feed, handed baby back to Dh, slept 10:30-12:30, took baby back for feed and then Dh went to bed and I did rest of night. It meant I had time away from kids to get tasks done every day and I started every night with 4 ish hours of sleep before I took over for the 2nd half of the night. Dh did all wakings with older one.

We only cook 2-3 times a week and make enough for 2-3 days at a time. Not the most interesting meals all the time but it keeps us all fed! We have a massive slow cooker which is brilliant as you just chuck stuff in and it cooks it for the evening. So we usually make a big pot of stew / pasta sauce / whatever and then we can all grab some as and when we can (we've done this since having kids but our kids are older now so we are faffing around at clubs most nights and eating at slightly odd times between us)

Let some things just go - it's not a time to worry about the small things.

I liked to have a basket in each space for chucking stuff to deal with later - random stuff in the wrong room, non-urgent mail, etc. Then when my kids were napping or I had a spare 10 minutes I could go through a basket but it saved my sanity to have somewhere to gather up all the random stuff.

If you can set your laundry on a timer you can get it put together whenever you have time and finish up when it's convenient.

And honestly... just cut down on the amount of stuff. My kids continually ended up with way too many toys (they're the only grandchildren for everyone) and once I was absolutely ruthless about it and really got rid of anything we weren't using a lot (keeping a few boxes to rotate toys now and again) it was so much easier as there was just less to deal with. So can be worth just boxing up some stuff if you can.

Lower standards, it's hard enough without feeling like you have to keep up every little chore constantly. Prioritise the essentials. The rest can wait.
We normally keep big chores for the weekend so we can tag team between childcare & chores.
When you are cooking, try to make extra portions at the same time and freeze them or eat as leftovers the next day. We built up a freezer stash by just making larger batches of our normal meals. We also do picky tea quite a bit as its easy, crackers, cheese, cucumber, carrot, fruit, meats etc.
I agree that decluttering makes tidying up so much easier. I also do a toy rotation so that there's way less toys out at any one time so less mess to be made and then easier for toddler to help with tidying up because everything has an obvious place. We also use little baskets for toys so worse case scenario they just get chucked in there and organised when there's more time.
Don't feel bad about temporarily making your life easier, when things are more settled and you feel more able, then you move back to cooking more, cleaning more etc. It gets a bit chaotic for a while but if you can relax and get back to these things later then it'll be okay.
I do laundry almost every day so it doesn't pile up and its easier to sort/fold it as it's only one basket at a time. We had to get a tumble dryer because I couldn't keep on top of air drying/rotating clothes whilst nap trapped and cluster feeding.

A fortnightly cleaner that only does the main spaces (kitchen, bathrooms, hoover main areas) worked for us. We had a weekly cleaner before that did all areas and it was too much trying to tidy the whole house with 2 small children. If they don't touch the living room or bedroom floors, you can just dump stuff in there and no need to clear the floors :)

Easy food for now - anything you can cut up or microwave quickly. Packet rice with some protein and veg. Nuts and cut up veg dipped in Hummus. Quick but healthy (ish) stuff. We did live on pi,zas for a while though haha

Remember "everyone fed, no one dead" if it's a bad day!!!

Oh yes also have a few different laundry baskets/bags to chuck clean washing into - even if no time to sort/Fold, if you're looking for something it's easier to look in the washing basket for mum/dad/kids/house to find it

One thing that makes cooking easier, and you are a small family so the cost would be more bearable, is to use ready prepped vegetables. I can’t tell you how much easier it is to put together a meal using frozen onion, garlic,mushrooms,leeks, ginger, peppers, etc. Just those few extra minutes where you don’t have to find, wash, peel, chop makes a huge difference. If you have the freezer space it is well worth it.

( I also use frozen mash , put the mash into a pan with a small amount of milk, a bit of dried English mustard powder and some butter and heat through. Takes minutes. I ring the changes by substituting the mustard powder with either a good spoon of horseradish cream, or a cube of frozen garlic. )