How do people find the time to get organised?

[PoloPrincess]

I've been feeling overwhelmed for months by the shear amount of stuff I have to do on a daily basis. I am a working mum and I feel completely exhausted at the end of the day that I rarely sit down and get any me time, let alone have a nice relaxing bath (a rare luxury).
My day consists of the following routine:
Get up 0530.
Quick bath because the showers not working.
Feed the animals.
Make everyone's lunch.
Feed remaining animals.
Wake DS up for school.
Feed DS.
Empty and reload dishwasher.
Grab some breakfast and eat while loading up car or sometimes take breakfast with me on the school run.
Drive to school.
Work during school hours.
Pick DS up and go to the park.

Drive home.
Feed animals.
Cook tea for all of us.
Eat tea.
Homework.
Clean up kitchen.
Iron the next day's clothes.
DS bath.
Supper.
Bed.

And that's it. Where the hell do people find the time to be ultra organised? To have a clean home, a wardrobe that's organised with clothes actually hanging up and not in the washing basket. The house isn't a tip but it never gets a regular dust or vacuum.
The weekends are virtually the same. Football on Saturday's and Sunday's and I might find time late afternoon to do the grocery shopping. We visit family or have an afternoon out with DS. DP has a hard physical job and he tries to help by occasionally loading the dishwasher and putting the bins out and only because I had a melt down at him.
I'd like the idea of batch cooking on a Sunday and I bought a couple of books about this but I've not had time to read them. Also there's no bloody time to do extra cooking on a Sunday unless I get up at 3am.
I feel like I'm existing and not living. I'm knackered and I mean absolutely exhausted. I know I'm not eating properly and rarely find the time to exercise which I live doing, running, cycling, swimming and team sports. I yearn to sit and read for an hour or potter about in the garden. I used to love sewing and dressmaking but that's all on the back-burner.
What am I doing wrong?

On a Monday I make something like Spaghetti bolognaise in the slow cooker, it's a 6.5L size so I make enough to fill it. At teatime ds & I have it for tea then I fill two freezer containers with enough for two meals in each. On Tuesday I add chilli, cumin & red kidney beans to turn the remainder in to Chilli con carne, ds & I have some for tea & then freeze the rest. On Wednesday we have something like steak & salad or labor pork chops & chips chops. On Thursday we have a meal that I have frozen, could be a chicken stir fry or stroganoff, it just needs to be reheated & some rice cooked. On Friday we have pizzas out of the freezer. Saturday night is always takeaway & very often we order enough to freeze some. Sunday is either a roast& whatever is left we use for sandwiches or have with chips another day or a meat & potato pie which lasts two days & I always stew the meat in the slow cooker doing double the amount so I can freeze half to save either for another pie or add veg & thicken for a stew. Whenever you cook a meal from scratch try to do something so you can add something else to it to make another meal or double up & freeze. One week in four we live out of the freezer, I don't need to shop. When you do your shopping plan your meals for until you shop again, keep things like rice, pasta, potatoes etc stocked up, if you are chopping things like onions for a dish, chop more than you need & add to a bag in the freezer, buy bags of soffrito to keep in the freezer, they can be a base for stews, soups etc, your slow cooker is your best friend. Look at the organised mum method for keeping on top of housework, she also has loads of easy quick meals on her website, start to treat your time like money, spend it wisely & save wherever you can.

Wash all school uniform.on sunday . Shake .Hanf it up let dry. Do not iron .
Cook every second day. Do this by cooking double quantaties. Then eat in diff way the next day. Eg if u eat chicken.cook one one day and have with veg and yorkshire puds.next day have with instant rice.. etc .
A slow cooker also helps as you can do quick easy prep( again double) and leave it. Do baked pots a cple times a week . Easy . Get a cleaner if poss.

DP does more
Minimal ironing
School lunches and dp makes his own
Cut down the park trips
Cleaner

I have x 2 DC and a full time job. I'm busy but have plenty of free time. Hardly any ironing, kids on school dinners, cooking split 50/50, cleaner, kids expected to entertain themselves. It's easier now they're teenagers though.

I looked at your schedule and it looks a lot!
Here are a few tweaks you could try:
1- stop ironing, honestly it is a game changer and I used to enjoy it
2- 20 min easy dinners - look up tiktok feta pasta, Tiktok noodles and oven fish n chips and there are three midweek options straight away, pasta with sauce frozen veg etc, all the pre-prepped veg in supermarkets? That is for the likes of us! Morrison’s for tea once a week or fortnight or month, sth to break it up?
3- wash kid less often, every 2nd night
4- don’t aim for big clean:wipe here, sweep there, hoover as necessary while bath runs clean bathroom sink etc
I have 4 kids n work full time. I never get chance for a full clean of house top to bottom, I have taken advice from friends who have neat and clean houses, wee bit here and there is what they do if they don’t have a cleaner.
Don’t beat yourself up or think everyone else has it sussed, we are all fecking knackered and inwardly chanting “it won’t always be like this”! You sound fed up- I do take the time to write down a five point gratitude list every morning, takes 3 mins and might help you feel better about the good stuff, the animals, the park visits, the chats at work or whatever. No-one ever looks back on their life and wishes their house had been cleaner but they might regret not enjoying the small moments so be kind to yourself.and if you are actually fed up because your DH is not hauling ass then you could ask him directly to pick up a couple of jobs he maybe does not realise it’s too much for you?

Is DP a farmer by any chance? I get that it's long hours but still he needs to do more. What does he do on days off?

Why ironing?

You mention tea and supper. One of those should be easy food, no cook food. But would a bigger meal instead of those two be helpful?

Looking at your list I would (other than getting DH to do more):

• stop ironing
• kitchen clean up during DC homework; Prep packed lunches then too (or move DC to school dinners)
• eat more at tea time and scrap supper
• put away laundry during DC bath time
• do stuff while DC is at football if possible; maybe take turns with other parents to drop off/pick up if your DH works weekends; otherwise take turns with DH
• do online food shop
• if you have too much to do, scrap park some days and come straight home; DC plays while you do stuff
• get shower fixed ASAP

I'm a sahm and I just found I couldnt work full time even with one child. Either finishing early one day or giving up a day was life changing.

I never iron anything. Ever. I get my washing in from.the line straight onto hangers outside. I pull everything flat and fold it carefully before hanging it out too. If you streach it as you fold it and allow it it sit even for a few minutes wet you would be shocked how uncreased it is when dry.

I do at least one batch meal a week. One huge spaghetti sauce that is also a lasagna.

I have the TOM app and even if you hover the living room and sort 30 minutes of putting things away at night its good enough to tick over.

Your dh needs to step up. Mine cooks and cleans up every night. It's his job. He gets the older kids up dressed and fed every day. He takes them.to clubs. They are his set jobs so I dont need to ask him to do them. He needs to be asked to do much less that way. He only sits down for a hour after work really.

I have a hobby and it's out of the house another non movable fixed thing. I dint have time for my hobby but I do it as it's my therapy.

So many things also dont really need doing so I dont do them

Get a cleaner. And your DH needs go take over a few chores like loading unloading the DW and feeding your cats some days. I agree with school dinners rather than messing about making packed lunches when you are on a tight schedule.

I am super organised. I find it easy.
I do everything straight away. As Soon as I get an email from School about a school trip, or in the olden days a primary mufti day, I would buy an outfit from eBay that very minute.

How old is dc?
I don't do a lot of what you do.
Wake up at 7am. Shower. Don't make lunches, teen ds's do theirs the night before, I too, often using leftovers. No ironing. I do it on Sunday. Cooking I batch cook say meatballs, so when I get home spaghetti and meatballs takes minutes.

I do think you are doing many things are making it unnecessarily harder for yourself than it needs to be.

Is there something missing, are you farmers. Is that why so much time is spent feeding animals?

Past that one kid shouldn’t take so much time, much of it seems to be feeding animals.

A few short cuts that might help;

1. whilst cooking tea the children do their homework, I make overnight oats for breakfast the next day.
2. DH or DS makes the packed lunches night before
3. I don't iron, I think the uniform can be folded straight from the dryer, my DH disagrees, so he irons uniforms on Sundays. They have enough uniform to last a week.
4. we don't have animals for this reason (not very helpful, I'd love a dog but the work sounds exhausting!)
5. one meal in the evening is plenty, fruit snack if no after school club, main meal around 6.
6. I don't think kids need to bathe everyday

But yes totally agree with not letting DP get away with it too.

Oh and whoever cooks doesn't have to clean up in this house. So I'm usually on the sofa whilst DH cleans up!