I love a good #momhack. Little things that can just make your life that much easier. 

You too?

I’m all too well acquainted with the chaos that can come with kids, so here are a few of my favourite tricks to make life just a tiny bit less crazy (because let’s be honest here, it’s always going to be a little bit nuts).

1. When all else fails, do a bath or shower. My kids can be fighting incessantly or just cranky, but as soon as we add water, they are happy as can be. Need something extra special to change the mood? Turn the bathroom lights off and have a candle bath. Or toss a bunch of small toys in the water that aren’t usually bath toys (Duplo works well). Or have a Popsicle bath (yup, give popsicles IN the bath).
2. When cooking a meal just isn’t happening, do a muffin tin meal. I’m often alone during dinner times and as much as I try to cook us meals, sometimes I’m just too tired. When that happens I pull out the muffin tins and fill those little circles with random stuff from the fridge. There’s no real rhyme or reason except that I try to make sure there is at least one protein cup and one veggie cup. The kids think it’s super fancy, even though it’s the furthest thing from fancy I can come up with. 

Put a bin of socks by the door. This one actually came from my friend Lindsay at Ruby Thursday Home and it’s GAME CHANGING. When you’re running out the door and realize your kid doesn’t have socks on, you can quickly grab it out of the bin and go….instead of taking your shoes off, going to the bedroom and getting distracted. 

4. Have a low snack and kid dishes drawer. We have a drawer down nice and low that is full of healthy kid snacks plus the girls’ cups and special dishes. When they want something, they know they can get it and I’m not constantly having to get them ‘just one more sip’ of water. 

5. Keep backpacks in the kitchen. This is one of those things that seems so small, but it has kept us way more organized. We have hooks in our kitchen where the girls hang their backpacks. We used to keep them at the garage door, which was fine, but I love having them in the kitchen so much more. The kids empty their backpacks when they come home and put all the papers and their lunch kits on the counter. The ice packs can then go straight into the freezer and the empty lunch kits back into the backpacks. I then sign whatever is needed, toss out the extra papers and put that back into the backpack. In the morning I make lunches (still not organized enough to do THAT the night before!) and it’s super easy to put it all in the backpack and double check that everything is in and ready for school. The backpack stays on the hook the whole time and isn’t sitting on the counter cluttering things up. Even when we had one kid in daycare this worked. Toss a few heavy duty hooks up on an empty wall and you’re good to go! If you have a bit more space, a shelf above with a basket to hold school papers is great too.

If you have a mom hack that you swear by I’d love to hear it. Let me know in the comments!