Hey momma, are you weary, overwhelmed, or possibly slightly burned out?
I’ve got something today that can help you. It’s about scheduling but before you roll your eyes and click away please hear me out. At Grace Filled Mom I’m passionate about moms thriving not just surviving. And a schedule can help us do that. But…
But maybe you’ve tried and scheduling is just not your thing or the first time your schedule goes array you feel like you’ve failed and who wants to feel like a bigger failure as a mom? Umm, no one. The guilt is already enough am I right?!
But wait…I have a twist that makes a schedule so much better. It’s about time blocking and it’s a flexible schedule and it’s really just about creating some peaceful structure for you and your family so you get the things done you need to and have more joy and peace while doing it. How does that sound?
Block scheduling can be a game changer for us busy moms because it can offer the structure our family needs but the flexibility our sanity insists upon because we know life happens. Children get sick, they go through developmental leaps, things come up, and we have many responsibilities to balance.
What Even Is Block Scheduling
Block scheduling is simply dividing your day into blocks of time with dedicated activities rather than trying to do an hour-by-hour schedule. You can group hours together which gives you more flexibility but still some structure to move through your day.
For example:
You can start dividing your day into blocks based on your and your family’s current priorities.
- Morning Routine Block (6 AM – 7 AM): This could be your get ahead of the day time before the children get up to pray, read, and prep yourself for the day.
- Family Morning Block (7 AM – 10 AM): Breakfast, getting kids ready for school if they go to school, morning chores.
- Mid-Morning Block (10 AM – 12 PM): If you work from home this could be your work block or time for housework and maybe even errands.
- Afternoon Block (12 PM – 3 PM): Make and eat lunch, activities with the kids, and outside time.
- Late Afternoon Block (3 PM – 6 PM): Pick up kids if they’re at school, homework help as needed, and prepare dinner.
- Evening Block (6 PM – 9 PM): Family time, reading, family worship, personal projects, bedtime routine.
This is just a general idea. You can name your blocks with more detail and adjust to your family and schedule.
As a Work From Home mom with a 2 year old my current blocks look like this:
Morning Routine Block: (5:30 AM – 7 AM): Bible reading, journaling, and prayer by my therapy light as it’s still dark outside. Then blog writing.
Family Morning Block: (7 AM – 10 AM): Our daughter gets up, feeds the pets, sends daddy off to work, and visits Grandma for a few minutes who lives on the same property. Then it’s a bible story and a walk or workout together. I do some quick housework during this time too.
Preschool Block: (10 AM – 11 AM): We just started a playing preschool block here with fun homeschool activities. That’s why I love a block schedule. You can adjust it as needed. As a homeschool mom, I get a flexible teaching schedule. This flexible block is working great for us now and I can split up her activities on days we have more going on.
Nap and Work Block (11 AM – 1 PM): When our daughter wakes up we have lunch and spend time outside. I make this focused time on her so she is ready for independent play in the next block. I usually have a snack and then work to fit in a focused 90-minute block of deeper work tasks like writing content.
Afternoon Block (3 PM – 5 PM): Our daughter will normally do some independent play time so that I can check emails and messages. I save this time for less deep work like administrative tasks as I’m keeping an eye on our daughter as she plays.
Also during this block, after wrapping up work, I encourage her to play outside while I prep dinner and watch her from the kitchen window. This is also when I do household chores. I will complete the laundry that I started in the morning, sweep floors, pick up, etc. We also feed the pets again. When my husband gets home we eat dinner too. This is a busy block.
Wrap-Up Block (5 PM – 6 PM): This is when I do the bookkeeping for the day for our family cafe business, my husband brings home the records from the day. I encourage my husband and daughter to have their quality time while I do the bookkeeping and look over the next day’s lesson plan and tasks and write down any to-do’s for tomorrow.
Evening Block (7 PM – 8 PM): This is when we start the wind-down routine with our daughter which is also family time. We get her in her pajamas, read books, have a quick family worship, and just relax together. Then it’s bedtime for the little one.
Couple Time and Bedtime Block (8 PM – 9 PM): This is the time that we like to just sit and read as a couple or watch a cooking show. Dedicated time for reading has helped me learn a lot. I am working on getting up earlier so I would like to be in bed by 9 PM but it does not always happen. Sometimes there is baking or sourdough making in the process late for the cafe for the next day but this is what we shoot for.
Your Blocks Can Be Unique To You
I’m giving you different examples to get an idea but your blocks will be unique to you and your family. You may be dealing with different school schedules. You may have extra time in certain months of the year but other months are packed. If life changes simply create a new schedule.
That’s the beauty of scheduling around a block of time, you get to choose what goes there, and when any major changes come up you can adjust. There may be significant differences in how your day needs to go versus how mine is depending on your tasks, family, age of your children, etc. You can just change the type of blocks that make up your day so it works for you.
Tips To Make A Block Schedule Work For You
Be Realistic About Your Day
The point of a block schedule is to have some flexibility and some buffer time for when life happens so don’t overload your blocks with too many things. Think about what is normally on your to-do list. A complimentary system to time blocking is day theming. It’s something I mention in my How To Create Your SAHM WFHM Schedule Guide and Workbook.
If you feel like you have too many things in your blocks you can make some of your blocks different for different days. You can create a weekly schedule instead of a day schedule and have different blocks for different days and rotate those each week. Traditional schedules often don’t work for us as busy moms because of how different our weeks can look.
Try setting specific tasks for specific days. Your afternoon block for example could be a deeper cleaning one day and a meal prepping block on another day. It’s kind of like flex time periods that schools set up for students where students go to different classes on different days.
Think about your energy levels when you are planning also.
Gather Your Resources
Use what tools and resources work for you. You can use a daily block worksheet that you print online. You could use your physical planner, you could use a digital planner, you could use an online project management app. You can just write out a schedule on a piece of paper and hang it on the fridge.
Don’t overcomplicate it. Actually, the less time we have the more effective we can learn to be with the right resources and a daily schedule that works.
Remember you can always change things as needed. If you have younger children you know how seasonal motherhood can be and your schedule can change often. The beautiful thing about this is you can always reassess and adjust. In fact, accessing how things are going is part of my system but we’ll get to that.
Remember Your Needs Too
Personal time is so important for our well-being. We can get so busy taking care of homes, businesses, and everyone else that we overstretch ourselves. Don’t forget to add times into the day where you can refuel especially before times that you know are particularly challenging during the day.
Pray, have a cup of tea, read a page, and look at an inspiration board, dream. Take a moment. What are your personal needs, what fills you up? Create some flexible time for that!
I know that late afternoon gap where our daughter is more needy, I’m trying to make sure the house is welcoming for my husband to get home, and making dinner is the most stressful for me. That’s why it helps for me to focus on her before that time so she feels filled up and can play independently.
As you try things out you will figure out times in the day that are the most stressful and find ways to work with them.
Delegate When You Can
Sometimes we need to ask for help. When I find myself doing everything I don’t allow my husband to have that focused time with our daughter. If I ask them to spend time together for at least 30-45 minutes in the evening it gives me time to have a moment of quiet and wrap up things in the home office so I am more prepared for the next day. And they bond more!
You could also trade some afternoon blocks with another mom. This is great if you have projects you need to get done or just need some quiet alone time. You could watch her children for the afternoon block one week and the next week she could do the same for you.
Don’t Expect Perfection
A good day can turn into a good week and you can be achieving more than you thought possible and may just be finding yourself enjoying life and motherhood more. It doesn’t have to be perfect and it’s not going to be and that’s ok.
If you have an off day where the schedule falls apart, that’s fine. Get back on track when you can and if it’s completely not working anymore just evaluate and adjust.
How Do You Get Started With a Block Schedule?
I’m so glad you asked.
I happen to have a workbook that I’ve already mentioned and recommend but I’ll give you some tips whether you grab the workbook or not. But I think it would be helpful to you if you’re serious about creating a block schedule.
I work through a process I call SOAR to create my flexible block schedule.
It is based on one of my favorite Bible passages Isaiah 40:31,
But they that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings as eagles; they shall run, and not be weary; and they shall walk, and not faint.
If I want to soar like an eagle I need structure. It’s the structure and systems that give us the freedom to fly.
So the “S” stands for schedule which is what we’re talking about here in this post. The “O” stands for Organize. If we’re going to make any schedule work long-term we’ve got to get organized. The “A” stands for access. Once we have implemented the schedule for a while we need to access it from time to time and see if it’s working or if there are areas that need to be changed or tweaked. The “R” stands for Rest. This is not about scheduling and organizing so you can cram so much into your day that you are exhausted. This is about buying back time and presence for you and your family.
- Schedule
- Organize
- Access
- Rest
Be Present And Work On What Comes
Presence. That’s a hard-to-find commodity these days. But when we know we have systems in place to get the things done that we need to we can go through our days with more ease. That’s my best tip- be present for each section of the day.
I know the preschool block is to teach our daughter, not for me to be thinking about work. I know the work blog is for focused content creation, not housework. I know the afternoon blog will help me catch up on those household chores so I can just focus on each block as it comes.
Working this way can help us learn to focus more and be present more.
Flexible block scheduling is a great idea to balance out your day to cover the different areas you are in charge of as a busy mom.
Go Deeper
If you want to dive deeper into this topic of block scheduling and also get some worksheets to help you schedule out your day then grab the Create Your Own SAHM WFHM Schedule Guide.
In it, I talk about how we as moms are curators of our homes and time. We can take the beautiful moments and the hard and challenging ones and weave them together in the magnificent tapestry that is our life.
There are worksheets for your time blocks, weekly task brainstorming, an assessment worksheet, and tips on setting up your environment for success. I also talk a little bit about setting healthy boundaries, a hard topic.
I have created the workbook guide to give you not only the resources that you may need but inspiration and encouragement for the journey too. I created the workbook guide when our daughter was a baby because it was something that I needed as a new work-from-home mom.
Now that I’m a work-from-home toddler mom, I’ve found the process to not only still work but be even more important. Our daughter naps less now so my work time needs to be more productive. She also needs me more now in different ways than before.
It’s Seasonal!
Something we talk about a lot here at Grace Filled Mom is how seasonal motherhood is. I’m in the “young children” season but the principles work if you have older children too. To me, work-life balance is not shooting for a 50-50 ratio but knowing that things are seasonal. We need systems in place that can change and grow with us. I’ve found flexible block scheduling to be one of those systems for me. I hope and pray it helps you too.
Are you ready to create your own block schedule? It’s an amazing time management technique. Or do you have another type of schedule that works for you? I would love to hear about it in the comments. Have something to add? Let us hear your good idea.
We always hear about this being our children’s one childhood which is true and so important. But it is our motherhood too. Let’s thrive with love and grace. At the end of the day, that’s what matters. I want my Creator to look over my motherhood and say well done good and faithful servant (Matthew 25:23).
Much love Momma, you’ve got this!
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