Thriving In Motherhood Podcast | Productivity, Planning, Family Systems, Time Management, Survival Mode, Mental Health, Vision

Our family has been using audiobooks for years and they have become an integral part of our routines. Today, I'm sharing why we love listening to audiobooks in our home, how we listen, how to develop the skill of listening to audiobooks, and our favorite audiobooks to listen to by age. Why Audiobooks? Audiobooks have been our trusty companions for years, adding a touch of magic to our quiet time and car rides. Here's why we love them: A daily break for me. Empowers the kids to explore incredible stories independently. Encourages my kids to work on projects longer because they can listen while they work (or clean!). Introduces challenging books in an accessible way, fostering an excitement to read the actual book. How We Listen: Our audiobook journey started with a CD player from Goodwill. We burned CDs with our favorite MP3s or borrowed them from the library. Over time, we upgraded to basic Kindles snagged on a Black Friday deal. With a passcode in place, the kids can only use it to enjoy audiobooks. We use the Libby and Hoopla apps for library access, making audiobooks an affordable choice. Developing the Skill: We started with audiobooks during my pregnancy with our third child. Sick on the couch with a three and a one year old, we used the CD player to listen to stories while the kids played with playdoh or did quiet activities near me. This started to train the skill with me in the room. Once the kids stopped napping, we rebranded the time to "Rest and Read Time." Since none of our kids were actually able to read yet, we started with audiobooks. Road trips and errands turned into shared listening sessions, which got the younger kids excited about audiobooks. Our Favorite Picks By Age: Ages 3-5 - Start with story telling adventures with music. Alexander's Amazing Adventures Focus on the Family: The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe Scripture Scouts Ages 4-6 Mr. Poppers Penguin Little House in the Big Woods Little House on the Prairie Little House on the Banks of Plum Creek Winnie the Pooh Stuart Little Trumpet of the Swan Magic Tree House Boxcar Children Chronicals of Narnia All of a Kind Family A to Z Mysteries Calendar Mysteries Fairy Tales: Jim Weiss Collection 7-10 - Classics start Little Women Little Men The Penderwicks The Secret Garden 5 Little Peppers and How They Grew My Side of the Mountain The Far Side of the Mountain The Moffats Series Pinky Pie Series The Shakespseare Stealer The Birchbark House Story of the World Anne of Green Gables Harry Potter 1-3

This is my seventh year creating a vision for my year. It is always a new experience, and I'm amazed at what comes out of this exercise. In today's episode, I'm sharing what I've learned in 2023 and what I'm focusing on, changing, and working toward in 2024. Here are a few areas from my 2024 vision: Investing More Into What's Working: Road trips Family adventures (beach, historical sites, new experience) Vegetable gardening Having friends over for dinner Hiking and time outdoors Relationships with our siblings and parents Projects: Rock climbing wall Write and publish a book Plant fruit trees and berries Start a medicinal and culinary herb garden Fix our fence Back to Basics Home management and our weekly rhythm Taking care of myself My relationship with God Every year what my vision works like is a surprise. It is unique and fits for the season I am in. I continue to share what my vision looks like as an inspiration for you to see that there is no wrong way to create one. I don't try to stick to a specific formula. I try to include God in the process and just see where I am for my learning and growth. If self care and creating good habits are part of your vision for 2024, Mom Matters Too is the place for you. Learn more HERE. And if you need help creating your vision, check out my Create Your Vision Mini-Course.

When it comes to goal setting, moms need different strategies in different seasons of motherhood. In this week's video, I'll be sharing what works in setting goals for the pregnancy and baby phase, when you have children under six, when you have school-aged kids and a full schedule, and when your children leave home. There are also principles that apply to all of us, no matter what stage we are in. Tips for Goal Planning in Every Season of Motherhood: Survival Seasons (pregnancy, postpartum, baby stage): Create goals around who you want to BE. There is plenty you are learning how to do in this phase of motherhood. When You Have Children 6 and Under: This is an exploring phase to figure out what type of motherhood you want to create and what you like to do. Do projects, try new things, and start something that scares you. Keep two lists - things you can do when your kids are sleeping and things you can do when they are awake. When You Have School-Aged Children: When schedules are full, and you feel like there isn't room to add more, ask yourself, "Where do I want to see progress in my life this year?" and be intentional about improving and going deeper on what you've already committed to. This progress will create excitement and energy. Empty Nesters: This phase can feel a lot like becoming a new mom - disorienting if you don't know how to fill your days. This is a good time to set goals to explore and figure out what matters to you or do things you've always wanted to do but haven't gotten to you. It's important to remember that as a mom, goals can include things you do with your kids, too. For a long time, I thought that for a goal to count, it had to be something I did away from my kids during alone time. So not true! I love to have a whole list of things I can work on when my kids are with me. Some things are more mindless activities that I can do next to them while they play, like wood carving or crocheting. Others are things we can work on together, like growing a garden. As you are figuring out your goals this year, make sure at least one thing can be done with your children. It's good for everyone to see mom working on goals! If you're ready to achieve your goals, tune in, grab a pen, take some notes, and get excited about the progress you'll make in 2024!

At the start of this new year, I realized I needed to make some changes to how I'm using my phone. In this week's episode, I'm outlining the problems I was having with technology and how it impacted my daily life, the parameters I've set for myself with my phone, and how I've set myself up for success. 5 Reasons to Reduce Phone Usage: Often, when things are out of balance, or we're not in our usual routines and rhythms, it's easy to fill the lack of structure and numb our feelings with screen time. This just makes things worse. I find that when I have things I want to do on my phone - whether it's an audiobook, podcast, course, project, etc. - then it is easy for me to come up with lots of excuses for the kids to keep playing, not involve them in helping out around the house, or for me to step away and finding ways to spend less time with them. These are great resources, but I want a break from the pull to step away. When I did my yearly review, I was surprised by the stories I was telling myself vs. reality. I was shocked at how much we did with family experiences and relationship-building with our family and people close to home. I want to be more aware and let reality count. I've been on my devices a lot more the last quarter with business and Christmas prep, which then turns to wasting time because our phones are masters at rabbit holes. I've gone down great rabbit holes I've learned a lot from, BUT it was still many hours on a screen and disengaged. I want to course correct and be more engaged at home. I want to give more attention to intentional rhythms with my younger kids specifically, which means firmer boundaries around screens for all of us. How I Set My Phone Up To Be…Just a Phone! I deleted all the apps off the home screen on my phone except for phone, text, calendar, and camera. I deleted and disabled Google Discover and Search, so I have zero ability to check email or look things up. I put my phone in greyscale mode. It looks horrible and makes it very unappealing to use for much besides phone calls. I got a flashlight to replace using my phone as a flashlight at night and in the early morning hours. I can't get sidetracked with it if it isn't in my hand. I got a pocket-sized notebook to carry around with a pen. I've replaced grabbing my phone with grabbing a notebook to write down a note or to-do item.

One of the skills in the structure pillar of the Three Pillars of Thriving is automation - making a decision once and having it happen over and over again. We can apply this principle to our weekly schedule. When we sit down and create a template of when we do things every day throughout the week, we can refer back to it with many decisions already made. Every quarter, I like to sketch out our current weekly rhythm or schedule. For years, I've done this on a piece of paper, but now we've added a two-page spread every quarter into the Thriving in Motherhood Planner for easy reference! In this week's video, I'm going to walk through my process for setting up our weekly schedule. This exercise is called an "Ideal Week" - which I really struggled with as a stay-at-home mom with lots of young children. It seemed like there was nothing ideal in my life, starting with the lack of sleep! I've adapted the concept in an empowering way for me as a mom, and it doesn't require me to have it all figured out yet. How To Set Up Your Weekly Schedule Step 1: Write down your anchors. For me that's our three meals during the day and quiet time. These happen no matter what. Step 2: Write down what's on the schedule. Church activities, music lessons, sports practices, library story time - what are your recurring appointments for the next few months? Step 3: Write down your essentials (there can't be a lot of them) for you and your family. Pair these essentials with an anchor. For us, that is scripture study at breakfast and my morning routine before everyone wakes up. Step 4: Write down what your days currently look like. Write down things as they are (in pencil). This isn't supposed to be ideal but reality. Step 5: What is working well? What isn't working? Use this to make 1-2 tweaks that involve your kids and another 1-2 that involve you. Step 6: Write down the essential things in the "puzzle pieces" section you want to have happen every night, but maybe not at the same time. For me, this is a time to record a podcast episode, have a date night, or have someone over for dinner. This is something that is going to develop over a period of YEARS, but making a few tweaks every quarter adds up to big things! I started with just figuring out what our mornings look like with young kids. Each day had a different activity: library, grocery shopping, nature walk in the woods, meeting friends at the park, and home projects. As we started homeschooling, we built morning routines to get to everyone's schoolwork. We made bedtime routines for the kids to get the next element figured out. Then, I focused on developing a good morning routine for myself and the kids (the 6 am - 9 am window). This included getting the kitchen cleaned up after breakfast as well as getting us ready for the day. We then added some structure to our afternoon hours, getting dinner ready ahead of time and resetting the house. Finally, I added some structure to the household management and cleaning and assigned certain tasks to certain days. Now, I'm working on creating a bedtime routine that gets me set up and even ahead for the next day.

In this week's episode, I'm sharing the #1 thing moms need to do for 2024 - and I can't think of any exceptions. In my 10.5 years of motherhood, this is the thing that has helped me in EVERY season, from hard pregnancies where days creep by to full schedules with lots going on in life and business. Every mom needs to create a vision for the year. There are an almost endless number of paths each day, but with your vision as a guide, you can walk in one direction and get to a destination you want to end up at. You can go to bed confident with how you spent your time and energy and wake up excited for the day ahead. Here are three steps to start creating your vision for 2024: Start a technology fast. Determine what you will and won't do for the next 14-30 days. The goal is not to have outside influences present - even good ones! This will help you get mental clarity about what matters to you in this season of life. Make it so the only factors in your life are your own thoughts, your spouse and children, and inspiration from God. Reflect on 2023. What went well? What didn't go well? What did you learn? What are you most proud of? What do you regret? Create your Vision for 2024. What do you want to do or experience? What projects do you want to work on? What habits do you want to develop? Who do you want to become? What household routines do you want to put in place? What matters for your family this year? As you begin to create your vision, remember this important principle: you have to go slow to go fast. This was a principle I learned as I recovered in the post-partum periods that if I wanted to get back to normal life as quickly as possible, I needed to do as little as possible to let myself heal. When it comes to productivity, we need to slow way down and create space in our lives to think, dream, prioritize, and plan so that we are ready to hit the ground running in the RIGHT direction. The direction that matters to YOU. If you want to learn more about creating a vision for your year, check out my Create Your Vision Mini Course. Inside, you'll discover: The steps to create your vision for the year The secret to making goals you are excited to accomplish How to eliminate stressing about time management and productivity - permanently! How to see the good you are already doing in your life to build momentum towards creating what's next for you You get IMMEDIATE access to the Create Your Vision Course when you purchase a Thriving in Motherhood Planner, or you can get the course on its own for just $15. If you're feeling overwhelmed, bored, lost, or crazed by motherhood's demands, creating your vision will make all the difference. It has a compounding effect that will allow you to create a unique life that is better than you could have imagined.

I have spent a lot of time inside with young kids who have loads of energy (even though we get out as much as we can). We've been in tiny grad student apartments and smaller houses without clear places to physically move their bodies for all 10.5 years of motherhood. As we get into winter, I start to feel a sense of panic about what we will do for months with shorter daylight hours, colder temperatures, and lots of need to move our bodies. In this week's episode, I'm sharing how we've set up our home (even when we lived in tiny apartments) so the kids have places to play hard inside, as well as activities I have to direct the energy when needed. Setting Up Inside So Kids Can Play In The Winter: Create a few intentional places for big movement. Even in our small apartment, we had a picker triangle and a small trampoline. We've added a pull-up bar in a doorway. Have self-directed activities like yoga or calisthenics cards and teach your kids how to use them. Have a list of activities you can refer to when things are going crazy (usually afternoons in our house). Here are a few of our favorite activities from my list: Tape pennies on shoes for tap shoes Skate on the floor with socks - bonus with wash clothes and Force of Nature for a mopping party. Have an indoor snowball fight with rolled-up socks or indoor snowballs. Wheelbarrow walk - hold your child's legs and have them walk around on their hands. Get my personal likes of 25 activities HERE. I don't want to entertain my kids - I want to set up an environment where there are a lot of options for movement. Having these things in place allows us to stay active in the winter months and keep my kids happy and busy. I'd love to hear your best inside activities with kids!

If you had told me ten years ago that I could be a full-time stay-at-home mom, living 30 hours away from our family, homeschooling my four children, and running a business in small pockets of time, I wouldn't have believed you. In those early years, the days ran together in one big blur, our cinder block student housing had stuff strewn around the floor, and I felt horribly guilty if I put my baby down, let alone did something I was interested in. In this week's video, I'm sharing my brand new 5-step PEACE Method Planning system for your week that has transformed my life from surviving the days to waking up excited. Many other productivity strategies work when you have uninterrupted blocks of time, but that is rarely the reality as a stay-at-home mom. This method is different because it takes thos interruptions into account and allows you to create a schedule that works. 5-Step PEACE Method Planning System: P: Purpose - what matters most to you? E: Energy - review the previous week for wins to build momentum and energy. A: Appointments - Write scheduled items on the calendar. C: Choose 3 - write down your big 3 for the week. E: Everything else - Write other "have to-dos" in context-based to-do lists for the week. This method is easy to start doing and doesn't need to be implemented all at once. Even doing one thing will increase your peace and confidence in how you use your time. You are building a foundation here that will be an upward cycle, and who knows what you will create! Let me know which one of these five steps you're already doing well and which ONE you are going to try this week.

How do you feel about chore charts? I like the idea of them, and I don't mind creating them, but when it comes to having a marker or stickers handy to actually fill them out, we drop the ball pretty much every time. This week, I'm sharing a new discovery I made that is simplifying our family cleaning routine: chore boards. This completely self-contained system allows me to clearly communicate each and every step that needs to be completed in a job, like cleaning the bathroom. In business, there is a crucial principle of writing standard operating procedures so that someone besides you can do a task and you can scale over time as you systemize. It's the same in our families. As my kids are getting a little bit older, I'm ready to delegate a bit more to them in things that it takes to run our household smoothly. We have lots of great habits in place (they all have jobs to keep the kitchen clean, they know their personal habits, and they each have a zone they know they have to pick up), but I need to have a better system to offload regular dusting, vacuuming, and bathroom cleaning. I was thinking of making chore lanyards for them, and while doing some online research, I stumbled across something even better: chore boards. I got so excited I purchased 10 of them so I could write the process for cleaning a bathroom, deep cleaning the family living space, as well as personal daily habits and weekly chores. Now I can give a child a job and a board with a clear step-by-step plan to execute it and then have a clear checklist to inspect it with. Expectations communicated!

Every month, I write down the books I read or listened to. Today, I'm sharing my 12 favorites that I read this year from a wide variety of topics and subjects. Reading lots of books has allowed me to actively learn while being a stay-at-home mom. When designing a planner for my needs, keeping track of the books I read or listened to each month was an essential piece. Why? Two reasons: it helped me to read more because I wanted to be able to write things down AND to remember all that I've read, learned, and enjoyed. A Books Read section is still in the official Thriving in Motherhood Planner in the monthly review. You can get your 2024 planner today and have it arrive by Christmas! Here are my 12 favorite books of 2023: How to Break up with your phone: https://amzn.to/3sDNw8J The Coddling of the American Mind: https://amzn.to/49L62g8 What Happened to You?: https://amzn.to/3unnc3b Habits of a Household: https://amzn.to/3GchGmo Love Life and See Good Days: https://amzn.to/3sy10Tv Grace Where you Are: https://amzn.to/47Dwcj1 Good Inside: https://amzn.to/3uo8bOu The Richest Man in Babylon: https://amzn.to/49BzWDk My Side of the Mountain: https://amzn.to/3SPyXJR On the Far Side of the Mountain: https://amzn.to/47m0zKX The Anatomy of Peace: https://amzn.to/49InIZA The Outward Mindset: https://amzn.to/3MRUxK5 I'd love to know your best book recommendations from this year to add to my 2024 reading list!