Fall is officially here and with it comes the beautiful chaos of school schedules, activities, half days, and the general feeling that someone secretly added extra items to your to-do list while you were sleeping.
I'm not going to pretend I have it all figured out. But I have found a handful of routines and habits over the last year that have helped me feel less overwhelmed and more grounded. None of these are revolutionary. None of them require a lot of money or a complete lifestyle overhaul. They're just small, consistent things that have made a real difference in my day to day life as a mom and small business owner.
If you get even one thing out of this list that helps you, that's a win.
1. The 15 Minute Daily Clean
I have always struggled with cleaning. Part of that is because I don't love doing it. But the bigger issue was that I'm an all or nothing cleaner. When I started cleaning I'd get so into it that suddenly the entire day was gone and I'd done this insane deep clean when really I just needed to wipe down the bathroom counter. Or I'd look at how much needed to be done and feel so overwhelmed I'd avoid it entirely until things got really bad.
About a year ago I came across the concept of 15 minute daily cleans through Hustle Sanely with Jess Massey. I highly recommend her podcast episode on home management if you want a much more evolved version of this system than what I'm about to describe. But the core concept of doing small focused cleans every day completely changed how I approach keeping our home tidy.
Here's how my schedule looks:
- Monday: Master bedroom or master bathroom
- Tuesday: Kitchen (every single week without exception)
- Wednesday: Kids bathroom or kids bedrooms
- Thursday: Flex day or makeup day if I missed something earlier in the week
- Friday: Home reset (more on this below)
- Saturday: Living areas or downstairs bathroom
When I was working full time as a nurse I literally set a 15 minute timer and got as much done as I could before it went off. Now that I have a little more flexibility in my schedule I don't always use the timer but the structure stays the same.
The Friday Home Reset deserves its own mention because it's become one of my favorite parts of the week. This is when I go through the whole house and put things back where they belong, vacuum, empty all the trash cans and wash sheets, bath towels and kitchen towels. I do it on Fridays specifically because it means going into the weekend with a cleaner, more reset home without having to spend Saturday morning cleaning instead of being with my kids.
Is this system perfect? No. Do I skip weeks sometimes when life gets in the way? Yes. But things are consistently cleaner than they've ever been and I'm no longer spending entire days trying to catch up. That alone makes it worth it.
2. The Evening Tidy with the Kids
This one pairs naturally with the 15 minute cleans and has made a huge difference in how the mornings feel.
Every evening before bed we do a quick tidy of the main living areas. That means wiping down kitchen counters, running the dishwasher and picking up toys. Now that my kids are three and five they're involved in this too. We talk a lot in our house about how keeping things clean is the responsibility of the whole family, not just mom and not just dad. It doesn't matter who made the mess. We all work together to clean it up.
Having the kids involved in this has two benefits. First the house is actually tidier when I do my 15 minute cleans because things aren't starting from a completely chaotic baseline. And second, waking up to a reasonably tidy house in the morning just starts the day better. At least until they wake up and immediately undo everything.
3. Daily Morning Walks
I'll be straightforward with you: these completely fell apart in July. When it was over 110 degrees and I went on a couple of back to back trips and lost my routine entirely the walks just stopped happening. And I could really feel the difference in myself.
Now that temperatures are finally becoming more manageable I'm back at it and I've made one small adjustment that's helped a lot. Instead of trying to squeeze in a walk before school drop off (which added morning pressure I didn't need) I go right after drop off instead. I feel less rushed that way.
Walking outdoors most days has genuinely helped my mental health in ways that are hard to fully articulate. Getting outside, moving my body and having a few quiet minutes to myself before the workday starts sets a completely different tone for the rest of the day.
And I won't pretend the quiet isn't part of the appeal. Walking without my kids means nobody is asking me 500 questions, nobody is bickering with their sibling and nobody is requesting snacks every five minutes. I love them deeply. AndI also love the quiet.
4. Daily Journaling
This one I've been doing for close to a year now and it's become one of the more grounding parts of my morning routine.
I use journals with prompts from Hustle Sanely that are goal oriented and include a daily gratitude practice. Being prompted to think about gratitude every morning shifts my mindset before the day really gets going. I also like actually handwriting it rather than typing. Something about the physical act of writing feels different and more intentional to me.
In the evenings the journal asks me to reflect on the day. What was my favorite part? What energized me? What drained me? I haven't been as consistent about going back and looking for patterns but that's something I want to be more intentional about because I think it could be really useful for figuring out where to spend more energy and where to pull back.
If journaling feels like too much, I'd encourage you to start with just the gratitude piece. Even writing down three things you're grateful for in the morning takes less than two minutes and can genuinely change how you approach the day.
5. Nightly Reading
One of my goals this year was to read 12 books. One per month felt manageable given that before this year I had barely read anything since my kids were born. I used to be a big reader and somewhere in the exhaustion of early motherhood that completely fell away.
Here's where I landed: I have read way more than 12 books this year. I think I read close to 12 in September alone.
A few things made this possible. Now that I'm not working full time at the hospital I'm not working until midnight every night just to keep up with my business. I have actual time in the evenings. And my kids are getting more self-sufficient which means I can sometimes sit in the same room while they play and read my own book while they're entertained.
Getting back to reading has brought me so much joy. It's something that was mine before kids and I'm so glad I found my way back to it.
If reading isn't your thing, that's completely fine. But if there's something you loved doing before you had kids that got pushed aside, I'd encourage you to think about how you might bring even a small version of it back. Make a tiny goal. One book a month. One hour a week. Whatever fits your life right now. The joy is worth protecting.
6. Meal Planning and Grocery Pickup
These two go together and I resisted both of them for longer than I should have.
I tried meal planning before and hated it because I felt pressure to find exciting new recipes all the time. My kids eat approximately five things reliably so that felt both pointless and overwhelming. Now my approach is much simpler. I rotate through about 10 meals we actually like and every couple of weeks I try one new recipe to see if it earns a spot in the rotation. Is it a little repetitive after seven months? Yes, but it makes the week so much more manageable that I'm keeping it going.
The Skylight calendar app (which is what I use to plan) has a meal planning and recipe storage feature that I use to keep track of everything. I look at what we've had the past two weeks and plan from there. Simple and low pressure.
Grocery pickup is the other half of this equation and I cannot overstate how much it has changed my relationship with grocery shopping. I go through the Fry's website, it pulls up my frequent purchases so I can quickly click through what we need and schedule a pickup time. I'm not wandering the store buying things I don't need because I walked past them while hungry. It saves time, saves money and saves my sanity.
The one exception in our house is mangoes. My husband does not trust anyone else to select his mangoes and that’s apparently non-negotiable. So he handles the mangoes and I handle everything else. It's a good system.
A Few Final Thoughts
None of these things are perfect. I skip walks. I miss cleaning days. I stay up too late reading when I should be sleeping. But having these routines as a loose framework means that even when things get hectic there's something to come back to.
The goal isn't perfection. It's just making the everyday feel a little more manageable.
I'm Lindsay, a Phoenix family and newborn photographer who specializes in capturing the real, beautiful chaos of family life. When I'm not photographing families in the Arizona desert at golden hour I'm right here in the thick of it with my own two kids, figuring it out one routine at a time. If you'd like to learn more about family or newborn sessions, [I'd love to connect with you here.]
Learn about some of the things I'm trying to hold on to by practicing these habits here: The Little Things I Don't Want to Forget
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