Episode 14 - How Can Bath Time For the Kids Be More Productive For Mom? - Intentional Edit

On this Tip Tuesday – Episode 14 of The Intentional Edit Podcast listeners find out how to be more productive while still safely supervising the kiddos during bath time. Lauren answers a listener question and shares a list of things busy parents can do to feel productive. Moms are busy and often looking for every opportunity to get more done and multitask. Thinking of safety and supervision first, Lauren shares a long list of ideas that will keep you busy and productive, checking off the boxes on your to-do list while keeping an eye on the bath tub.

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Full Episode Transcription:

(00:00):

Welcome to another Tip Tuesday episode of The Intentional Edit Podcast. This week, I’m answering your question from a busy mama that wants to be more productive. When her kiddos are cooperatively playing for about 45 minutes every night in the bathtub, thinking of safety and supervision. First, I share a long list of ideas that will keep you busy and productive. Checking off the to-do on your to-do list while you’re keeping an eye on the bath.

Hey friends, quick tips that make a big impact in your daily life are my favorite ways to implement systems around the house. I’ve been sharing easy strategies and my go-to organizing products for tip Tuesday on the intentional audit Instagram feed for a few years. Now I’m excited to bring it to the podcast with short episodes, answering your questions every Tuesday. If you want me to answer your questions, go to the podcast page on unintentional, edit.com and submit your questions there.

(00:49):

Let’s get started on this tip Tuesday episode of the intentional edit podcast. Thank you for joining me for another tip Tuesday episode of the intentional edit podcast today. Our question that came in is that time is a struggle for me. It’s the only time my kids play it together without arguing and fighting. I have to be in there to watch them, but I feel so unproductive after the five minutes it takes to wash their hair and get them clean. I love that they’re playing nicely and it takes up a good 45 minutes or more of our evenings, but I feel like I should be doing something productive instead of looking at my phone and scrolling through social media during bath time. That is a great question. Thank you so much for submitting a question. If you are listening and you want me to answer your questions, you can submit them through direct message on Instagram or go to my website, intentional edit.com and click on the podcast page.

(01:39):

If you scroll down, there is a button that says, record your message here, and you can actually leave a voice recording of the question that you have for me. I will gladly answer those questions on a future tip Tuesday episodes. First of all, I want to acknowledge that it’s awesome that your kids are having these long bath time where they are getting along and playing together. If you are a person that is craving systems and organization, if you’re listening to this podcast, you probably are. You’re trying to figure out how can you be more organized, have systems in your house and simplify you are desiring that simplicity. If that’s you, then you have to think of why do you want to be more organized? Why do you crave the systems? Why do you want the simplicity in your home to usually to spend more time with the people that are most important to you so that you can be more engaged?

(02:30):

And the time that you do have is more meaningful, really try, enjoy the little things. And don’t put so much pressure on yourself without having the overwhelm feelings and the nagging that you should be getting something done, whether it’s 10 minutes or 15 minutes, try to enjoy that time, come up with some things that you can do. I know you said your kids played together and that’s the only time they’re not arguing or fighting. Maybe try to be more involved in that a little bit, be engaged with the littles while they’re in the bath. You could always go to Google and search for some bathtime game that fit the ages of your kids, but also just simple things. Like what about those Koreans that write on the wall for a bathtime you could play a guessing game. You could do something fun with that, draw a picture, but so you don’t feel disconnected from the bath time because they’re playing with each other.

(03:20):

Try to be involved a little bit. This goes with the last tip Tuesday episode, where we talked about the mindset shift. Yes, you can be more productive and I totally understand you wanting to get more done because I’m the type of person that always likes to have something else to do. If I, if there’s a task I can complete while doing something else and neither one of them will suffer because I’m multitasking. I find a way to do that. So I understand where you’re coming from with a little bit of a mindset shift. Even if you can be more involved and play a game or be a part of that fund that they’re sharing together for a few minutes, I think you will get a lot out of that. 45 minutes is a long time, and I bet your kids are cold. The water’s cold by the time that they get out.

(04:05):

If you think about, if you had a 45 minute block of time where you could get things done, what would you want to do? You probably have a long list of things. And as a parent, especially with the young kids that needed supervision, when they’re in the bathtub, you probably don’t have those 45 minute blocks of times or even 30 minutes at a time very often. So I’m understanding that you want to feel more productive. And what can you do to be more productive during this bath time when your kids are in the water and need constant supervision. Obviously, if your kids are in or around water, safety and supervision is the most important and comes first, whatever you choose to do to be more productive, can’t take away from their safety and the supervision that’s required with kids around water. So whatever you are choosing to do, whether it’s something I’m recommending or you’re coming up with something on your own, make sure that whatever it is, doesn’t distract you, that there’s no distraction there and that you can constantly watch the kids around water.

(05:02):

Let’s get to what you actually want. What can you do to be more productive while your kids are playing cooperative, Tivoli, cooperatively in the bath, and you are still watching them. The first thing that comes to my mind is laundry. And the reason that I’m going to say folding laundry, number one on my list is because laundry is one of those repetitive things we always have laundry to do earlier in earlier episodes. That’s one of the things that I share to put into your daily routines, rather than doing all your laundry at one time or over the weekend. And it’s load after load putting one load in each day, or as often as you need to, depending on the size of your family, that might be two loads a day, but doing that and then folding and putting away in the same day, it makes it so that laundry is a task that takes a few minutes here and there rather than your whole day is dedicated to laundry.

(05:54):

When you can fit it in and you’re leaving baskets full or piles of clean clothes to deal with because there’s not time to put it away. So if you put laundry in the washing machine and get it into the dryer in the morning, or at some point throughout the day, before you turn on the water to have your kids go to the bass, you can easily get that entire load in a laundry basket and bring it into the bathroom with you while your kids are in the bath, you can be watching them, watching them and continuing to supervise while you are folding clothes and putting them in piles for where they will go put it back in the basket and then take it to the room where it needs to be put away after bath time is over. That would be one thing. Another thing that comes to mind that seems was kind of obvious to me is you’re in the bathroom.

(06:38):

So take that time to clean the bathroom. Maybe it’s all in one night and you do this once a week or once every other week, or you break it up and you do the glass cleaner and the mirrors and all that one night. And one time you do the floor and you break it up like that. Continuing with cleaning the bathroom, you can also deep, clean and organize if your bathroom or the bathroom that the kids are bathing in is messy. Take this time to do a deep clean start with a drawer or just one cabinet. If it has a linen closets, you could work on the linen closet or a shelf on the linen closet, whatever area you pick within the bathroom, empty it out, purge what you don’t need. Soar clean the shelf, drawer cabinet, whatever it was, organize everything based on how it was sorted.

(07:27):

And then you can put it away. You might get through a couple of doors in one night, or it might be something where you do one door, one night, a cabinet during the next bath, a shelf during the next bath, break it up based on the time that you have and how long it will take you to do these things and make sure whatever you’re doing during this bath time, you can do it from start to finish. So it’s not something you started and then leaving you with a mess. So it actually leaves you more stressed because you can’t finish it similar to the bath. You could also do closet organizing. You could bring in everything off of one shelf or out of one dresser drawer, go through those, figure out what you don’t need, donate her unwanted items, fold how they will be put away.

(08:09):

Once the kids are out of the bath, water’s drained, then you go and you put those items away. You could tackle your whole closet in chunks like that by removing things from our rod or removing things from one shelf and just doing one thing at a time. Another task that comes to mind that you could do, I would say on your phone, there’s so many things you could do on your phone, delete unnecessary, unnecessary, and duplicate photos. If you do an online album or anything like that, you can also work on that. I know I use Snapfish, there’s tons of albums. And then every year I just print an online album for my family. But instead of sitting down and doing all of it at one time, it would take hours and hours and hours. If you dedicated one or two of bath time a month to that, you could easily get a few pages done, or you could do the photo dumping where you’re getting it into that software, putting it on those pages for those albums, things like that.

(09:08):

Another idea I would say is take something you’re struggling with like maybe your family is being picky at dinner time, and you need to find some new recipes or you’re wanting to come up with a workout routine that you can do for a few minutes each morning. Something like that. If you have, and not just you, but your whole family, if your kids are struggling, maybe you need to find a math tutor or Spanish tutor or something. You have little ones that are interested in participating in a new activity, or they want to do a sport to spend this time wall you’re in there. And you’re supervising bath time to whether it’s on a computer or your phone, look up. These companies look up local businesses, search for, uh, you know, the tutors that you need. You can make a phone call to friends that might have experience with these things or use Pinterest.

(09:56):

That’s great for recipes and workouts. W I mean, just a Google search, simple things like that, and then save the information that you’re finding. If you like the recipe and you want to print it out, print it at that time, or save it to wherever you keep your recipes. Maybe it’s just a Pinterest folder. Use that time that you’re stuck in the bathroom to look for those things and accomplish those tasks. That way those things are on your to-do list anyway, and you’re getting them done during this time. The other thing I would say is a little bit of online shopping with holidays coming up, or if you have birthdays family members, you’re buying presents for things like that, order the gifts, spend some time to order the gifts and just cross that off of your list. You have to do these things. Anyway, these only take a phone or a computer to complete.

(10:42):

You can easily bring those things into the bathroom with you and do them. Then same thing with a grocery order. If you place online orders for pickup or delivery, you can do most of that. During this time. Some of these things are ongoing tasks like the laundry, and they can repeat every week or every day, just depending on what they are, but the purging and organizing of the bathroom. That’s not a repetitive activity. Once you do it, it’s done. Of course, you can spruce it up and do a refresh a few times a year, but those activities are more like a one and done activity for bath time. You can work out both of those. You can definitely find a way to do both of those things, but I think some of the more repetitive activities are what is going to keep you going during this time for the long run to keep this episode short and quick for tip Tuesday, I think that’s a great starting point for activities and things that you can do to be more productive, to occupy this bath time for quite a long time into the future.

(11:39):

Hopefully you will feel more productive and free from some of this time that you have, where you feel like you’re sitting in there by getting these things done and cross off your to-do lists. Instead of another night, just sitting in the bathroom, watching the kiddos and scrolling through social media. Thank you for listening to another tip Tuesday episode of the intentional edit podcast. Be sure to have head over to intentional edit.com, click on the podcast page, scroll down and press the record button. To leave me a message with your questions. I would love to answer your questions on future tip Tuesday episodes. I hope this helped you and I will see you later in the week for another episode,

(12:17):

That wraps up another quick episode of a tip Tuesday. If you want to be featured on intentional edits, tip Tuesday, go to intentional, edit.com, click on the podcast page in the menu bar, and then scroll all the way down to the bottom. You will find a button that says record, tap on that and record your question or share what is currently overwhelming to you. What is going on that you need help with? I want to know I needed to know your struggle so I can share actionable solutions to help you create simplicity in your home. If you’re having this issue. I know other people are having it too, and we want to help as many people as possible. Head over to the podcast page of intentional, edit.com and record your question for me there.

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Lauren is the founder of Intentional Edit, a home organization and lifestyle company focused on consciously editing to create efficient and organized spaces. Lauren believes that a functional home that looks and feels good has a positive influence on all aspects of life. Creating systems that allow for the home to function more efficiently, therefore, eliminating most of the clutter and chaos is her priority. While trends come and go organization is always in style!

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