How to Cope as a Stay-at-Home Mom: Realistic Tips From a Mom Currently Doing It
I’m standing at the kitchen sink at 2:17 on a Tuesday, scrubbing sticky apple juice residue off the bottom of a sippy cup, when my 3-year-old wraps both arms around my left sweatpants leg and yells that her dinosaur nuggets are too hot. Thirty seconds later, my 7-year-old yells from the living room that he “accidentally” glued a pack of googly eyes to our cat. I’d had a list of things to do that day: fold three loads of laundry, respond to the elementary school’s field trip email, sort through the bin of outgrown winter coats to donate, and drink my entire cup of coffee while it was still hot. By 2:20, none of those things had happened, and I was gripping the kitchen sink so tight my knuckles were white. By 3 pm, I was sitting on the floor picking plastic eyes off a very annoyed cat, then snuck a bite of my 3-year-old’s rejected nugget and cried a little into the crust of her half-eaten uncrustable.
I quit my job as a 4th grade classroom teacher two years ago, after my second daughter was born. Daycare for two kids would have eaten 110% of my salary, so the choice made sense on paper. What no one tells you before you make the jump is how quickly the unstructured days can start to feel like they’re swallowing you whole. Every Instagram post I saw back then talked about coping through big self care: book a monthly massage, take an hour every morning just for yourself, hire a cleaner once a week to take chores off your plate. That all sounded great, until you remember we don’t have family within 300 miles, my husband works 10-hour shifts at the hospital, and the extra money for a cleaner doesn’t exist. Most of that advice might as well have been written on Mars for all it applied to my life.
Two days after the googly eye incident, my friend Lacey—who’s also a stay-at-home mom of two little kids—came over after my husband got home from work, brought a cheap cold beer, and sat on my messy couch while I ranted. She didn’t tell me I needed to prioritize myself or plan a girls’ weekend. She just told me the small things that stopped her from crying into leftover nuggets most days, and I started testing them out.
The first thing I changed was how I clean up when everything feels overwhelming. I used to look at a living room covered in construction paper, half-eaten goldfish crackers, stray Lego, and discarded socks and think I had to clean it all at once before I could sit down. That would take an hour, the kids would just mess it up again five minutes later, and I’d end up resenting everyone in the house. Now I set a timer for 10 minutes, and I only pick up the things that are blocking the paths I actually use: the walk from the couch to the kitchen, the kitchen to the bathroom, the door to the car. Anything that’s off the beaten path stays where it is. When the timer goes off, I stop. I don’t feel guilty about the crumbs under the coffee table that are still there. Most days, that’s enough to make the house feel livable without draining me.
The second thing I changed was what counts as a successful day. I threw out my printed checklist of chores a year ago, and I stopped measuring how good my day was by how many boxes I checked. Now, my bar is really low: if everyone eats three meals that aren’t just chips, no one gets hurt bad enough to need a band-aid bigger than a tiny kid-sized one, and I change my underwear before 3 pm, that’s a win. If I get to fold the laundry too? That’s a bonus, not a requirement. Last month, my oldest had a half day of school, it was pouring rain, and I’d planned to sort that bin of outgrown coats. Instead, we built a fort out of the clean laundry that was stacked on the couch, ate pop tarts for lunch, and watched three episodes of Bluey. At the end of the day, the laundry was still on the couch, the coats were still unsorted, but I didn’t have that tight throbbing headache I get when I’m trying to force productivity that doesn’t matter.
I also stopped feeling guilty for saying no to almost everything. For the first year, every mom I met told me I needed to get out of the house, I needed socialization, I needed to go to playdates and mom coffee hours and library story time. The problem is, loading two kids into the car, packing extra diapers and snacks and extra clothes, driving 20 minutes across town, and herding them through an hour of small talk with other moms was more exhausting than just staying home. Now I say yes to one outing a week, max. If that outing gets canceled because someone has a cold, I don’t fill the slot with something else. I just stay home, and that’s okay. I keep a pack of my favorite mint gum in every drawer of the house, so whenever I walk past I can grab one and get 30 seconds of cold, quiet mint that’s just for me. I lock the bathroom door when I go, and I stand there for an extra minute instead of rushing out to answer the next question. It’s not an hour-long bubble bath, but it’s my break, and it doesn’t require any planning or money.
Some days are still bad. Last week, I mopped the kitchen floor, and both kids spilled full cups of water on it within 10 minutes, and I snapped. I sent them both to their rooms, and I sat on the front porch step breathing for five minutes while they banged on the door. I still have days where I don’t get out of my pajamas until 4 pm, and we eat frozen pizza three nights in a row. I don’t have this all figured out, and I still wonder some days if I made the wrong choice quitting work. But these small, boring tricks work better than any fancy self care advice I ever read online. Right now, getting through most days without crying into a kid’s leftover lunch is enough.
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