Know Your Stress: Get Organized! Stress Beating Tips for Parents and Families

Life’s demands can be overwhelming, especially during the transition back to school. These simple tips can help create more order and less chaos in your brain and in your life. I have separated these tips into two posts: Know Your Stress: Get Organized and a follow up post Know Your Self: Self-Care. Both are important for parents and their children, at any age.

Know Your Stress: Get Organized

The first step to alleviating stress is understanding what is stressing you out. Organization promotes understanding, better boundaries with what you take on for yourself, and time-management. Some tips can help make these goals a reality.

 

Make to-do lists in chunks.

For example, house tasks, financial matters, and school assignments each get their own sub-sections on the To-Do List. This tricks your brain into remembering more, and thinking you have less to do. It works for the kids on their homework, too!

 

Use a calendar.

If you already use a calendar, consider the calendar on your phone, computer, or email server. Sometimes these include features that allow you to coordinate with other people, set reminders, repeat events automatically, and more. You might even make a family chores calendar for the week!

 

Block off time to complete tasks.

There is nothing more discouraging than telling yourself in the morning that you will get ten things done, and only doing four of them. Blocking off time in your calendar for each task can help you with my final tip, which is…

 

Be realistic.

Remember that you are a human being with a mere 24 hours in a day. Accepting the reality of any situation can allow you to prioritize what is truly important and adjust your expectations to make them more manageable.