It’s 8:30pm and the last child is finally asleep. You sit down for the first time since breakfast, then remember the lunchboxes, the permission note due tomorrow, the washing still in the machine and the receipts piled on the kitchen bench. By the time it’s all done it’s 10:15, and the evening you’d been looking forward to has gone.
For most families the evening disappears into a dozen small jobs that never got a proper place in the day, so they all wait until after bedtime. In this post you’ll learn four practical ways to move that work out of your evenings, from a 15-minute reset after dinner to handing the paperwork to someone else.
Do a 15-minute reset straight after dinner
Evening jobs take longest when they’re done one at a time, spread across three hours with a sit-down between each. Doing them together while you’re already up and the kitchen’s already a mess is much quicker. Set a timer for 15 minutes after dinner and get through the lunches, school bags, tomorrow’s uniforms and a wipe of the benches in one go. With the bags by the front door and the lunches in the fridge, the morning runs more smoothly too. If the house needs a better system before this sticks, these smart organisation ideas for busy families with kids are a good place to start.
Give kids real jobs around the house
Kids can usually take on more than we ask of them, and every job they do is one you aren’t doing at 9pm. A four-year-old can set the table and put their own shoes away. A seven-year-old can feed the dog, empty the cutlery basket and pack their school bag. By ten or eleven, most kids can make their own lunch, hang out a load of washing and cook a simple dinner one night a week with you nearby. It’ll be slower and messier for the first few weeks, which is a fair trade for the time it frees up later, and most kids like being trusted with a real job. A chart on the fridge with each child’s jobs saves the nightly negotiation.
Plan the week’s dinners on Sunday
The 5pm “what’s for dinner?” question often costs more time than the cooking, because it ends in an extra trip to the shops or a takeaway nobody planned. Twenty minutes on Sunday to choose five dinners and write one shopping list settles it for the week. Cook double on the nights you have time, a big pot of bolognese or a tray of chicken thighs, and freeze half for the Wednesday that goes sideways with swimming lessons and a late pickup. Let each child choose one dinner a week and they’re far more likely to eat it.
Get on top of family paperwork and bookkeeping
Paperwork is the job most likely to be left until everyone’s asleep, because it needs quiet and nobody wants to start it. Give household admin one fixed 30-minute slot a week for the bills, school forms and renewals, and keep a single tray where all of it lands as it arrives, so nothing ends up hiding in the car or at the bottom of a handbag.
For parents who run a trade, a market stall or a small business, the paperwork is bigger and comes with deadlines. Matching receipts to bank statements, lodging the quarterly BAS and running payroll can take several evenings a month, and it’s exactly the work a bookkeeper can take off your hands. They don’t have to be local, because nearly all of it happens online. Hopkan Partners, a Sydney bookkeeping firm, works with small businesses around Australia through Xero on a fixed monthly fee. In practice that means photographing receipts on your phone as you go, while they do the reconciling and lodge the BAS. Registered BAS agents also get extra time on most quarterly lodgements, which takes the pressure off the week before the due date.
Start with one change this week
Pick the tip that matches your worst evening, whether that’s the lunchbox scramble, the dinner question or the receipts on the bench, and try it for a full week before adding another. Changing everything at once rarely survives the first busy week, while one job moved out of the evening usually sticks.
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Lorraine is co-owner of Buggybuddys & Seniorocity and is a mother to two and furmum Cocker Spaniel Storm. Lorraine is also a qualified personal trainer and pilates teacher, once owning her own Yoga & Pilates studio in Perth. She previously lived and worked in London, UK where she worked as Public Relationships and Marketing Manager for several IT companies and worked with some of the largest tech companies in the world including Microsoft, Dell and EMC.
