How To Find Time for Hobbies As Busy Parents
Currently, I’m a mom of two and have a baby on the way. Trying to find time for hobbies seems impossible when your time is spent working than coming home to kids OR being a stay-at-home parent who focuses on their children & home until they go to sleep. Both parents end the night the same:
Collapsing on the couch or bed and saying “I’m exhausted.”
I was once a working parent, but am now a stay-at-home mom, so I understand both sides.
On top of being a stay-at-home mom & blogger, I am also a teacher; we chose to homeschool. The days are spent being a teacher and a mother. Tending to my children, making sure they are learning & entertained, fed and clean. I used to find it very difficult to find the energy to sit down and do anything at the end of the day.
From blogging to just picking up my knitting needles, it felt like an exhausting task.
That is until the year 2023.
When I started to homeschool our oldest, it was also around the time I discovered I was pregnant with our third child. It was at this time I decided I needed to figure out more time for ME so I could do the things I love. I was going to be busy with both kids at home and in a few short months a newborn!
I started implementing new routines, testing things out here and there to figure out what worked best for myself and my kids. Some of these may not work for all, but they did however work for me. There is no harm in trying some of these techniques out to gain your own time and of course, adjusting to fit your families needs.
How to Find Time for Hobbies
Hobbies are incredibly important for both our mental & physical health. Making the decision that you are going to incorporate time in your day for hobbies is a big step, especially when you are a parent. As a parent, it can feel daunting to add another thing to your day, but hobbies have so many benefits that you’ll end up feeling so much better than you did before.
Related Blog Posts: 8 Slow Living Hobbies to Help You Slow Down
Clean & cook with your kids
Something I used to say daily and have heard lots of other parents say is:
“Well I have to make dinner, I don’t have time”,
“I have to clean, I don’t have the time”, OR
“I have all these chores to do and I want to spend time with my kids before bedtime”.
Cooking and cleaning with kids can really improve time spent. Often times, I hear parents say they need to entertain their child while they cook and clean. Instead of trying to find ways to distract them, encourage them to help you in the best of their abilities.
When you clean with children, they learn how to clean. With my toddler, we sing the clean-up song when it is time to clean. She absolutely loves the song, and will often times start singing it without me even encouraging it.
I also turned cleaning into a game. Playing and hide-and-seek with their toys when it’s messy, and when they find them, putting them away. My oldest loves playing games like this that are similar to a scavenger hunt.
Same with cooking. It can benefit you and your child and will help. I promise. Cooking with young kids can get very stressful, I’ll say it first. Learning breathing exercises is probably best before tackling this with your kids. Even though you may find it stressful, your children will have so much fun in kitchen.
The best part about including our children in the cooking & baking process is seeing how proud they are when they see the finished product. Not only will your child be overjoyed and happy, but also confident in themselves.
Have a cleaning schedule
I used to be that mom that would stress about the condition of the entire house every single day. The kitchen, bathroom, bedrooms, play area, you name the room and I was stressed.
It wasn’t until I came across Not The Worst Cleaner on TikTok (I no longer have TikTok downloaded on my phone, but we will get into that later) that my mindset about cleaning our home changed. I downloaded her cleaning schedule, printed it off and stuck it to my fridge and it’s been a huge help since.
Thanks to her printout, I tackle the house throughout the week on different days instead of doing it all in one day. By doing this, I’m not overwhelmed when it comes to bedtime because I have a million things to clean. And I end up having more time for hobbies!
I enjoy going to bed with a clean kitchen, so my husband and I (because we are a TEAM people, you should be a team with your spouse!) clean the kitchen together. Having the living room tidy is also important for me, so the girls know that about 20 minutes before we start getting ready for bed, we take the time to tidy our living room.
Set a Clean-Up Deadline
Having a cleaning schedule is a must. It can help with your mental health, especially if you’re someone who can get overwhelmed.
Having the schedule handy, helps me throughout the day knowing what I need to tackle that day. I always clean with my kids & when they are awake as mentioned above. This way, they help around the house and don’t just depend on me.
Also, setting yourself up a deadline for when you want your home to be clean is a MUST. This way after the deadline, you can relax and grab your hobby. I have my clean-up deadline just before bedtime. My kids help tidy the living room & dining room (it’s one big room), while my husband stays in the kitchen, and I bounce back and forth between helping the kids and my husband. Then when the kids go to bed, we finish our chores and can have time for hobbies!
Put your phone down
Seriously, put it down. It’s not going to help you any. I mean, unless you’re reading East Coast Slow Living to help you with hobbies and slowing down, then, by all means, keep reading.
Phones do not help us any when it comes to trying to do our hobbies. We tend to get distracted by the endless scrolling of Instagram or TikTok. When people tell me they don’t have time, it’s usually because they are wasting so much precious time on their phones.
Social media isn’t that important and it can be very damaging for your mental health. Whereas hobbies are the opposite, and can significantly improve your mental health.
I made the decision to remove TikTok from my phone. I noticed from my time spent on my phone, almost all of the time was spent endlessly scrolling on TikTok. Plus, I find there is so much negativity on the app that I just didn’t want to expose myself to that anymore.
If you need to delete apps off your phone in order to focus, by all means, do so. There are apps to help limit our time on our phones, as well as our phones have an option in our settings to limit the amount of time we spend on certain apps, like social media apps
At the end of the day, it’s you who chooses to make the time for your hobbies.
Evaluate What Works Best For YOU to find time for hobbies
Now, these tips I mentioned earlier might not be the answer you were looking for, but it starts you somewhere for working on creating more time for you and your hobbies.
How I do things might not work for you. And thats okay.
This is why it’s great to do research and to look around for multiple different kinds of tips and implement them in your life to figure out what works best for you and your family.
Change things up so it works well with your schedule and your family needs.
Just remember that even though you are a parent, you still deserve to have some YOU time and time for hobbies.
Kate