Thank you for joining me on the blog again today!  We’ve been talking about being fully focused in motherhood.  If you missed them, please look at Part One (we talked about how technology can sabotage your focus, your family time, even your kids’ very lives) and Part Two (we talked about how to be focused in different stages of motherhood).

Today, I want to give you my favorite tips for being fully focused at home…here we go!  

1. On the drive home from work each day, take off all the happenings of the day.  Listen to music that you like or teachers/pastors that you like…but, begin to focus your thoughts on your family and what is going on at home tonight.
2. Let yourself off the hook. If you are career mom and wife, you are not going to be able to cook or decorate like the moms on Pinterest.  Do the best you can…but, if you have roast in the crock pot for dinner or stop and pick up Wendy’s on the way home…it’s the conversation over the meal that is important anyway.
3. Delegate chores at home. If your children will pitch in and do their share, things will get done more quickly, it’s good for them and you will have more time to hang out together.
4. You and your family should be off the phones, pads, computers etc. by a certain time each night.
5. Take a walk together.
6. Tuck your kids in every night, no matter how old they are.
7. Wake your kids up in the middle of the night to look at the stars, share hot cocoa, or just chat.  I do this with my own kids, and you wouldn’t believe how much we get out of choosing to spend time together in the middle of the night for silly things, like playing Skip-Bo.
8. Journal to each other.  Get a journal for each kid and start trading.  Always end in a question.  “What is your favorite home cooked meal?”  “What should I send you in a care package in college that would make you think of home?” “What do you wish I knew about you today?”
9. When the rest of the house is quiet, and everyone is tended to, I often at back to work. I don’t likely sleep as much as I should, but I feel better about not taking time from my family to work.
10. Be organized.  If you can think and plan ahead for sending snacks to school, making locker tags or doing the school project it helps.
11. We have a whiteboard in the laundry room that family members can write down things they need–out of toothpaste, $10 for school activity, etc.
12. Keep a family calendar.
13. Take a deep breath.  You are just the woman for the job.

Being fully focused at home isn’t easy, it only comes from taking deliberate steps to do so.  What are your ideas for being focused on your family? I’d love to hear them!

My love,