Working mothers - We are slaying it!

Janice Windt (Working Mothers Expo)

It's great to hear that we as moms are doing a great job! That working moms are super human! That we are amazing and that we as moms have tremendous value! We sometimes forget it in the thick of things, trying to get the little one to wear that extra jacket to school... Each and every day! Blah!

I was extremely fortunate to be able to attend Kids Emporium Bloggers Breakfast at Olives and Plates this past Saturday. Lauren and her team spoilt us and gave us so much soul food as well!

Stunning!@olivesandplates #breakfast #bloggersbreakfast #kidsemporium #thompsonsholidays #champagne https://t.co/Pgp7GRJNkT pic.twitter.com/ph5zpsNArE

— Karen du Toit (@karentoittoit) June 24, 2017

As far as I am concerned, it doesn't matter to me if you are a SAHM, WAHM or a FTWM, we are all "working moms"! There are ways to deal with working moms guilt, after all!

Janice Windt from Working Mothers Expo spoke to us about the value we attach to the things we do and sometimes that can be too much! We want to believe that the more we do, the more value we have! We want to believe that the time we spent will have intrinsic value regardless of what we do. But it can be too many things that we say yes to! It can be overwhelming! One of the things that working mothers struggles the most with, is time management!

Working Mothers Expo ran a recent survey:

They asked hundreds of working moms: “What is your biggest challenge?”
Without any leading information, 84% answered "Time Management".   

In another survey, which had over 1,000 working moms respond, they found that:

• 74% of us wake up before sunrise
• 21% of us never make our beds in the morning
• 1 in 3 of us spend 9 or more hours at work, our day job, every day!
• 55% of working moms only get 5-6 hours sleep on a weeknight
• A third of us check our work email before we even get out of bed in the morning
• 56% of us never exercise
• 65% or moms are somewhat or very likely to swear at something in the morning – no judgement here!

Janice Windt also touched on the fact that we might still be craving the approval of our parents? It is necessary to figure out what still serves us, and to let go of the why? We are in a specific time-frame/season in our lives! We are doing it for our kids (or NOT!). We can let go of the exterior motives! We are in our own season! We can decide our intrinsic value and our intrinsic purpose!
We can reap the benefits of our own perspectives!

I am enough! 

Janice from @workingmomsa about finding value in who you are! #kidsemporium @kidsemp #bloggersbreakfast #thompso… https://t.co/caqJY9FK6V pic.twitter.com/X7fMbH1I8r

— Karen du Toit (@karentoittoit) June 24, 2017

Janice reminds us that balance does not exist! We need the stress and the challenge to do what we do and pursue our goals. But we also need to de-stress to be able to handle the stress!

Janice uses the following tools to help her cope: 

- Mindjet Mind Manager to organise her life!
- Audible to listen to books while on her way.
- She also tries to go hands-free every once in a while (cellphone limits!) (Check out Hands-free Mama blog)


Working Mothers Expo has created a two-hour Time-Management Make-Over workshop.
Sign up here to be notified: Time-Management Make-over


What do you do to de-stress?


Related post: Inspiring Lauren de Swardt of Kids Emporium

Digital detox with Unroll.Me: great for busy moms

Daily Rollup in my Inbox

I was alerted to Unroll.Me in my Inbox.
It streamlines and cleans up your Inbox.

Lauren Browdy from Unroll.Me says the following about doing a "Digital detox:

 Sounds so nice, but it’s totally unpractical to go without technology for too long, right? Well, decluttering your inbox is the best way to bring about sanity, and save an extra hour in your day.
As a mom, having to clean up after your kids, and clean up your house, and NOW your inbox too – it’s totally unmanageable! While we can’t really help you with your house (sorry!), we can certainly do a thing or two about that inbox.
I want to introduce you to Unroll.Me – a free service that allows users to mass
unsubscribe from the subscriptions they no longer want to receive but keep the ones they want by placing them into a daily digest email, called the Rollup.
A study from the McKinsey Global Institute shows that we spend an average 13 hours of the workweek on email. Think about how much of that time can be saved by simply not having to sort through all the junk to find what you're looking for!"

I have been using it for a week, and I must confess that I love having a much cleaner Inbox.
I don't have to look at all the clutter that comes in regularly. You have an option to select a time during the day that you want the Daily Roll-up, and I love that it all gets sorted in different "boxes" when it comes from the same subscriptions.
I can decide to delete more subscriptions with the daily Rollup or I can unsubscribe some of the subscriptions that I want to see immediately when it comes in.

I can recommend it to any mom (for that matter; any person) who don't have the time wading through all those subscriptions each day.

I can't remember where I subscribed to most of it in the first place?
(Most probably those competitions that gets me to tick the subscribe boxes... "sigh")