How to Wear All the “Hats” in Motherhood

Ever felt like motherhood is less a role and more a company you're running solo? Today, we're talking about how to wear all the hats in motherhood. In this episode, we are going to tackle how someone juggles it all.

The juggle is real, but so are the strategies to keep all balls in the air. Discover how to identify and streamline your household tasks, allowing you to nurture your family and yourself while pursuing your personal goals.

Tune in and equip yourself with the tools to manage your home and family life with strategic planning and essential self-care.

What you'll learn in this episode:  

• How to handle different roles in motherhood
• Balancing the needs of children while pursuing personal goals
• The importance of setting personal 'office hours' to avoid burnout
•  How to take care of yourself and have downtime in a busy parenting schedule
• Techniques for making conscious choices about where to invest time, energy, and money in household tasks

Click HERE to watch this video to learn The 3 Things to Avoid When Reading Self-Help Books

How to Connect with Lara:

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Transcript

Welcome to the Mom on Purpose Podcast. I'm Lara Johnson, and I'm here to teach you how to get out of your funk, be in a better mood, claim more with your kids. Manage your home better, get your to-do list done and live your life on purpose with my proven method. This is possible for you, and I'll show you how. You're not alone anymore. We're in this together.

Welcome back. I think I always say that but really, I am always excited that you come back because I hope you know How much I love and admire you and know what an incredible job you are doing in your life, in your home and with your children. And if you haven't been told that lately, I'm telling it to you now.

So please, truly take that to heart because you wouldn't be here if you weren't trying to do the best that you could in whatever capacity that you know how to. So, today we're talking about how to wear all the hats in motherhood, and I find that outside of the obstacle I don't know what I want to do, or I don't know what my purpose is.

The next biggest obstacle typically is I've got too much on my plate. Balls will drop. I don't have any time. How will this work? My children are going to be neglected. Like my house will fall apart. You know, something along those lines will impact.

So, I think it's important to spend some time here to think about how does someone juggle it all? How does someone wear all of the hats in motherhood because motherhood requires a lot of hats, doesn't it? I know I'm preaching to the choir on that. So, to start with, I think it's important to identify what those hats are in your life.

And when I say hats, I think most of us will start to list the many things that we are doing and What I have found is that when we do that, we start actually getting more overwhelmed because it's like all these smaller pieces that are piling up on us. So instead of hats for the sake of this podcast, and if it resonates with you for the sake of the rest of your life, you can use the same concept.

I want you to think about it in terms of a startup company and departments that exist within a company. You know, instead of hats. And the reason why I use that is because when we think about departments, it's a weightier feel, not weightier that it's going to stress you out, but weightier in the sense that like of importance, like the departments within your home have.

A lot of importance and when you focus on that importance and when you recognize that like you're the one that's responsible for it. I hope that doesn't overwhelm you as much as allow you to kind of rise up to like feeling really proud of yourself for the departments that you are running within your home.

That's a, that's a really big deal. So, my husband is now a CFO for a tech company out of the UK. He has worked in many, many capacities within startups. Where we live in Utah, there is a very big tech industry. A lot of startups do come out of Utah. He's worked in other industries as well. But it's kind of given me a front row seat to what startup companies go through.

And I will tell you, it's not. Pretty by any means. I think sometimes we hear the story of, you know, Apple starting out of a garage and we kind of glorify it a little bit. No, it's actually not pretty whatsoever. So, I think it's important to recognize that when we're thinking about a startup, it's pretty messy about how motherhood feels.

And so that's why I really want to use that as like our example and how we're going to think about all of the quote unquote hats and motherhood for today on this episode so that we can start to get clear on the business of your home. I think the other thing that I want to get really clear on is that when you have a startup company, one person typically does everything until it starts to grow.

And you start to develop those departments. So, at this point, your startup company maybe you doing all things. For many companies, many they call them solopreneurs, they are very successful, and they choose not to ever hire out or expand their company. Now, for some companies, they do choose to do that, and so I think it's important to recognize that it doesn't matter where you're at or where your company is going to go.

What matters is that you recognize the departments you are managing right now, and that some of these departments may not be clearly identified, but we're going to go through that process so you can get clear on them. So, the first department that I want to call out and identify is the department of motherhood.

Now, what I have found in so many motherhood communities that I am part of, that I've seen in my own mind and my clients is that we take, and we lump all departments in the motherhood department. But when we really pull it back on what that is, the motherhood department is. It's our emotional, mental well-being and the relationships we have with our children.

That is being a mother. It is not the role of being a mother, it's the relationship of being a mother. You can kind of think about it as like the HR. Like the big phrase in tech companies is the people team. It's essentially HR Recruiting, but it sounds cooler to say the people team Okay, so motherhood would essentially be your people team where you are focused So that's the thing with the people team is, there's, there's a lot to do within the people team.

You're focusing on teaching them emotional well-being, you're focusing on the challenges that are having, you know, functions within the home, sibling rivalry, like your people team. There is a lot to manage within the people team and it can be a very fun and rewarding thing. So, that's the department of motherhood.

That's what we're going to call it. That's your people team. But then there's also a separate aspect. And again, for the most part, moms don't separate these two things out. There is the caregiving of your children. This would be the more physical things. This would be giving them food. This would be bathing them.

This would be who is watching them. On the day to day and when you are a stay-at-home mom, for example, for me, I didn't totally love the phrase stay at home moms. If you love that phrase, own it. I felt like it didn't totally encompass everything that I was doing. It just felt like, it just felt very minimizing to me.

But what I did love was like, I am, I am a full-time mom, regardless of whether or not I'm working, and I'm the primary caregiver of my children, which means on the day to day, I am the one taking care of their physical needs. I'm the primary caregiver. Now, if you are working full time, for example, there may be a primary caregiver, a nanny, a daycare, your children may be in school, elementary, junior high, high school.

Those are other options where caregiving is happening. Someone is aware of your child, and they are accounted for. I would argue that that is separate than your people team. That is your caregiving team. But then we get into some of the other departments. Households management, for example, that would be the cleaning the day to day.

That would be the laundry, the systems within your home. That would be another department. Another one might be transportation that is, you know, having, like making sure your kids are getting to where they need to, the activities, you may have an education department. Maybe you homeschool your children.

Maybe you have a lot of options outside of public education where you get to make some choices about their education in a private or a charter school type scenario. So, there might be an education department that might also include the homework. Essays, the school projects are incorporated in that as well.

So, then you kind of get into some of the fun ones where there might be like a culinary department within your company where you are meal planning, and you are grocery shopping, and you are making decisions about the food items within your home. Or there might be an accounting department where you're looking at the budget, you're planning futures and vacations and you're budgeting and saving for those things.

You're looking at retirement. You're looking at the day-to-day expenses that might all go within the accounting department. But then there can also be, and as I was thinking about this, I'm like, I very much believe that there's a sales department in every single one of our homes, because how often do we have to sell our kids on things?

It's like, Eating a piece of broccoli at the dinner table. Like sales is a very big part of our, of our department and, you know, you could argue that that, you know, wraps into like the relationships and the people team, but it's kind of fun to think about things in terms of departments. And when we're looking at.

Departments. And this is something that I've seen in every startup company that I have studied, that my husband's worked for, that, you know, we're, we're friends of people within these is that these departments won't be well defined for a time. Sometimes new departments, it's time for them to come online and you have to get really clear on what goes into that department.

But for the most part, when things start out, one person's doing all of it. And it's not a bad thing if one person is doing all of it, but you do have to make peace with the fact that you are doing all of it, so you get to decide what are the most important departments that you want to spend the majority of your time on, knowing that some of the other departments might be messy for a little bit.

The other thing that I'll say is that even within these departments, there will be specific things that happen in the department that will fluctuate over time. An example of this, like within my people team department of my home, there are some children that need more attention than some of the others.

And sometimes within my people team. I'm having to spend more time on a child, and sometimes we get that child, you know, and their emotional wellbeing and some of those things taken care of just in time for the next child to need some attention. I find that my one in kindergarten right now, he, this is the first year they've ever introduced full day kindergarten for us, and we put him in that knowing that for his personality, he is one that can actually do it, but that doesn't mean there aren't challenges with it.

So even though historically, some of my other children have been needing more attention. I'm surprised at how much more attention my kindergartner, which is typically the one that doesn't need it, needs this year. So, recognize that even within a department, sometimes you're rotating through things or people in that department.

So, at this point now that you've. So now that you've identified your departments, it's time to start thinking about the cost for each of these departments. When you're looking at, for example, building out a team, and usually the people team will have to work very closely with the accounting team, the finance team.

Because they will typically come and say, okay, this is my need. I want to hire this many people and the accounting team will say, well, this is your budget. And then they'll go back and forth and negotiate on these things. But a lot of times it comes down to what is the cost. Now there's typically three things at this point that I've identified.

That's the cost of a department. One is time, one is energy, and one is money. Now for a business that's trying to grow, money is a big consideration. In order to hire people, you have to have money. On the other side of that, what they're also considering is if we want to, they call it scale, if they want to scale or grow their business, they may have to sacrifice more money in an effort to get time or energy back because they want to grow this company.

You have to bring on more people, so it's this delicate balance at all times where you're managing the cost in time, energy, and money. Now, how does that apply to you and your departments within motherhood? And again, I say motherhood because that's what we typically Look at but I'm saying, you know motherhood and like all the departments that fall under you as an individual So for me when I'm looking at this I'm always trying to gather the data of how long something is taking me and how much energy am I?

Expending towards it and how is it? consuming our household income. So, when I look at time, well let's, let's start with energy because I think this example is very easy because it relates to so many of us. When I'm looking at energy, sometimes the coordination of carpool outweighs the time it will save you.

Right? How many of us have at least 20 texts flying in all different directions at all times coordinating where all the kids need to be between playdates and activities and school pickups. And it is like warfare level planning of coordination. Now sometimes. That is totally worth the time it takes and sometimes there are times where it's better for me to just go and pick up the kids myself because I don't want the coordination.

I don't want to expend the energy for the coordination. Okay, so that's a really good example on, like, depending on where you're at, my transportation cost might not be worth it to bring other people on. It might be worth. Me just doing myself. So, another example of this is looking at the money aspect of things.

Now there are lots of people that can come in and clean your home, but the cost of that financially might not be worth it for you. So that's where you have to start looking at it. But the opposite side is, and I've seen this time and time again, is sometimes the cost of bringing someone in frees up time and energy to where someone may be able to spend that budgeting better for their family.

So, when they're going into a grocery store, they know exactly how much to spend. They're not buying things that they don't need. And when they get home, they have less stuff to organize in the first place because they are very aware of the money that is being spent. Again, I use that as an example, it may not be true for you, but all of this is coming back to being able to see the time, the energy and the cost that's going on within each of your departments.

Now, I'll also say that sometimes when you're looking at this cost, you'll start to recognize there are things you're doing that aren't worth it. I remember Within my household management department, realizing having organized bins of toys for my two-year-old was not an effective use of my time and energy.

And I just started throwing things in bins. Now there are times where I actually like that. That's an enjoyable part of my household managing. It feels very therapeutic, so I'm more willing to expend the time and energy. But because I know the data, I'm making a conscious choice of spending time in that way.

So, this is why you really want to get clear on what your departments are, and you want to get clear on what is the cost for each of these departments. Now at this point, you have a couple options as you're going through your departments. Okay, when I say options, I'm thinking just, you know, things to kind of consider or to think through.

The first is there are multiple departments within the business of your home and motherhood. Balls will drop. Things will be messy. Plan on that until you make millions of dollars and can have someone else come in and organize every aspect of the departments in your home. Chances are, it's going to look messy and it's going to be messy, but you get to make the choice of which areas do you want to be messy?

Which areas do you. Not mind as much a ball dropping. I do not, do not like my children to be left at school. That is one of my transportation things that I am willing to expend time and energy on and you know money and gas to ensure that that does not happen. But that does mean that maybe I'm not I'm not doing my accounting department as particularly, or I am letting something else go within my house.

I'm not doing the dishes because I would rather go and pick up my children. Okay, that is a cost, an exchange of cost. That is a ball that I'm not willing to drop. For a ball that I am okay dropping, I'm okay for something else being a little messier. Okay. So, another thing to just consider is that as you are working through, and this is a very common problem in startup companies, is that if you are not recovering, recovering, Energy, covering money, time, you know, whatever that cost is, you will burn out.

So, knowing that essentially you have a startup company within your home, and you have all of these departments, if you do not have off times, you eventually will burn out. It's a given. One of the ways that I have found to address this, to combat it, whatever you want to call it, is I have office hours for mom.

That's what I call it. It's the best way I could describe it to my kids. At a certain point, mine is usually 9PM, I no longer am accountable for how nice I am. I say that laughingly, but also kind of serious, like my mood starts dropping drastically after 9PM. And I just don't show up that great because I'm tired from the day.

I'm tired of being on probably about seven to eight. Depending on the child, my office hours turn back on the baby, you know, I, I know he can't really understand office hours as much. So, him, he can kind of wake up a little earlier. I personally, you know, for religious purposes, I don't drink coffee. I had this conversation with one of my kids the other day, I came in and I was like, you know, how some people drink coffee and you see that on their shows and their parents kind of joke about how they need their coffee in the morning and they're like, yeah, I was like, okay, well, I don't drink coffee.

I have quiet time. Like, please don't come and talk to me before 745. I need just some time for my mental mind to rejuvenate. And it all came from when my husband was out of town, and I was having to get up earlier to get ready for the day. One of my children came in early one day and I had a bad dream or something and they found out that I was actually waking up earlier than they thought.

Then they thought mom office hours were open before then. So, we had to have that conversation. The mom office hours weren't open yet. So that's one of the ways that I have found for myself to combat that burnout, to combat you know, giving myself time to recover. Depending on where you're at in your life, depending on how old your children are, that may look different.

It may be that all your children are in school right now. So, when they go to school before you start in all your departments, you're giving yourself quiet time or you're addressing all your departments, but there's a strict cutoff time so that you have time to recover before the afternoon chaos begins.

So just recognize that there are ways that you can recover. As a business leader within your home and it's important that you do that, or the inevitable burnout will happen. The last thing that I want to say as a consideration when you're looking at your departments is that there are kind of two options.

If you're feeling overwhelmed by the departments, you can either delegate or you can eliminate. Those are the only two, okay? By delegate, I mean you can give it to someone else, but the whole point of delegation is that you are not micromanaging it. If you choose, and depending on the, how the partnership within your home, if there is a partner in your home, and how that partnership works, they may or may not be doing dishes.

They may or may not be vacuuming the floors, okay? Whatever that partnership looks like. If you delegate it, you can have that conversation. You can communicate on that standard, but it may also look different than what you think it will. And that doesn't necessarily mean it's a bad thing. So making sure that communication is established, making sure there's an agreement in place, and then not managing it after the fact.

You know, I think about I think about this with our children as well, when we're teaching them to step up in the Household Management Department. Yes, we are going to teach them how to clean. Yes, we are going to go through these steps so that they know how to manage a home, but we don't have to micromanage them to the point where it's all consuming and miserable for us as well.

So that's an example of delegation. Also, hiring someone is also a way that you can delegate different departments. The second is to eliminate things. This is I would say one of the most powerful tools that you can use when you're looking at your departments. I was talking to one of my clients the other day and she was asking, you know, how we do chores in our, in our home.

And I was explaining to her that so many times our kids are throwing a fit on like, well, I didn't make this mess. I didn't do this anyway. I didn't want this stuff in the first place. And oftentimes we'll kind of brush those. You know, concerns aside, but for me, I kind of took those to heart on like, yeah, actually, you didn't ask for a lot of this stuff within the house.

Now I've chosen to keep it, but where does that role and responsibility come in? And how can I consider that when I'm thinking about elimination? So, one of the things that I had the thought of one time was to ask my kids, okay, I recognize that this is the standard that I would like for your room. I would like the system of your room to be reset once a week.

And I recognize that you have no desire to reset that system. So, let's have a conversation about it. And I remember sitting down with them. I'm like, okay, how long do you want to spend cleaning? And they're like, well, what? I was like, no, like, really think about that. How long do you want to spend cleaning?

And they're like, well, I don't want to spend any time cleaning. I'm like, perfect. We're going to take everything out of your room, except your clothes and your bed. And the look on their face, like it was, oh, no, no, no. Actually, I do want to spend some time cleaning. You can just see who else processing and it totally.

It totally got them to the point of recognizing, actually, I, there are some things I do want to keep. Okay, so now look at that for yourself. If there are, if you are so overwhelmed by picking up toys in your house, eliminate more than half of the toys within your house. I don't care if you throw them in a bin and throw them in your garage, whatever, okay?

If you are overwhelmed by it, you have the option. to eliminate a large amount of that. If you are overwhelmed by the dishes within your home, you have a couple options. You can actually eliminate a lot of the dishes within your home. It is possible. You could only be eating on paper plates. Now you may choose not to, but give yourself the option to think about what can I eliminate within each of these departments within my home.

You will find very quickly that there are things that you want to keep and there are things that you want to get rid of. That will be the point where you become the most powerful leader within your home. That is where you will be able to manage your departments with the most success. That is how you wear all the hats in motherhood.

So, if there is anything that resonated with you in this episode, please go down, rate and review this. If there's something that stood out in this episode, or if you're loving the whole podcast, please go down and I would love to be able to read your thoughts on this or ways that I can improve or be able to share something so that other moms can find this podcast as well.

Thank you very much. I'll talk to you next week.

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