So, you reckon the SAHM life is not for you? What’ll I do all day? Yeah, that’s what I thought too before I tried it for a few years.
If, like me, you end up at home for an extended spell, here’s how to keep yourself busy outside of being a mammy.
1. Volunteering – at your local school, at the library, with the meals on wheels, there is always someone who’d love to make use of your help and skills. It can be really rewarding and can be worked in with or around the kids.
2. Take up a hobby – gardening, sewing, learning an instrument, joining a choir, playing a sport, writing a blog, photography, …the list is endless. A hobby is a great way to balance out your life if you feel that playing happy families day in day out has reduced your to a shell of your former self. It can be a great way to tap into your creative or musical side and can be a brilliant way to make new friends.
3. Set up a routine – start a routine of library visits, play dates, baby swimming, music classes for the kids, a daily walk or whatever interest of your own you want to add in. It prevents you getting bored at home, gives you more motivation to get up and out and can broaden your horizons too.
4. Do a spot of research – whether it is on family history, language learning, a period of history, a job-related interest you never had time to do at work, or simply researching a new sofa for the living room, finding a topic and getting stuck into it is a good way to channel the restless part of you that misses your old job.
5. Home renovations – in a similar way to the research point above, getting stuck into some home renovations, be it putting up shelves or re-doing the kitchen, gives you a separate interest and lends your day a sense of purpose that is sometimes missing in the hum-drum of daily family life.
My stay-at-home days are over now and I am acclimatising to my desk job now. But before I went back, I wrote this piece for HerFamily.ie which you might be interested in: