What You Need to Know Before Creating a Mom Schedule

I created a mom schedule that I thought would make Fridays easy peasy. Instead, I ended up canceling an activity and sending a very long apology text to my friend. 

Fridays were supposed to be the easy days… the days where we went light on school and heavy on friendships (socialization and PE anyone?). And it had been going well… until our options for Friday kept increasing. It’s a great problem to have — wanting strong friendships for myself and my kids — but not so great for the schedule or my sanity.

With so many options and kids of different ages to consider, I didn’t want to let anyone down… and yet, somehow, I still did. 

While I know you want to do all of the things, mom schedules made from people pleasing or FOMO rarely work out. Instead, approaching commitments with a value-based mindset makes life much more manageable. Obviously, I’m still working on this myself. 

So if your Friday looks chaotic too, know that you’re not alone — and a value-based approach might help more than any mom schedule ever could. 

Understand Your Values

Knowing why you even want to do an activity is extremely important …especially when you have a lot to choose from. Let’s face it, there are so many hours in the day, and you can’t possibly do them all – at least not without having an emotional breakdown (that’s NOT a challenge – ask me how I know).  

A thriving, happy, and PEACEFUL home is about understanding what makes the most sense for ALL involved.

You have to be honest with yourself about:

• what you can handle
• what your goal is for this season of motherhood. 

I’m an introvert – I know I need time to recharge. Yet, my desire to build friendships for myself and my children pushed that reality aside ….and left us in more of a predicament. 

While both time to recharge and nurturing friendships are values we hold, I have to prioritize my time to recharge so that I can be in a better place to nurture those friendships.

Knowing your values and how they rank in your priorities helps you decide what to say ‘no’ to — and what to confidently say ‘yes’ to — in any given season. There may just be some seasons where you’ll have to re-figure it out again like I am right now. 

I really wanted to go to that activity on Friday — mostly to support my friend — but I’d given her an unsure yes at the last minute. In the end, my kids didn’t even want to go, making it a clear ‘no’ — and a lesson in being honest with myself about what fits our values and rhythm.Talk about feeling like a mom-friend failure. Yet, it just showcases the importance of being honest with yourself. Making decisions about your mom schedule based on your values, instead of your feelings, can make life so much more manageable. 

Balance Between Flexibility and Integrity

Having a mom schedule doesn’t mean that every hour of every day is planned out and executed like clockwork. Your family isn’t a machine, but a living, breathing organism that is constantly changing and growing. Because of this life can look messy – and that’s okay! Yet, it can still have structure and order while allowing flexibility for growth. 

If you’re ready to build a rhythm-focused mom schedule that actually works for your family, check out The Intentional Day Blueprint.

I consider myself to be a person of integrity, so having to cancel that Friday activity was a lesson in humility. It further solidified the importance of making value-based decisions. Doing so keeps our commitments manageable while maintaining flexibility, because you never know what mom life will throw at you!  

Keeping commitments isn’t just about our own integrity either. Doing so helps teach our children:

• the value of honoring commitments
• being responsible with their time
• sets them up to better handle adulthood. 

Over the years I got really good at saying “no”. My mental sanity was already at its limit just navigating the day to day life with littles. Yet, as my kids have gotten older, I find myself in more and more situations where I feel the need to say “yes”. 

I am (very slowly) learning how to determine if that yes comes from a people-pleasing standpoint or a value-based standpoint. For me, this means listening to that inner voice I usually try to silence. Many times it just wants to scream “no”. I’m slowly starting to realize that it actually has a reason for saying “no”.

• Sometimes my instinct to say ‘no’ is about self-preservation. It can feel like laziness, but it’s actually my body’s way of telling me that it’s going to be too much.
• Other times, it comes from fearing I’ll let someone down, even when I know it might be too much for us.

Guess which one you should give more weight to? Yep – the one based in fear. Once you can identify the fear, you can also speak truth to it. It feels so much better to be honest with where you are and what you can handle than it does to overcommit. 

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Develop Your Anchors and Your Daily Flow

A great way to help maintain flexibility AND help you understand your boundaries when determining what you can say “yes” to, is to understand the anchors of your day. Anchors are basically mini rhythms that help you keep your priorities from getting pushed under the rug.

These priorities can include:

• morning prayer
• meal and snack times
• nap times
• even bedtime routines

These are the things that are vital to everyday life that you want to make room for first and not just try to fit in where you can. 

If you’d like to see what an example of this could look like, check out my free daily schedule for stay at home moms. 

Once you know your anchors, you are better able to understand your daily flow. This is where flexibility comes in. You have the ability to schedule fun playdates around your anchors, or even have white space to breathe a little between activities. This is what helps make saying “yes” or “no” just a tad bit easier. 

This is why I love a good paper planner with hourly segments. I can look at my day, determine where each of my anchors will fit, and then decide what and if any other activities will go anywhere else in my day. The key is to understand and “schedule” in your anchors first. 

Time Analogy:

I’m sure you’ve heard of the time analogy with sand, pebbles, and golf balls in a jar? That’s kind of like how this works: The golf balls represent the high priority things – the anchors, then the pebbles and sand represent activities of lesser and lesser priority, respectively. If you fill the jar with sand first, there will be no room for the golf balls or pebbles. However, if you start with the golf balls, then the pebbles, and finish with the sand, then it all fits neatly in the jar.

The same is true with your planner or your mom schedule. You have to be in charge of it by making sure those anchors (the golf balls) are taken into account and added to the planner (the jar) first. Then you can clearly see where to  add in the appointments, playdates, and other fun activities. 

Additional Resources:

• How to Create a Peaceful Daily Rhythm with Kids at Home
• The Power of Small Daily Rhythms for Moms: Finding Peace in Everyday Moments
• Catholic Mom Daily Planner Alternatives: Why Most Planners Don’t Actually Work

One final note:

Don’t dismiss the idea of white space – especially if you’re an introvert. Our brains and bodies need time to recharge and rest. Whatever it is we want to do, we can do it better and with more intentionality when we don’t feel like we’ve been run ragged with an over-scheduled and busy life. Plus, it gives our children more opportunity for unstructured free-play that boosts creativity.

Please know, whether it’s Friday or other days, life can be messy. While a rigid mom schedule may sound appealing, they rarely work long-term. Instead, taking the time to create flexible, value-based rhythms will serve you and your family so much more effectively. …Although, not always perfectly, as you can see from my recent Friday mishap. 

If you want to dive deeper into discovering and reflecting on what your own family’s unique values are in this season, I highly recommend checking out The Intentional Day Blueprint. It’s a workbook that you can keep coming back to as you figure out each new season of motherhood.

If you’re not quite ready for a deep dive, but would like a mom schedule template to try to work some of this out on your own, grab my free daily schedule for stay at home moms.