12 Practical Ways to Clear Some Space in Your Mind and Make Family Life Feel More Manageable

Some evenings, I sit down after putting the girls to bed and realise that my body has finally stopped moving, but my mind has not.

Did I return that kinder form? We are nearly out of toothpaste. One child needs a library book for school. Another has been coughing, and I should check whether we still have her medication. There are clothes in the washing machine that need to be hung up. What are we having for dinner tomorrow? I need to reply to that message. When was the last time I changed the bedsheets?

None of these things feels especially big on its own. Together, they take up an enormous amount of space in my head.

The mental load of motherhood is difficult to explain because so much of it is just invisible.

It includes the tasks we complete and all the remembering, noticing, anticipating and planning that happen before anyone else even knows something needs to be done.

It is noticing that a child’s shoes are getting tight before she complains.

It is remembering which daughter will eat which sandwich, who needs a specific clean clothes tomorrow and when the next appointment needs to be booked.

It is thinking three steps ahead while making breakfast, answering a question and searching for the missing water bottle that was definitely on the bench five minutes ago.

Sometimes a friend ask if I need anything, and I genuinely appreciate the offer, but even producing the answer requires me to open the entire family filing cabinet in my brain.

I know I am not the only mother who sometimes feels physically tired from things she has only been carrying in her mind.

I have also learned that waiting until life becomes less busy does not help very much. With three young children, work, writing and a home to look after, there will probably always be something unfinished.

What has helped me is finding small ways to give my brain fewer things to hold at once.

I am still working this out, but these are twelve practical things that are making our family life feel more manageable.