how to balance blogging + motherhood

Welcome to the fourth installment of The Mom Blog Collective: How to Balance Motherhood and Blogging.

If you’re new here, here’s the scoop. Once a month, our group of amazing and inspiring mamas will answer the same set of questions to do with blogging, Instagram, photography, collaborations, sponsored posts, balancing it all with motherhood, and more. We each have different perspectives and different opinions, so this is a fun way to learn from one another. We hope you’ll join along! Check out the hashtag #themomblogcollective to see everyone on Instagram, and I will also link you to all of the amazing blog posts here at the bottom of my post!

You might also want to catch up on the last few posts in this series:

My Top 5 Tips for How to Start a Blog or Instagram | How to Build Your Online Community | How to Take Better Pictures

So let’s dive right in!

The short answer to this question is: I DON’T balance motherhood and blogging. At least not always! Some days I literally amaze myself. Other days, I forget classroom snacks, am late for pickup while being side-eyed by other parents, and forget half my grocery list when I’m at the store.

Or in other words, something is always sacrificed. I don’t believe there is any such thing as “doing it all.” Some things have to get put aside in order to focus on others. You may look at someone’s life on social media and think they have it all together, but I promise you, they do not. You never know what sacrifices that person is making in their life in order to accomplish the great things you see on the surface.

For me, when my husband is home, he is SUPER helpful around the house and with the kids. He helps get them to and from their various activities or works from home if I need to make a meeting, etc. But in the last year, he has been traveling a lot more than ever before. When he’s gone, it sorta throws a wrench in our everyday routine and my #1 priority becomes taking care of my kids [AKA survival mode].

But let’s put that element aside for a moment. I’m going to walk you through and average day for us and how I manage to keep up with blogging, social media, and of course being a mom! [For more on this topic, you can read this interview I did earlier this year with Little Miss Dessa’s How Does She Do It? series.]

Our morning start our early. My kids wake up between 6:00 and 6:30 am every day and drag me with them. My husband goes to the gym early most days [but man, do I love it when he skips it, haha]. Then it’s the usual morning craziness with kids. Breakfast, getting dressed, packing lunches + backpacks, breaking up fights, making messes, attempting to clean up said messes, putting on shoes [why does that take so freakin’ long??], and finally, out the door! Sometimes I have a few minutes to check in on Instagram and sometimes I don’t.

From there it’s school drop-offs. My older son is full time and my daughter goes three days a week. Two different drops offs. [I literally have dreams about the day I only have one drop off.] Then I take the little one(s) to the gym and/or to run errands, depending on the day. Our gym has awesome childcare where I can leave the kids for up to 3 hours per day. So sometimes if I am really backed up with emails or blog posts, I won’t even work out and will just bring my computer and work from there.

Then it’s home for lunch + naps. Diego is 2 now so naps unfortunately have become more hit and miss. Alessandra is almost 4 and doesn’t really nap at all anymore. I try my best to encourage quiet time but again, it’s hit and miss. So unfortunately, I can’t rely on my afternoons to always get productive work done. But this is the time I most often try to check emails and catch up on Instagram, since those are things I can do quickly and come back to when I inevitably get interrupted.

After naps it’s back to school for pick-ups and after school activities. I try to have something planned for the kids to do every day after school, whether it be an organized sport, a trip to the park or library, or a playdate. I try my best to make that time for me and them to just have a little fun and unwind from the school day.

Then it’s home for dinner where we meet up with dad [when he’s home]. He is awesome in that he is most often the cook. This time of day is also hit and miss. [Are we sensing a pattern here?] This is usually when I start to feel behind in my accomplishments for the day and just want to hide in my office to put together an Instagram post or finish up a blog post. But it is also what we call “crazy hour” for the kids. It’s like, no matter how much we’ve done in a day, they are just always so wound up at this point. Which makes it really hard for me to concentrate and for my husband to actually cook.

Some days I get a shower in. Some days I fold a pile of laundry. Some days I do the dishes. And some days I do none of these things. It’s called balance, people.

After dinner it’s homework, baths, reading, and blessed bedtime. We try to have all the kids in bed by 8:00pm but sometimes my oldest has to stay up a little later to finish his reading and/or homework.

And then, I can finally start working. But to be honest by this point, I need to unwind a little myself, so I usually sit on the couch and scroll Instagram or watch a tv show [although I don’t watch much tv] for an hour or so. And THEN I can finally hear the thoughts in my own head again and I will sit down at my computer to write or catchup on all the things from the day I missed. And this my friends, is why I stay up way too late. My average bedtime is around 1:00am these days. Which is better than it used to be, but not as great as it could be. But again, it’s my only quiet 100% me-time of the day. And it’s often my most productive time as well.

So for anyone who’s ever looked at my life and thought I have it all together, there you have it, I DON’T. Still, I chose to focus on the pretty parts of life, and that’s what I share on my Instagram and blog. Real life is messy. And that has value too. It is important to talk about it, as I am doing here. But I don’t think necessary to always broadcast it to the world, ya know?

I’m not sure if my schedule will be helpful for anyone. I wouldn’t necessarily suggest not sleeping, if you can avoid that route! But perhaps you can take some tokens of what I do to help you figure out your own way to live out your blogging dreams. What types of mom-scheduling hacks do you have in your pocket? I’m always looking for new ideas! Let me know in the comments, friends.

Also, be sure to check out the other mamas in this blog series and their posts today on the same topic. These girls are some real gems, I tell ya.