15 New Years Resolutions for Moms

Written by Sara Lillestol for her blog, Magical Mama Blog.

You can follow her on Facebook and Instagram!

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• Spend time with your husband

Once the kids move out, it’s just the two of you.  If you don’t put the work into keeping your bond strong while the kids are around, you’ll have an awfully big hole in your marriage once you’re alone.

Get out for date nights.  Have date nights in with the kids.  Tell your kids about how you met, your funny dating stories, how the proposal happened, about your wedding, etc.

Get dressed up every once in a while and treat yourselves to a fancy dinner and drinks.  Parenting is no walk in the park and you’ll get into a deeper and deeper hole the longer you wait to remember you are a couple, not just offspring raising robots.

• Adopt “me time” into your schedule

Write down a designated time each week on the family calendar.  Just two or three hours.  Make Dad or a relative promise to keep the kids amused during that time.

Lock your self in the bathroom for a little self-spa day.  Bring in a laptop and charger. Bring in a lap top, charger, and your favorite chick flick.  Dye your hair, exfoliate and moisturize your while body, enjoy a bubble bath, shave your legs, pluck your eyebrows, give yourself a salon-status blow out…and most importantly…go to the bathroom by yourself.  No knocks, no fingers under the door… can you picture it?

Go to Target by yourself, throw in your headphones and listen to your favorite music while you browse.

Go to the mall and try on clothes.

Go get a mani-pedi or massage.

Go see a movie by yourself.

Have a wine night with your other mom friends.

Getting rid of your stresses and clearing your head will make you renewed.  I know after a mom afternoon, my patience is at a full refill, I have more energy, I am more positive, and much more relaxed.  It’s really a win for everyone.

• Say “I Love You” multiple times each day

I don’t think you can say it too much.  Make sure your kids know how loved they are.  Give hugs and snuggles, words of affirmation and endless “I love you”s.

Make it the last thing you say to your kids and your husband each night.

Say it before you part ways.  (To get dark for a moment, if anything were to happen to anyone you love, wouldn’t you want the last thing you said to them to be “I love you!”)

• Put down your electronics

Turn your devices off for a few hours…not to silent, not plugged in… just off.  Put them in another room, a drawer, a box, somewhere that no one will be constantly tempted.

Talk to each other, look at each other, hear each other, pay attention.  If you can’t imagine it, pretend it’s the 1950’s and none of these things existed.  What did people do back then?  Figure it out!

Challenge one another to do this for an amount of time every day.  Or pick an evening and turn it into an old school family gathering.

You don’t want your kids to grow up and only have memories with their phones, tablets, computers, and gaming systems.

• Make experiences and memories

Get out of the house and stop buying junk.

It doesn’t have to cost you several paychecks to have a family outing.  Go to a local park or beach and have a picnic and play with frisbees, hoola hoops, a soccer ball, etc.

Head out for an evening walk as a family, get to know your neighbors as you walk by, enjoy the fresh air and exercise.

Go to your town’s holiday festivities.  Check the paper or your city’s website to see what is happening.  Check out the farmers market or a local concert in the park.

Check the Parks and Rec out in your community.  Maybe everyone can sign up for a class and learn something new.

If you’re going to spend money on something, make it an adventure instead of toys.  Take the kids to a water park instead of buying the latest toy.  They’re much more likely to remember a day with family than a toy.

• Start family traditions

Start doing something special on each holiday, every few weeks, or once a week.

Pick an evening in December each year everyone has to keep open to go out as a family and look at Christmas lights.

Every other Saturday, have family game night.  At Christmas or borthdays, give each family member a new game.

Have a Valentines Day date night as a family.  Everyone dresses up and you go out together to a fancy restaurant.

Every Thursday, have the kids choose and make dinner.

Whatever works for your family, enforce traditions that can live on.

• Take more pictures

It’s easier than ever to take pictures with smart phones all over.  But don’t force your kids to pose every day to capture them growing.  Take candid pictures.

Capture the kids playing together, when you pick them up in the mini van, when the family is playing a board game, the kids creating a fort.

When they look at these pictures later in life, let them remember what life was like, not the fancy, staged photos that happened in between the memories.

• Implement family reading time

It has been shown that around 4th grade, kids have a drastic drop in reading ability and interest.  That likely correlates with parents stopping reading to their kids as soon as they can read on their own.

Buy books.  Go to a book store (while they still exist), let your kids discover authors they like and purchase whole collections.

Start a book club within your family.  Everyone can read a chapter of the same book over the week and can have a little cafe sit down talk about it.  Help them discover the lessons within reading.

Have your kids read the bed time story book to you.  Use it as a wind down before bed time.  Have one kid read a book aloud while the others (or the parents) act it out.

Make reading fun and keep them interested.

• Slow down your hello’s and good bye’s

Instead of your kid running past you in the kitchen yelling “bye” over their shoulder, stop  what you’re doing for (literally) 10 seconds to get a bear hug, kiss on the forehead, and an “I love you”.

When your kids walk in the door after school, get up and give them a hug, ask about their day, see what their needs and wants are.  The more we slow down and take in one another, the more we’ll be on the same page and ready to handle anything.

If you’re running late, 10 seconds isn’t going to hurt. Give a hug and a proper goodbye.  Let your loved ones know that they are your first priority.

• Eat healthier

Jump on board with meal planning at least a few nights a week.  If you already have every ingredient and it has an expiration date, you’re much more likely to make a meal than go out and spend money on food that may not be fresh.

Get the sweets out of sight and go for healthy snacks to have around.

Drink water.  Every time you go to the store, you should be grabbing a case of water if you’re grabbing a 12 pack of soda.  Make sure your kids are hydrated and not drinking unnecessary calories and syrups.

When you’re eating well, you’re feeling well.  Get your whole family off to a good start and start these habits young!

• Work on your patience

Talk to your partner, or even your kids, about patience.  Come up with a phrase to say to one another when you start to lose it.

“Let’s take 5 minutes, then start over.”

“Breathe in for 10 seconds, hold for 10 seconds, exhale for 10 seconds.”

“Let’s keep talking, but let’s use monster voices.”

Patience is a hard thing to keep up when you live in a crazy house and a crazy world.  We can’t control everything and sometimes we lose control in ourselves.

It helps to have people that love you let you know that you need to take a look around and that this will pass.

I would much rather have my husband tell me to breathe when I’m getting crazy than to blow up and regret it later.

We can all use help every once in a while.

• Write down the special little moments

There are 525,600 minutes per year…in 18 years, that’s 9,460,800 minutes.

There’s no way you’re going to remember all of those minutes with each child.

Grab yourself a few journals or set up an e-mail address.

Write down the funny thing your 3 year old said today.

Write down what your kids fought about today.

Take a tally of how many times your 10 year old asked “are we there yet?” on the cross-country road trip.

These are the things you can look back at when they’re graduating high school or getting married that will make you smile.  (I’m sure you could also help yourself with some embarrassing material to use when your teenager is giving you the run around)

• Use the dining room table

We’re all guilty of getting cozy on the couch and watching TV while we eat a meal.

Set the table, put the electronics away, turn the TV off, and sit down as a family.

Have each person talk about their day, relax, discuss the events you have coming up, make plans for a fun adventure.

It is so important to put each family members’ little world on hold and to reunite as a family.  Use the expensive table you bought and decorate for fancy occasions.

If it’s a matter of not wanting to do dishes and clean up, throw a dollar store plastic tablecloth down and use paper plates and red solo cups.

Get into the habit of having meals as a family and stick to it!

• Remove what you don’t need

Go through your closets, offices, garage, etc. Get the clutter out of your home.  Everything can have a place, everyone can know where everything belongs and won’t have an excuse for not putting things away.

Get rid of toys.  Kids don’t need much to amuse them…at least they didn’t in the days of yore.  So your kids’ friends have the latest toy…yours will survive without it.  It is always a trend and it will always pass.  This is not life altering… do you still have your treasured Pogs? Pokemon Cards? Pet Rock?… didn’t think so.

Go through your social media accounts and delete the negativity.  Unfollow people who start political debates, people who share news stories that bring you down, people who post constant negativity.

Live a simple and happy life this year.  (Check out my 7 Day Declutter Challenge to clean out your home and your mind)

• Be positive

When you’re going through a rough time, and don’t we all at some point each year, grin and bear it.

Try to find the silver lining in every situation.  Look forward to something better.  Take some deep breaths, figure out how to get out of your rut, figure out what you need, get help if you need it, and move up and move out!

If you have a group of people in quick sand, the positive person will hope for a solution, and make that come to fruition.  If your kids are struggling, let them know that you understand and that there is a way out of every sticky situation.

Let’s all implement at least one of these resolutions into your New Year.

I hope you strive to be the best mom for your kids and the best wife for your husband.

My wish for you is that you can the driving force for your family to be the best they can be this year.

Good luck and Happy New Year!