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While you'd think that parenting would be harder in this day and age, thanks to technology it's much easier than it ever was in the past. Check it out here.
As a parent, you eat, sleep, and breathe your family. As an employee, you're passionate about your career. As a person, you need to create a work-life balance. Today your smartphone can help you achieve this balance when you harness its power properly. It will help you streamline your domestic life, free up valuable hours, and carve out more quality time with your children.
Organizing Your Home Front
Being happy and comfortable at home is an important part of being successful at work. When you're ready to get organized here, you shouldn't be afraid to ask for some help. There are three great services that you'll want to check out here:
- Instacart is a grocery delivery service that will bring you groceries to your door from any major local chain in your area at any time of the day or night. You can even shop at more than one store with a single order. Many parents believe that this is actually less expensive than what you’d pay in gas, parking, and frustration trying to shop with your children in tow. Now you no longer have to be rich to have a personal shopper work for you.
- Meal delivery services like Blue Apron, Plated, and HelloFresh have also recently cropped up. This combination of a meal planning and food delivery service will send you everything you need, in the exact amount you need, to your home each week. In doing so the service lets you cook a specific number of dinners that are all appropriately adjusted for the number of diners who will be eating these meals. Blue Apron started off by shipping just 20 boxes of meals but now they're sending out over a million meals each month to customers all over the country. By outsourcing the meal planning and grocery gathering process you can now make dinner in just 30 minutes, regardless of how unexpectedly crazy your day has been.
- With just a push of a button, you can have anything else delivered to your home too. This is thanks to Amazon's numerous services – Amazon Family, Subscribe and Save, and Amazon Pantry. On your way to work you can order anything your baby needs in bulk, then receive a great discount, and have it shipped directly to your doorstep. You can even set these shipments up to recur automatically. Leave it to Amazon to decide when you will most likely need more of the item, based on your ordering history.
Organizing Your Work
Once you're comfortable at home, you may never want to leave. Unfortunately, that isn't possible today since you'll probably have to do some traveling for your job. You can find some suggestions on Facebook that will help you stay in touch while you're on these trips. This probably isn't something you'd thought about in the past but this is actually a great place to get parenting advice. It's much more convenient to ask other parents for advice instead of waiting for your pediatrician to call you back.
When you talk to other Facebook parents about traveling for work, you'll come across some helpful ideas for staying in touch with your children while you're away. Some of the ones that IF Studies have picked up on include:
- Put a note in your child's lunchbox before you head off to work. It can be as simple as “I love you” or as complex as a funny riddle you found online. If your child gets a hot lunch, tuck the note into their book bag instead.
- Record a message on iPod or micro recorder for your child.
- Send your child a text when they least expect it just to remind them that you're always thinking about them.
- For younger children, create your hand print so your child has it to hold onto when he needs your hand while you're at work. You can also create their hand print to take with you to work. This really is a great project to work on together with some paint, sequins, glitter, and glue.
Striking a Balance
Throughout all of this, there's a common theme: Scheduling is important. Parents says that you should also include your children in your schedule. For them, it's as simple as scheduling a lunch date or another time to talk. Doing so will do wonders for both of you. It gives your child time to tell you about the latest dramas at school and you a time to stop multitasking and be completely focused on them.
When you find gaps in your schedule you should use them to your advantage. Fit things like mobile banking in where you have a few moments. This will save you from making a trip to the bank just to wait in line each week. Now you can deposit a check, manage bill payment, and handle your household's budget through your smartphone.
You could even sneak in visual conference calls instead of taking all those unnecessary business trips. Of course, some of those trips will still be unavoidable but now your children can still see your face while you're gone. With this one tool, you have a lot more flexibility in your life – even telecommuting has become a more viable option today.
Maybe you can even do some of these things while someone else does the driving for you. This is where Uber can be helpful. Considering how precious time is to working parents, even the few minutes you'd save here will be beneficial. If you're traveling with your children in tow, check out Uber Family – they have car seat options available.
These apps and services streamline your parenting and give you a lot of helpful options for getting things done today. Most of them are driven by millennial parents just like yourself. They're bound to continue growing in number too since about half of all millennial parents report using their smartphones to help them be better parents today. This is great news as it's bound to continue making parenting in this day and age even easier.
Published by Lynn Joesph
Written by Lynn Joesph
6 years ago 
