Cara Harvey (00:04.142)

Welcome to the Purpose Driven Mom Show. Here at a Purpose Driven Mom, we believe that it’s possible to manage your home, work on your personal goals, and grow and scale an online business.

Most productivity tips out there tell you to hustle more and make you feel shame about not being motivated enough. And we’re here to dispel this myth. I’m Kara Harvey, and I am on a mission to help work-at-home moms realize that they have the power to go after their dreams, take care of themselves, and manage their home without perfectionism, guilt, or having to sacrifice their sleep. If you’re ready to shift your thinking around productivity and get some practical tips to help you manage your mom life, toss your earbuds in while you fold the laundry, and let’s do this.

Cara Harvey (00:50.176)

Welcome to Purpose for Mom Show, episode 511. Last week I talked to you about how do you create this vision for a summer that doesn’t have to look picture perfect but feels good. And when I was done, I was like, you know what? That was really good vision setting. I want to do some more nitty-gritty. So let’s call this a part two. And it’s how to structure your day when the kids are home.

without losing your mind. Now last episode, and if you didn’t listen, we’re gonna link it up in the show notes at a purposedrivermom dot com slash five eleven. But it was episode five hundred and ten. Go listen ’cause it really talks about the mindset of like what are the anchors that you need holistically, looking at the entire summer. Right now actually, I want to talk about the nitty-gritty. I want to go into the week by the week, the day by day, how I’m gonna structure it and and the suggestion, right? Like you’ve already decided, I get it. I’m button, I don’t need a perfect summer plan, but like cool. Like what are we doing?

That’s what we’re gonna talk about today. Because it is real. The constant interruptions.

Mom can I have a snack? Mom can I have a snack? Mom can I have a snack every five minutes. I always say, I’m like, you ha use your school stomach today. Like, why are we still eating, right? Trying to get any sort of work done like is real. And then also, again, last episode we talked about the guilt. How do we kind of allow ourselves to not feel like we have to always do something? So today we’re gonna get practical. All right, this is our part two from last week. Again, go back and listen to that one. It’s simple, it is a flexible way, keywords flexible, to structure out your days so that they’re predictable, you’ve got your routine.

You got your rhythms, but you’re not rigid in them. That’s the key. Okay. In the last episode, it was about creating your rhythm, looking at the big picture. Today is zooming in. It is how do we build the day-to-day? All right. When you have a lack of structure in summer, which is what happens. We get to summer and we’re like, all right, well, I have time off.

Cara Harvey (02:31.904)

No alarms, do whatever, take the time off. Because we’ve been so structured all scary. You’re so burned out. I don’t know you. I’ve had a hard school year. I literally just got off messaging my daughter’s teacher. Fourth grade is so hard. I we have never had any school issues to this year. And I cannot even tell you the amount of meetings I’ve had at this. Like, I’m like, this year has been so awful. Like it’s been a hard year. So we wanna give them time off. We wanna give us time off. We wanna give the brain break. But when we have too much lack of structure, then we’re stuck in the decision fatigue of the day.

What are we gonna do? I need a plan, I’ve gotta work, or you know, there’s no expectation. Kids do thrive off the structure and routine of a school year, whether you’re homeschooling or traditional school.

When kids don’t know what to expect, there’s gonna be more, but not more of the good stuff. More asking. What are we doing today? What are we doing today? What we doing today? More whining. I’m bored, I’m bored, more interrupting. What are you doing, Mom? Can I help you? Can we play? Da-da-da. All of it. You wind up reacting instead of leading the day. And when you still have things you have to get done, it’s important you’re in charge of what the day holds with flexibility. Structure

Itself is not gonna restrict your summer, it’s gonna support it. So we’re not looking at the school year structure. It’s gonna look a little bit different. The mindset switch of yes, we don’t have to have perfect activities every single day, but also it’s not just let’s just have fun every single day and never get anything done, and then everything becomes a mess and we’re feeling chaotic, okay.

This is our four block summer rhythm. Now I teach multiple time blocking methods, right? I anchor into them. It’s part of my structure. But in the summer, I want you to look at your day as quarters, right? Four quarters of a year, four quarters in dollar, four quarters is what we’re gonna deal with. This is four blocks of your day because, especially for me, and again, I’m talking about summer with kids home. Your schedule is different. You might still have to go into work, out of work. I shared this last episode, but our summer, I work from home.

Cara Harvey (04:31.014)

My husband’s gonna take the kids one day a week into work with him so I can have one work block. I’m gonna work a half one block, like a nine to twelve.

Or 12 to 3 every single day. and that’s how we’re gonna structure it. Three 10 weeks they’ll be at camp, otherwise they’re home. So again, every week is different, okay? But take this system, run it into your schedule, okay? So you might not have as many time blocks is what I’m saying, because you’re like, we don’t have school drop-off or pickup. A lot of times my time blocks are anchored into school drop-off and pickup, right? So here you go, ready? This is how we’re gonna structure your day.

Rhythms, not routines. And the other thing that’s really important, the order doesn’t have to stay the same. This is about flexibility based on what the day needs. So if maybe getting dressed is in that one block we’re gonna talk about in second and becomes the last thing you do, that’s okay as long as it happens in that block. So allow that flexibility. So first up, your summer block of the day is your morning block. This is a start the day morning reset block. The goal of this is to just get the day grounded.

Before activities, before even before you take him to camp, if they’re going to camp, before you do the fun thing, before you get to work, okay? This is where you’re like, we get dressed. Now I love a good pajama day like the next person, but I find that if we get dressed and brush our teeth and do our normal things, we are set up to have more productivity in the sense of structure, okay?

So yeah, in the summer my kids get dressed. Do we go th we have a pool? So do we go through a hundred outfits and towels and yes, there’s extra of that because once we have to I really have to work on this with my son. He will wear like 12 outfits a day. I’m like, the outfit you put on in the morning is the outfit you wear all day. If you change, you you know, whatever. Anywho’s your morning block. This is where you’re getting dressed. You’re doing your basic chores, your breakfast. I my kids have really been asking for an allowance. So I’m gonna be coming up with a menu of things for them to do and they’re gonna do them in the morning. Like they need to get done before we

Cara Harvey (06:28.692)

Go to the park, go to the playground, et cetera. Okay. optional, I would definitely toss in like a 10 to 15 minute reset tidy, and I would toss these in in every single block you have. That way you’re resetting

Before you move on. There’s shoes everywhere. Okay, 10 minutes, shoes go in the bed. Towels. Let’s start the laundry. Let’s move, you know, that kind of thing. The other thing that’s gonna be important during this is to set your expectations for the day. Now, during the school day, I’m sorry, the school year, we all eat breakfast separately, right? My son is an early bird. He sometimes I get up at six, he sometimes is up before me. He knows how to make his own breakfast. We’ve taught him how to do this. He’s eight, so he’ll like have his breakfast because he knows he can’t have tack until he’s ready for the school day. So my man will get up, have his breakfast.

Get dress brushes, teeth sometimes before I’m even downstairs because he just wants to watch two and a half hours of TV. And I let it happen. Okay. I during this time am going working out, packing the book bags up, getting my shower in. My daughter is a sloth. So she just moves very slowly. We barely get her out of bed in time. So we all just eat breakfast separately. But maybe you want to say, like, hey, it’s sit-down time for breakfast. That’s probably not what we’re going to do in our home, but maybe you want to. And we set the expectations for the day. This is what we’re going to do today. This is when mom’s work block is. This is your activity, et cetera, et cetera. Don’t skip it.

Have a nice little morning meeting because when you have chaotic mornings, it’s just gonna lead the day to being chaotic. Okay, so that’s block.

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Cara Harvey (08:19.244)

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Cara Harvey (08:32.126)

One is your morning block, all right? Another block that you’re gonna want to set, and it doesn’t have to be in the same order, okay? Morning block, yes, obviously, first thing you do. These next two blocks you can make interchangeable. This is your activity block. So I would recommend in the summer having an activity block to use up their energy.

Again, we have a pool, my kids play outside with the neighbors a lot. Like my kids are very fair little outside creatures. So they love like digging and dirt and just being outside, playing by the like I anticipate my kids being outside.

A lot in the summer. I am a little bummed because I’m pretty sure the neighbor kids are going away this summer and they play with them so much. But they’re from Guatemala and I think they’re going back to Guatemala, and I’m like, like for the summer is like a summer trip. And I’m like, no, because they play so good with them that like they’ll just play all day outside. But whatever. Do something to use their energy, make it intentional so that you have something that you’re looking forward to, something fun, right? Park, pool, make a play date.

errands even. and if it’s at home, let’s do some crafts, let’s do some sensory bins, let’s do some outside play. Allow this to be fun for you too, doing games, things like that. These are your anchor activities that we talked about in the last episode.

Cara Harvey (10:01.654)

Now your next block is your quiet time block, which would make sense logically to have after that we got the energy out block, but maybe you want to swap these because of your work schedule. So that’s why I say it’s fine. But like this is like a reset time where everyone’s resetting. Okay. This is nap time if your kids are napping or want to. This is independent play. My kids are big Legos players, you know, they’re in their room doing Pokemon or

crafts or reading. My daughter loves to read. if you want, screens could be a good time. Like this could be your screen time because it’s like kind of guilt-free because you’re like, all right, we just did something active. And this is where you can do a couple things. You could reset for yourself, you could rest, or you could get work done, right? if you did nothing else today, take in the fact that I recommend you build in a quiet quarter. This will allow your kids to know the predictability of mommy’s getting her work done.

This is what you’re doing, right? So this is allowing it to be easy breezy but intentional. because you gotta get some work done too. Now your fourth block, and then I’m gonna give you a bonus block, is a flex block. So this is like say you switch your energy blocks and your quiet blocks. Again, the reason I would I would

makes sense to do them in order but because you get the energy and then you rest. But if I have to work nine to twelve, I might swap those two blocks, right? it just depends if I’m working 12 to 3 or 9 to 12. Is your afternoon flex block? So this is like low pressure time right before dinner, etc. No big expectations. Outside time, free play, TV, scroll your phone, do your thing, right? Simple activity, keep it easy breezy. And then you kind of close out with your evening connection block. So this

This is ending your day with intention. This is having dinner together, a family walk, movie night, reading, sitting by the fire pit, things like this, so that you can all have some time together and close out the day. Again, like I said, I recommend having inside each block a place to reset your house to. So at the end, before you go to each block, 15-minute timer, let’s get some stuff done. All right. So

Cara Harvey (12:14.574)

I’m gonna give you some tips on how you make this work in your real life and things like that. Okay? First up, time block. Don’t timestamp. This is like saying at 10 to 11, we’re doing this, and 11 o’clock we do this, and 12:15 we do this. Morning, we’re gonna reset. Midday, we’re doing an activity. Afternoon, we’re

It’s quiet time. Evening connection, right? Give those those words. I also want to recommend visual cues, no matter how old your kid is, to help them. Having the schedule written out is one of the things that helps my kids know what we’re doing. I get less of the questions, the interruptions, et cetera. Cause I can just say, Go check the chart. And then I’ll be like, go check the chart. Go check the chart. And the whole first week, they’re gonna keep coming to you. They’re gonna ask you. And you just keep saying, Go check the chart. That’s what you keep saying. And then by week two, they’re gonna understand they need to go check the chart. You just keep sending them there, right? This could be a way.

Board, paper schedule. If your kids can’t read, we got pictures, you know, things like that. It will reduce that like constant like, what are we doing next? What are we doing next? What are we doing next? When can we go here? Right? Go to the chart. Okay. The other thing that I recommend is just planning one thing. We talked about this last week, but one thing a day, your anchor activity, and let everything else flow around it. Don’t feel like your anchor activity has to be always out of the house. It doesn’t have to always be spending money. It’s just one thing that we’re gonna focus on doing. And then also batching your attention. All right. So we talk about

batching which is putting like-minded things together. What about batching your attention? When it’s activity time, be all in. I’m playing and beating my kids at Monopoly. We’re in the pool and I’m enjoying it. When it is quiet time where I’m getting my work block in, I’m all in on work, right?

Being all in there will eliminate some of the guilt you feel during the other blocks. Like if I’m working and I’m like, I should be with my kids, if I had really been as intentional and all in during my time with my kids, I’m not gonna feel as much guilt, okay? And then also just lower the bar. Mom, you’re doing enough, right? Not every day has to have an outing, a craft, a memory, right? Like not every day has to have these things, but I want you to have these anchors in the day to make it feel doable and good.

Cara Harvey (14:30.486)

And remember that some days are just survival mode. And we stay in our jammies and we watch TV all day and have a Harry Potter marathon and it’s fine, right? It is fine. So what could this look like? I’m gonna give you some examples. All right, say we’re having an at-home day, we’re not going anywhere, we’re just chilling at home all day. My morning block, breakfast, we’re gonna get dressed, we’ll do a cook tidy. Maybe our activity is we’re gonna do water play and hang out in the yard. Then quiet time, watch the movie, right, while I get my work done.

Afternoon, just go play whatever you feel like playing. And then the evening we have a movie night as a family. See how it’s still intentional. It still follows the framework, right? But it’s an at-home day. Now, what if it’s an outing day? Okay. Morning, we’re gonna reset, get ready for the day. Maybe our activity is head to the park and the library, run some errands, come home, have quiet rest time, right? You get work done.

Afternoon, everybody just chills, right? And our evening, maybe we sit by the fire pit, right? It’s a nice outing day. We got out of the house, we did some things, maybe we take a walk. If you have a heavier work-from-home day, now again, I’m putting all this in with the caveat of I make my own schedule. I batch a lot of stuff in April and May so that I can take light June, July, and August where I don’t have to work nine to three. You might not have that flexibility. So again, take it with a grain salt.

You’re like, all right, morning reset, do our normal thing. Then you set up some stuff for independent play. That’s their activity, so you can get more work done, right? Then during their quiet time, you do a couple calls, you do a morning work block, and then in the afternoon, something low effort because you’re still closing out your day. TV, a walk, et cetera. It’s not about controlling every hour in the summer. It’s just about making a little bit of a predictable flow so they know. And again, having that visual chart, go to the chart, go to the chart, it’s gonna help. The structure you create is gonna be different every day, but it should serve you, it shouldn’t stress you.

Out. and and having that consistency, those anchors, knowing this is when we’re gonna do it will help. All right. So I want you to look at the summer. I want you to look at your days and ask yourself, how can I set these quarters up for myself to really feel successful? And which is the block that I know that I’m gonna struggle the most? DM me at a purpose driven mom, I’d love to help. And which is the block I know that I really need right now. Show notes are at purposedriven mom.com slash podcast 511. Please send me your questions. I would love to answer them and have a great day. And don’t forget if you

Cara Harvey (16:47.344)

If didn’t listen to last week’s episode 510, where we talk about the vision, make sure you go back. we’ll add more to this series of summer planning soon.

Thanks so much for listening to this episode of the Purpose Driven Mom Show. If this episode served you in any way, we would really appreciate it if you headed over to wherever you listen to podcasts, hit that five star, and leave a review and a rating. That’s how more moms can find us and we can grow our community. If you had a tip or an aha, make sure you come over and tag me at a purpose-driven mom on Instagram and share it with your friends. The best way for us to get this message out there of less hustle and less shame and more intentionality is for you to share it with people you know need to hear it.

Thanks for listening, we appreciate you, and I can’t wait to connect with you more outside of the podcast.