When your spouse travels extensively for work and you’re left to run things yourself, you can feel overwhelmed, exhausted, and lonely. Even if you’re getting everyone fed, clothed, and meeting basic needs, trying to get everything done alone can be exhausting and cause tension between you and your partner.
Treat yourself well and don’t be afraid to ask for help, and with a little planning, you can better handle your spouse’s travel schedule and keep things running smoothly at home.
Keep Meals Simple
Keep meals simple by making things such as lasagnas, casseroles, DIY-pizzas, and other easy-to-throw-together dishes. Crafting up an ultra-fancy meal can be fun, but not if it makes grocery shopping, prepping, and cleanup more difficult than it needs to be.
Consider meal delivery services, or enlisting outside help for meal prepping and planning to ensure that mealtime isn’t stressful.
Taking yourself and your children out to eat once or twice a week while your partner is away can also be a fun and simple way of cutting down on household cooking tasks.
Don’t Take on Extra
Avoid taking on extra school volunteer duties, staying late for work, or starting extra projects while your partner is traveling unless you feel like you have a lot of available time.
Understand that you cannot physically or emotionally tackle all of it on your own, especially not without piling onto your mental load. Ensure everyone is fed and clothed and gets to sleep, and consider everything else a bonus!
Keep a Routine
Stick to your normal routine as much as possible, especially if you have kids. Having a semi-normal routine will eliminate a lot of unexpected bumps in the road and help you anticipate what comes next and how to handle it. This will keep things calm and maintain order in an otherwise potentially stressful household while your partner is away.
[Related: How Stress Affects Your Health]
Create Personal and Social Time
Make sure you take time to practice self-care throughout the chaos of running a household while your spouse is traveling. Schedule lunches with your coworkers or friends, or carve out one evening a week to hire a sitter so you can go out and grab dinner or drinks. Have other friends that are going through something similar? Invite them and their kids over for a potluck-style dinner.
If you find that you’re running low on time spent with yourself, get the children to bed a little earlier and have a bath or make yourself a cup of herbal tea. Alternatively, getting up before your kids to practice yoga or meditation can help you see things clearly and keep calm.
Enlist Extra Help
Although handling your entire household yourself may be possible, you don’t want to stretch yourself too thin. Don’t be afraid to ask for help when you need it, especially if your partner’s away.
You can hire a personal assistant to help with tasks such as running errands, grocery shopping, meal prepping, household tidying, and more to keep things running smoothly, especially while your spouse is out of town. Hiring a personal assistant will free up your schedule so you can spend more quality parenting time with your children and participate in some essential self-care as well.
Having a personal assistant available to help out on a regular basis and provide additional support while your partner is away can be extremely beneficial.
Pepper’s Personal Assistants can help you manage your household and keep things on track long term no matter your situation. We provide services such as meal prepping, grocery shopping, laundry, and running errands so that you can have more time. Contact us today and let’s see how we can help!
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