Sharing is caring!

This post may have affiliate links, which means I may receive commissions if you choose to purchase through links I provide at no extra cost to you (in fact, many times its cheaper for you). Also, as an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases. Read more about these links in my disclosure policy.

Hey there, mama! From one SAHM to another, stay at home mom burnout is NO JOKE, and what you’re feeling is entirely real.

I get it—being a stay at home mom is a full-time job, and then some. Between juggling the endless chores, managing the kids’ schedules, and trying to sneak in a moment for yourself, your hobbies, and maybe even a side gig, it’s no wonder you’re feeling burnt out. Did you know that many stay at home moms experience burnout at some point?

First of all, I want you to know that you’re not alone, and I’m here to help (like for real, you can message me through my contact form, or even on instagram. I always reply).

You can imagine your energy is the battery in your smartphone. When you’re constantly using your cell phone without giving it a thorough recharge, the battery drains rather quickly, am I right? Your energy works in a similar way — Your brain needs a break. Without taking the time to recharge, burnout is inevitable. But what if I told you there was a simple, yet effective way to keep your internal “battery” all charged up, but without overhauling your entire routine?

The answer for us overstimulated moms, is micro habits—tiny, manageable, micro actions that can make a huge difference in your every day life.

In this blog post, I’ll dive into what mommy burnout might look like, why its happening to you, and how you can reverse it using the power of micro habits.

Ready to find yourself again? Let’s go.

What is Depleted Mother Syndrome, Also Known As Stay at Home Mom Burnout?

First off—what even is this?

When my therapist first told me about depleted mother syndrome (DMS), all I could think was “how is there a name for THIS too? How many issues can I have”?

But within just a few minutes of her explanation, I realized there that I didn’t have a bunch of issues – I had one. And I had been experiencing mommy burnout for YEARS. Four years to be exact.

Long story short, DMS is when the demands for you as a mother have increased, and yet your recourses have decreased. As a result, you are now more sensitive, feel disorganized, and feel as if you are easily triggered by just about anything.

Obviously, many mothers have been feeling this way since the dawn of time – DMS was first introduced in a book by Dr. Rick Hanson, Dr. Jan Hanson, and Dr. Ricki Pollycove called Mother Nurture – A Mother’s Guide to Health in Body, Mind, and Intimate Relationships.

What Does Mom Burnout Look Like?

If you’re experiencing mom burnout… you likely feel emotionally and physically exhausted, you may also feel mentally disconnected from yourself or from your family, and like you just cant stay on top of everything.

Mommy burnout isn’t a time issue, it isn’t a lazy issue, it a “my cup is empty, and I have no recourses to fill it” issue.

What Are The Signs of Mom Burnout?

There are many signs, and It’s not a one size fits all. Here are some common symptoms of mom burnout:

Physical Symptoms: Upset stomach, back aches, headaches, physical exhaustion, poor sleep.

Emotional Symptoms: Feeling like you are not a good mom, emotionally empty, always feeling drained, guilt and shame after actions, questioning your choice of becoming a mother, feeling disconnected from your spouse or partner.

Behavioral Symptoms: Frequent outburst or the feeling of losing control, yelling & screaming, easily triggered, poor emotional control, withdrawing from others, little to no interest in things you once loved.

Causes of Burnout

There are many reasons why stay at home moms may experience burnout, here are a few likely culprits:

1. Lack of Personal Time: I know as well as anyone – we can’t even pee alone, let alone find time to be alone in general.
2. Lack of Self Care: Believe it or not, peeing alone or showering alone is not self care. You need more than that, you need a self care routine no matter how small.
3. Lack of Help: Another reason for mommy burnout may be because of lack of help, or lack of community. Maybe you have no close family members, friends, and your spouse or partner works away from home a lot. Being alone with children 24/7 as the default parent can absolutly lead to mom burnout.
4. High Demands: The to-do list can seen never ending, plus the day to day stuff like tidying the house, cooking, brushing teeth, not to mention the desire for a hobby, a side gig, or self care.
5. Societal Pressures: There’s often an unrealistic expectation to be the “perfect” mom or a “super” mom, and wanting to live up to those can be very draining.

Burnout doesn’t just affect your mood either, it can also take a toll on your physical health, your overall wellbeing, and even your relationships. Imagine trying to run a 10 miles every day without eating or resting. Sooner or later, your body would just quit, begging for a break or a meal – right? The same goes for your burnout meter.

The Concept of Micro Habits

Now, let’s talk micro habits.

Think of them as little seeds that, with a bit of structure, can grow into mighty fruit bearing trees. Micro habits are tiny, easy to accomplish actions that can easily fit into your day and have significant benefits over time.

The Benefits of Micro Habits for Burnt Out Moms

• Consistency: Because they are smaller, they are much easier to stick with. Making it possible for you to be consistent.
• Cumulative: These tiny habits add up, creating larger habits, and long lasting change in your day to day life.
• Ditch the Overwhelm: Unlike big habits, micro habits feel a lot less daunting, therefore you are less likely to get discouraged and give up.
• Time: Because these habits are designed to be small, if you are a busy mom they are a lot more achievable as your running around trying to get everything done.

The biggest benefit I have personally seen from implementing Micro Habits is the cumulative affect they have on my daily life.

Not only do they add up easy, but because you are getting small wins everyday – it’s EASY to keep them going and let them stack up. Gives you that boost of motivation and excitement that trickles into other parts of your life as well.

I have a whole free mini ebook on creating micro habits, it helps you break down your big goals into actionable micro habits. It’s perfect for overstimulated, burnt out mamas who need a little structure added to their big picture goals. Sign up below..

Tiny Habit Examples for Mom Burnout

I am going to give you a great list of micro habits that I think would help you, have helped others, or have personally helped me kick stay at home mom burnout.

If you want to come up with your own, I recomend picking a goal you have and thinking of three small habits that you could implement in the next week that would get you closer to that.

For instance, if your goal is to lose 5lbs this month, your tiny habit examples might look like:

1. Skip breakfast to start intermittent fasting. Only eat from 12pm-8pm. (this might be great if you do not like cooking big breakfasts for everyone).
2. Wake up 25 minutes before the kids to do a 15 HIIT minute workout in the living room.
3. Bake 1 whole chicken a week so that you always have fast protein on hand. Rub it with avocado oil, season it, bake it, throw it in a gallon ziplock and boom. Chicken for the week. You can have it in the oven before your 15 minute workout, and put away after breakfast for the kids.

Anyways, below are micro habits examples for burnt out moms.

1) Drinking 40 oz of Water First Thing in The Morning

40 oz sounds like a lot, but its just a Stanley cup of water first thing in the morning (or the knock off cup that I personally love). Personally, I can chug so much more water with a straw 😝

40 oz of water is almost half the recommended intake fro women, so now you’ll only need to sip on one more Stanley cup full throughout the day!

This quote from Harvard Health Publishing states:

For healthy individuals, the average daily water for men is about 15.5 cups and for women about 11.5 cups (92oz). That might mean you need only four to six cups of plain water, depending on other fluid sources such as coffee, tea, juice, fruits, and vegetables.

2) Wake Up 25 Minutes Before The Kids

This is one of my favorites.

What I like to do during this time is to start coffee, drink my 40oz of water, then do a 15 minute HIIT workout. This helps me feel energized, accomplished, and meets a bulk of my health goals for the day.

Also, it’s so important that we wake up before the kids, there can’t be anything good about being startled awake by the “i’m hungry”! screams.

Honestly, waking up 25 minutes before the kids is the best way to start micro habit stacking. You wake up, you drink water, you workout, you have time to yourself. You really cant go wrong here!

Here is some more credibility behind the topic of waking up before your kids from mom blogger Mackenzie Beuttenmuller at Design Darling

“I’m sharing a new habit that’s helping me create more margin for myself as a mom of three boys three and under: waking up before my kids.”

“But giving it a try and sticking with it for this long has been confidence-boosting and life-giving in a way I didn’t totally realize I needed.”

3) Read 5 Pages of a Fiction Book

Reading fiction is beneficial for health in so many ways, not only is reading just plain relaxing – but it’s an incredible way to get some self care for moms.

You can completely zone out for even just a few minutes, and focus on just the book.

Choosing fiction is important because it will feel like an actual activity, instead of a chore, or something you have to do to “learn” something.

Here is another great benefit from the Park Bugel:

“Reading can contribute to our well-being in other ways, too,” Olson added. “It can be a way to learn and to understand or process our emotions. Reading stories can help us find or explore purpose, hope and vocation, as can telling our own stories. Reading fiction can build more empathy for a situation than reading about it in a published report or professional journal.”

Implementing Micro Habits to Combat Burnout

Starting small and starting simple are the beauties of Micro Habits.

For instance if you want to start sleeping better. Instead of watching 3 episodes of your evening show, watch 2!

Consistency is key to micro habits. So don’t make them any bigger than you think you can handle, remember they will stack up overtime and you will feel accomplished vs discouraged.

The best advise I can give you on implementing tiny habits into your current routine, without becoming overwhelmed by them would be:

Do them while doing something you already do. For instance, while your coffee is brewing you chug that 40oz of water, or you do a two minute stretching routine, or you throw on that 5 minute face mask.

Practical Micro Habits for Stay at Home Moms

Now, let’s dive a little deeper into some specific micro habits you can implement today to help combat stay at home mom burnout.

Self-Care Micro Habits

• Deep Breathe Breaks: Take five deep breaths just before getting out of bed. This small habit can set a peaceful tone for your day. If you want to take this one to the next level, set an alarm for mid day to step out and do it one more time. You can use this as a mid-day mood reset.
• Short Nature Walks: Pick a meal, and take a 5 minute little walk after. You can live in the city and do this, focus on the birds, the sky, the leaves, the plants.
• A Minute Meditation: Spend a 1-2 minutes just focusing on your breath.
• Skin + Hair: Put hair oil on your ends. Rinse your face with a wet cloth, and apply a slugging oil to your face and chest. Boom, self care! (i use vaseline or tallow balm to slug. Its 100% changed my skin for the better)

Micro Habits for a Clean Home

• 5-Minute Tidy-Up: Set a timer for five minutes and tidy up as much as you can in that time. This can prevent the daily clutter from becoming “overwhelming”too much”.
• Daily Priorities: Every morning, write down the top two things you most want to accomplish. This can help you stay focused and feel more in control. Plus, two accomplishments keeps your list small, and do-able.

Relationship Micro Habits

• Quick Check-In: Check in with a friend or loved one, or reply to a couple messages/texts – staying in touch with people you care about is crucial for mental health.
• Quality Kid Time: Dedicate 5-10 minutes a day to really connecting with your kids. Have a chat, watch their show with them for a moment, start an art project with them, a random dance party, or make a yummy snack. (We are making donut holes today. I know this will be good for all of us, even though I really don’t feel like doing it right now)!
• Make Your Spouse Feel Loved: Do one small act of love for your spouse. For mine, it would be changing the bed linens, or cleaning the fridge. Those are his two favorite things to come home to. I know, the fridge thing – odd huh? It stems from him loving to provide a full fridge for us, but also he really doesn’t like seeing food go to waste, so having a clean fridge eases his mind.

Whats something your spouse loves that may seem off the wall to others? Let me know!

Remember that small changes lead to big results. It’s okay to go slow.

My Personal Real-Life Success Stories

Hearing about others’ successes can be incredibly inspiring, especially if you are feeling very discouraged about your current mom life. So I want to tell you about a couple of real-life stories that have highlighted the power of micro habits in my own life.

Case Study 1: My Morning Routine

I’m stay at home mom of two energetic toddlers, ages 2 and 3. I was used to feeling quite drained by midday (sometimes even midmorning). I was often finding myself in tears. Telling my husband how much I was struggling to keep up with the demands of our amazing, but WILD kids and the daily house duties. I felt as if I rarely had time for myself. The constant exhaustion was affecting my mood, patience, and my peace.

My husband reminded me that what I was feeling was totally normal. BUT he also said how hard it is for him to help more when he has no choice but to go to work daily. Plus we live very remote off grid – so he leaves earlier than the average woking dad and returns home later. Sometimes he’s gone for weeks working in other states.

He told me maybe I should think about doing something to improve my sleep so that i can wake up even just 20 minutes before the kids.

I decided to start drinking a small glass of water, and take magnesium citrate before bed. My sleep and even my mood improved drastically, but I knew in order to wake up earlier I needed to go to bed a little earlier.

This was hard for me because I felt like evenings were my only alone time. But The truth was, I was spending it watching TV – which isn’t all that beneficial in the ling run. So I then decided to only watch one episode of my favorite show instead of two, and wake up 25 minutes before the kids do.

How This Snowballed into More Habits for Me…

This was a game changing snowball effect for me! Fast forward a year, and I now wake up at around 5-5:30am, so I have 2-3 hours to MYSELF before the kids wake up. How do you think I am writing this for you right now?

And, sometimes I do ALL THE THINGS during this time. Clean, cool early, yoga, workout, blog… and sometimes I do NOTHING and just scroll, read a book, drink too much coffee, or whatever else!

Moral of the story, I actually have time for myself now!

Case Study 2: Working Out

I was a personal trainer for moms for 6 years, then I had two kids and totally fell off the wagon.

2 years later when I wanted to get healthy and fit again, I just kept trying to start where I left off. Doing 6-8 week programs, working out an hour a day, and changing my diet completely. Overhauling my life, really.

Finally I decided to pick an easier diet without crazy restrictions (animal based), skip breakfast so that I am intermittent fasting, and only workout 15-20 minutes a day 4x per week.

I am 10x heather than I was before I decided to get back on the health train. And I am 20x healthier than I was when I was trying to take on too much and continuously feeling overwhelmed and discouraged. Just to ultimately quit just to try to start again a couple weeks later. Then repeating the whole thing over and over again.

Lessons Learned

From my little stories, you can see the huge impact that micro habits can have on burnt out moms. The key takeaways from my experiences are:

1. Start Small: Begin with micro habits that feel almost effortless. The main goal is to build momentum and confidence. Don’t worry about the habits being small.
2. Be Consistent: Consistency is more important than intensity. 5 minutes a day if far is better than an hour once a week.
3. Adjust as Needed: Life changes, and so will your micro habits. Be flexible and adapt your micro habits to fit your current lifestyle,
4. Celebrate Small Wins: Every tiny action counts. Celebrate your progress to stay motivated and positive.

How To Avoid Stay at Home Mom Burnout

Ask for Help: I know how hard this can be, but it’s also so very necessary to ask for help. And, if you don’t know anyone, or have a mom support group – I have some recourses posted below.

Create a Routine: Create a daily routine for yourself including your micro habits. Create this routine for your mental health, NOT your lifes goals. It’s okay to take a step back, move slowly, and use your micro habits to reach your goals instead of overhauling your days with these big tasks.

Schedule in Self Care: First off, find a way to keep your kids busy while you shower (unless they are infants obviously), that way you can shower alone. THEN, find a way to get some self care in. Try my “wake up 25 minutes before the kids” method. Do whatever you want in this time, but DO NOT clean. Do something for YOU.

Lower Your Expectations: You don’t have to have everything perfect. Focus on the 3 things that are most important to you. Such as, what your children are eating, your workout for the day, and making sure the kitchen it tidy in the evenings. The rest can wait, or be fine with the minimum.

Find your people: I live very remote, it takes me 1.5 hours to get to town, all via logging roads. I am alone with my children most of the time, I have no family here, and only one close friend.

But I used to be even more alone/secluded until I joined a mom group. Now we meet every Wednesday and the kids play while we chat. I have also thought about joining a church so that we get out into a positive atmosphere one more time during the week.

Extra Resources For Mom Burnout & Micro Habits

Keeping track of your micro habits can help keep you accountable, see your progress, and continue to propel forwards. Here are a few simple ways you can do this:

• Habit Tracking Apps: Phone apps like HabitBull or Streaks can help you monitor habit progress. Habitica is an app that turns habits into games.
• Pen and Paper: If you prefer pen and paper. A bullet journaling is a creative way to track your habits, or downloading a habit tracker off of Etsy.
• Sticky Notes: Put sticky notes in visible spots around your home where your habits are, as reminders and to mark off each habit. This is also helpful for micro goals!

Books and Articles

• “Atomic Habits” by James Clear: A guide on how small habits (micro habits) can lead to huge life changes.
• “The Power of Habit” by Charles Duhigg: An amazing book explaining the science behind habit making.

Support Groups and Communities

• Peanut: An app that connects moms for support and friendship (I personally use peanut).
• Bumble for Friends: Did you know that Bumble also has a section for friend making? My best friend uses this, and she has had great success meeting mom friends in her area!
• Mom Support Groups: Look for local or online groups where moms are meeting. Also look for “homeschool” groups, Paint and Sips, and local events that moms may be attending.

Conclusion

In this post, we’ve explored the topic of stay at home mom burnout together. How micro habits can serve as a powerful solution to keeping it at bay, or even halting it completely. By starting small, being consistent, not overcomplicating, lowering your standards, and adjusting as needed, you can make significant moves in managing and preventing mom burnout. Remember my little success stories? —they’re the proof you need that tiny habits really can lead to big improvements in your motherhood journey.

What we are doing isn’t always easy, sometimes it’s more often hard. We want to do it all, and we want results fast. I beg you to take a step back. Pick something that is important to you, and spend the next 30 days using micro habits to achieve it. Rinse, and repeat.

Your Homework

Now it’s your turn! I want encourage you to try incorporating just one new micro habit into your daily routine! Start small, give yourself grace, and track your progress.

I would love to hear about your experiences with tiny habits. Share your stories with me in the comments below, through my contact page, or send them to me on Instagram. Let’s support each other on this journey to a more calm and joyful motherhood!

You’ve got this mama, let’s focus on small changes and watch the magic happen!

Sharing is caring!