There are many things you don’t realise until you have kids. You realise you can survive childbirth. You realise you could never love another human being so much. Annnnd you realise you completely wasted your time before they arrived.

Here are nine crazy time-wasteful things I used to do before I knew better.

1) Showering twice a day. Yep, morning and night. Who needs to smell good to sleep? The old me thought it was a great idea, but now the thought of throwing away five extra minutes of sleep for a rinse makes me LOL.

2) Peeing the instant I needed to go. With kids you have to time your bodily functions to their schedule. This often involves holding for several hours and praying you don’t sneeze. Oh, your kids don’t nap anymore? Then I hope you haven’t drunk any water in the last eight hours.

3) Wearing make up. Haha remember when you used the care about your appearance squandering precious minutes in front of a mirror instead of wiping soggy cereal off the floor? Those were the days!

4) Replying to texts. Now I don’t even get to read most messages until after Giggle and Hoot have gone to bed, and usually it’s with one hand holding a glass of hard liquor – so don’t expect them to make sense.

5) Folding laundry. This used to be part of our clothes cleaning routine, straight after the washing and drying part. Now we just grab stuff straight out of the basket, sometimes still slightly damp. #aintnobodygottimeforthat

6) Doing one thing at a time. Now I can cut my nails while changing a toilet roll, brushing my teeth, and singing twinkle twinkle to my 2 year old.

7) Cleaning. Or at least cleaning ‘properly’. With children you learn to short cut. There’s only so much you can get done between snack requests and cries of Muuum, so you’d better find a way to do things faster. For example, I used to waste time walking scraps from the sink to the bin. Now I just kind of shove it down the plug hole and hope the drain doesn’t block up and spew last weeks left-overs back out at me.

8) Eating. Oh food, glorious food! We used to have such an indulgent relationship, me and food. I’d spend my time preparing delicious meals with great care and patience, then an equal amount of time savouring every delicate bite, usually with some insightful adult conversation. Now by the time I get to eat my cold cardboard flavoured microwave parmigiana over a conversation about Peppa Pig, I’m usually full of sandwich crusts and choc milk dregs anyway.

9) Sleeping. Sleep is for the weak. Sleep is for those who have nothing better to achieve at night….like reinserting a dummy 20+ times, or imagining what excuse your toddler could possibly come up with next to still be awake. I tell you what, next time she calls my name she had better be in the middle of an alien abduction.

Forget being a millionaire – my new dream is to eat a cheeseburger while asleep in the shower. While giving up these luxuries hasn’t been easy, it’s been worth it for all the extra precious moments I get to spend with my kids. And that’s what I’ll keep telling myself until I forget how bad I smell.

What things did you used to ‘waste time on’ before kids? Please SHARE in the comments below.

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