Even before I had a kid, I hated the term “work-life balance.” When you don’t have kids, you aren’t even really allowed to comment on the topic, even though you don’t need to have a kid to constantly struggle to figure out how to keep your house clean and meals made when you’re on a business trip every other week, pulling 12 hour days chasing a deadline, caring for aging parents or anything else that requires a lot of time and energy. Add a kid to the mix and it all of course becomes much more complicated, but even before I knew what it was like to be a WOHM mom, I fully believed that there really is no such thing as “work-life balance.” The best you can expect, regardless of whether you work at home, outside the home or are a stay-at-home parent, is finding a comfort zone where some things have to happen all the time, some things can happen some of the time, and others just have to give until there’s free time (hah!); what those things are will depend entirely on your and your family’s priorities.

This week marks exactly a year since I returned to work after 3 and a half months of maternity leave, and I found myself thinking about our work-life comfort zone – how it’s grown, shifted and stabilized over this past year. Different things will work for different people, of course, but here are some things that helped us find this zone.

1) Figuring out what’s important to you is key. For example, I get extremely unsettled and actually lose sleep and get anxious if my house isn’t at a certain state of clean. I’m by no means a neat freak – the dust bunnies in my long untouched corners will attest to that – but there’s a level of clean that I need to maintain in order to stay sane, which means some of my precious little free time needs to be allocated to getting to that level of clean. I straighten up Baby C’s play areas and dishes from her dinner every evening while Mr. Carrot gives her a bath. Every weekend we do all the laundry from the week and Mr. Carrot and I vacuum and do some dusting and neatening up in between entertaining a lively toddler.

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In return, some things have to give because there’s just not enough time – we get home right before 6 pm, after our commute and picking up Baby C from daycare. Immediately, it’s her dinner time, then bath and bedtime. We don’t get to do much else until 7:30, and I need to get a decent amount of sleep to be functional, so I’m rarely up past 9:30, which means we have two hours or so to allocate wisely. I’m not much of a cook, so we make do with very quick meals and more takeout than I care to admit, though we do our best at keeping things as healthy as possible, and we’ve given up most of our favorite TV shows since there’s just no time to watch them. I try to do some prep for the next day – getting Baby C’s snacks ready for daycare and packing my own lunch – but this happens maybe once or twice a week at best and I squeeze it into the morning band of time instead.

2) Use your vacation and sick time. I know that many working parents may not have this luxury, but those that do and have a bit of wiggle room, I really recommend using some of that time to catch up on life. My work schedule is pretty busy, especially in the fall, but for my own sanity, I take a mental health or vacation day once a month or so, just to take care of things that otherwise fall off the list. I wash my floors, go to the specialty grocery store on the other side of town that we otherwise don’t have time to go to, catch up on personal errands like cleaning up the closet or doing a little shopping, and I always try to find some time to just have a sit down meal, with a book, just to relax. Mr. Carrot and I will also occasionally use these days to do a date day, since we still haven’t brought ourselves to find a babysitter for Baby C, and go to a movie, lunch, take care of bigger projects, etc.

3) Establishing a routine at work and home helps tame the chaos. In my case, my team and my supervisors know that I am out the door between 4:15-4:45 every day in order to get to daycare. This is not negotiable, nor is me not being reachable between 5:30 and 7:30, while we get Baby C fed and ready for bed. This can be tough in an organization that’s mostly younger and tends to come in later and leave later, but I set my schedule as soon as I got back from maternity leave and I haven’t compromised on it. In return, everyone knows that I will answer work emails and catch up on projects after Baby C is in bed, if things are urgent.

At home, routine has been a lifesaver for me. Baby C has been on a fairly consistent schedule since she started daycare at 3 and a half months, with adjustments as her bedtime got later or wake-ups got earlier, and we added dinner and longer baths as she got older. As with all babies, things do happen that throw us off track, but for the most part, we keep things consistent and that allows me to plan the day – errands I might run after Baby C is down for the night, a gym class I might squeeze in if I have the energy, etc. I know that I have about a half hour between getting up in the morning and when Baby C will start wanting some attention, which allows me to run a flat iron through my hair, brush my teeth, warm up her milk and make our bed. This way by the time Mr. Carrot is out of the shower and dressed, he can entertain the kiddo while I get dressed and we get ready to head out.

I have a lot of optimistic goals – I do hope to become a better cook one day, and be a more consistent exerciser, and hopefully even go out to dinner with Mr. Carrot one day! I also know that there are lots of balls to juggle and duck under when they fall – and they do fall, between work craziness that inevitably happens, baby sleep that goes off track, someone has to travel for work, etc. I find it’s much easier to deal with those dropping balls when there’s a comfort zone to retreat to.

How do you maintain your work-life comfort zone?