With Mother’s Day just around the corner, husbands and children are thinking of presents for wives and mothers. Just what does a working mom want for a Mother’s Day present?
Well, probably not these things, unless your wife/mother loves practical gifts. Some moms love practical and some moms want jewelry. I assume you know what the mother in your life wants, and if not, ask. But these are things that every household needs–even if it’s dad who does the cooking.
When you’re working and managing a family, you want things to make the life part of work-life balance run smoothly. These are guaranteed to help.
1. Crock-Pot or Instant Pot
These are two separate items that are actually the opposite of each other–but they serve the same purpose, dinner on the table, easily. With the Crock-Pot (or slow cooker) you dump everything in the pot before work in the morning, turn it on, and come home to a delicious dinner. With the Instant Pot, you can dump everything in when you get home and in a half an hour, it’s ready to go. (The Instant Pot also does have a slow cooker function, but I swear by my Crock-Pot.)
To keep reading, click here: 10 Things Every Working Mom Needs
Based on experience, I must disagree with this list. One year, Jessica Rabbit kept saying, “I need a new vacuum cleaner, I need a new vacuum cleaner…”. I took the subtle hint and for Mothers Day I got her the best vacuum cleaner with all the bells and whistles.
She immediately got me a doghouse and there I was, like a misbehaved junkyard dog. She also reamed me out that wonen should never be given household appliances or anything like them.
Yes dear.
Seems to me that if she needs a new vacuum cleaner, the best time to buy it is right now, not at the next convenient holiday.
Something used for the benefit of your household, even if generally used by one person, is household maintenance equipment. While you might not mind receiving something like that as a gift, a lot of women see it otherwise. The point is to know your own spouse.
I have to agree with Roger Rabbit comment—don’t give appliances to a woman as a gift, however useful they may be because it only emphasizes the gap in workshare load in the home. Men don’t need to pass on the load even more but share better. Why else was Sheldon using the folding board?— If you plan to buy things from that list be prepared to use them to offset housework tasks, with the exception of the cleaning person. I would love to have one that I could trust to keep up with the daily cleanup tasks. Most American cleaning services don’t fully vet their employees ( to save dollars and employ people off the books). Last time I had a cleaning person who charged $75 for a once a week two hours service, I was not impressed by the cleaning especially when I had to supply the cleaning items,too. It may take me longer to clean up but I do detail clean not spot clean.
We are a working couple, but in our house the man is the one who cooks, does laundry etc. I totally concur with the benefit of a cleaning lady. We fretted about the money, but there came a point where we realized that it ended up costing $25/ hour for 10 hours per month to save 2 weekend days. Now, we just do touch up in the interim and look forward to how the house looks when she cleans. The kids destroy it quickly, but that clutter is different than the soap scum, hair in the corners kind of dirty that the house used to me. There was also a study from 2017 that found that spending money to buy free time vs. things increased happiness, and that was the clincher for me. Study Link: https://www.pnas.org/content/early/2017/07/18/1706541114.full
I would add gift cards for spa services to this list! A day of pampering always feels amazing for us working moms.
The list is all wrong. Here’s what working moms need:
– Flexibility at work if she needs to take off to stay with a sick kid or aging parent
– Paid sick leave and guilt free use of vacation time
– No bias in hiring if she’s taken a break from work for full-time child rearing
– No pressure to cut a maternity leave short
– Clean, comfortable, private space to pump milk, even if she works for an employer that doesn’t need to provide it legally
– A spouse/partner/roommate (assuming she has/wants one) that actually shares the load of housework, home maintenance and child rearing (instead of just buying her a roomba…ahem)