A mama on Pinterest wrote this under the hospital bag pin: “Everyone says self-care, but I have five minutes between feeds and a toddler. What fits in five minutes?” More than you would think, and I say that as someone who had five minutes between feeds and a toddler for most of a year. The resets that got me through were not the hour-long ones I kept promising myself. They were the five-minute ones I actually did, and one of them, done daily, did more than any spa day could have.
Here are twelve, sorted by what you need in the moment: quiet, energy, or a body that feels like yours. Then the small trick that turns one of them into a habit, because a reset you have to decide to do is a reset you will not do at four in the afternoon. Self-care is not selfish is the why; this is the how.
When you need quiet
The hot tea, sitting down, drunk to the bottom before anything else happens. The step outside the back door with your eyes closed for the length of three slow breaths, baby monitor in your pocket. The window: standing at one and looking out at nothing in particular for the whole of a feed, phone face down. The face wash with cold water and the good cloth, which is two minutes and feels like an hour.
When you need energy
One song, loud, in the kitchen, the one you used to play before. Thirty seconds of stretching with your arms over your head, which undoes the feeding hunch. A glass of water drunk standing in the sun. A text to one friend about anything that is not the baby, and the reply, which is the real reset.
When you need a body that feels like yours
Getting dressed in something you chose, which is the five-minute reset that lasts all day and meets you in every mirror; a wrap top in your colour instead of the stained tee is the whole ritual. Hand cream, slowly, both hands. Earrings, even on the sofa day. Hair up with the good clip rather than the elastic from your wrist. The bad-mirror day survival guide is for the days the body is the hardest part.
Free · takes ten seconds
Whatever time you have today, it counts.
Tell The Window how many minutes and how many hands you have free, and it picks one small thing for you: a stretch, a shower, a page of a book, ten minutes of nothing. A jar counts them up over the week.
No email needed. Works on your phone, one-handed.
Why five minutes is enough
Because the reset is not the minutes; it is the signal. Five minutes of something that belongs to you tells the rest of the day that you still exist in it, and that signal lasts long after the tea is cold. The hour-long version is lovely and rare. The five-minute version is possible every day, and daily beats rare.
The trick that makes one a habit
Attach it to a feed. Every morning feed, the tea. Every lunchtime feed, the window. Every evening feed, the song. The feed happens whether you decide anything or not, and the reset rides on it, so by the second week it is not a decision at all. Pick one feed and one reset; add the second only when the first has stopped feeling like effort.
Free · five minutes on Sunday night
Five minutes on Sunday night, and the whole week is dressed.
Tap the kind of day each day is and The Sunday Reset lays out seven outfits, one window of time for you each day, and the three things that matter this week. Print it, or have it emailed.
Free. Made for the mornings when choosing is the hard part.
The reset that needs someone else
A shower with the door shut and nobody within earshot. Ask for it by the clock: “Can you take him at ten for ten minutes?” It is the one reset on this list that needs another pair of hands, and it is the one most worth asking for. Forget sleep when the baby sleeps has the fridge list for the asking.
A week of resets, to copy
Monday the tea. Tuesday the song. Wednesday the outfit, which is really every day. Thursday the step outside. Friday the face wash. Saturday the shower with the door shut. Sunday the window, and ten minutes planning the week’s outfits so Monday has no decisions. Seven days, thirty-five minutes in total, and a mama who is still in there.
The five-minute resets were the ones I kept, because they were the ones that fit. The tea at the morning feed became a habit with my second and I still have it now, with three children and no newborn, because it stopped being self-care and became how the day starts. Start with one. Attach it to a feed. Let it carry you.
If the outfit is going to be your reset, the Year Round Capsule makes it a four-minute choice from two hundred already made, laid out and then worn, with three pictures of you in them on the house. The Window is a free little tool for finding the one window in a day that is yours. And the Sunday Reset is the ten minutes on Sunday that takes the decisions out of the week.
Five minutes, one feed, every day. You are still in there. The focus is on you, mama.
You deserve to be looked after too
A stylist who already knows you, every morning.
The Atelier is Anah every morning, already knowing your season, your shape and your closet. The community, the magazine, the planner, and Dress me for the mornings when choosing is the hard part.
