Home Education Mental Load: Reducing Decision Fatigue

Since becoming a home educating parent, I’ve become increasingly aware of decision fatigue and the hidden mental load that can come with home education. I first heard the term 'decision fatigue' in an old magazine interview with Barack Obama. Here's a little extract from that interview:

"I’m trying to pare down decisions. I don’t want to make decisions about what I’m eating or wearing. Because I have too many other decisions to make." He mentioned research that shows the simple act of making decisions degrades one’s ability to make further decisions. "You need to focus your decision-making energy. You need to routinise yourself. You can't be going through the day distracted by trivia."

Now, of course, he was the president and had far bigger decisions to make than I ever will and wouldn't have had the distraction of the needs of children all day, but this stayed with me because it put into words something I’d been struggling with for a while.

When It's All Down To You

Once you step outside of more conventional systems, you suddenly become responsible for creating that structure for yourself. School provides routine, timings, external accountability and decision-making, not to mention things like uniforms and meals, which remove a lot of invisible mental load from parents.

With home education, you’re building that structure yourself, which can increase the mental load of home education significantly. And you’re often building it while also questioning it, adjusting it and, unfortunately, being bombarded with plenty of stuff online showing what you should and shouldn't be doing.

I think many home educating parents think deeply about parenting and learning. We read books, listen to podcasts, consume research, rethink old assumptions and try to make intentional choices. This can be brilliant and genuinely life-changing, but it also means there’s a constant stream of new information coming in and a pressure to assimilate all of it into daily life.

At some point, all of this becomes too much. I'm not sure human beings are really designed to consciously rethink every aspect of life all at once, especially without a huge support network and team around you.

The small decisions that add up quickly

There can be so many tiny, mundane decisions every single day in bringing up and educating our kids that, unless there’s some sort of system or order in place, they can use up a significant part of our energy before we even get to the things that actually matter. Not to mention the chaos that can ensure if things don't have at least some sense of order to help us get through the week.

I also noticed that removing the decision-making from my day was the real key, not the tasks themselves. It wasn’t the 'doing' that felt draining, but having to decide what needed to be done each time I came to it - what to cook, what to wear, what to pack in the bags, which activities we were doing that day etc.

On top of these there can be many other smaller decisions within the day or things to remember: keeping on top of laundry and housework, important life admin tasks that may or may not require a decision, choosing birthday cards and gifts, not to mention decisions associated with work, community events and possibly caring for others too.

Funnily enough, one of the things that can be so brilliant about home education - freedom and flexibility - can also become the thing that exhausts us if we're not careful. Then we can sometimes long for the structure that we enjoyed stepping away from.

How I've Built a Manageable Simple Structure

Recognising this has helped me put a few small systems in place that, over time, have made life run more smoothly. And although I'll never claim to be the height of organisation and consistency, having a husband who is, has helped in a big way so I'll often lean into those strengths to help the weeks tick along.

And I thought it might be helpful to share a few of the simple things that have really helped reduce our daily home education mental load. They're pretty small and manageable and the effect far outweighs the time taken to put them in place:

• Meals: Meal planning has been one of the biggest ways of reducing decision fatigue, because deciding three times a day what's going to be on the menu (plus snacks) is not fun for me. And although I'm not a huge fan of Chat GPT, it does come into its own for planning weekly meals and creating shopping lists and recipes so I'd highly recommend this if you haven't tried already. I print it out, stick it on the kitchen wall for everyone to see (also making it easier for others to help) and it's reduced a significant portion of that day's decision-making energy.
• Clothing - I think I'd secretly love a school uniform for the sheer ease of knowing what everyone's wearing! This one might be just me but deciding what to wear and helping my kids sometimes decide based on weather, what we're doing that day etc. and possibly needing spare clothes is another area that can take way longer than it should. Home ed families can spend a lot of time outdoors so being appropriately dressed (with spares) is important. Having certain clothes and outfits for certain types of days, getting clothes out the night before and keeping the options pared down by having fewer clothes, have all helped to remove this decision from most of our days.
• Learning - This one could be a post all on its own but how learning looks is different for every family. For us, external activities alongside two home days creates a flexible home education routine that still gives our week some shape. And it's on those home days that a few anchors help us all feel as though we're moving through the day in a meaningful way (no-plans days are fine now and again but I always find them a bit flat if we do it too often). Aside from meals together and daily quiet time after lunch, a home day will also tend to include:
  • Morning activities with breakfast
  • Daily core skills learning in the mornings
  • Shared activities like history, art or music once or twice depending on the day
  • Plenty of blocks of free time for my kids to play and explore their own thing
  • A very light weekly plan so I can pull out activities easily without having to think of them on the spot and know in advance what I might need.
• Everything else - and for those smaller decisions that pile up in the background:
  • Batch-buying or making birthday cards at least 2 months in advance and trying to choosing the same gifts for people of the same age and taste so I don't go down very lengthy rabbit holes trying to find the 'ideal' gift.
  • Setting aside chunks of time each day or week for general admin and replying to longer messages instead of trying to fit it into the gaps in the day has freed up a surprising amount of headspace. It also makes me more present with my kids because I’m not constantly trying to do everything on the go.
  • I also use time boxing for smaller tasks.  It’s true that work expands to fill the time you give it, so if there’s no limit, one small task can drag on forever. If I give myself 20 minutes for emails, finances, planning an activity, or even chores, I’m far more productive than when I let those jobs spill across the whole day.

What I've noticed

I’ve definitely noticed that reducing the mental load of home education and reducing the number of decisions to make, protects energy and space for the things that matter most. I'm definitely more present with my kids when things run more smoothly (which is kind of the whole point I'm doing what I'm doing). We roughly know what’s happening on different days, there’s more predictability and less constant decision-making and negotiation.

And weirdly, having some constraints has given us more freedom, not less. I've found too much openness can create its own kind of pressure because you’re constantly having to decide, reassess and reinvent the wheel.

Without being too rigid, some form of routine just feels like it supports wellbeing and protects my energy and, most of all, makes home education feel much more sustainable.