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Daily Mirror
Daily Mirror
National
Rosaleen Fenton

Mum-of-ten shares intense daily schedule that starts at 4am every morning

Being a parent isn't easy - especially when you have ten kids.

Mum Tracee Schaeffer, 34 has shared the intense daily schedule that helps keep her organized - which starts at 4am every day.

With husband Justin, 40, she has Dahlila, 14, Beau, 13, Ryan, 12, Scarlett, 11, Tootie, nine, Wyatt, nine, Rhett, eight, Rhiggs, eight, Remy, six, and Ausy, three.

The mum - who runs Pop Culture Agency, which helps women in business with their online presence - also homeschool's some of her children.

Tracee chooses to wake up two hours ahead of the children at 4am so she can get a moment of peace before the chaos.

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She said: "In a typical day I wake up around 4am, that's when I do all my self-care so things like prayer and get the house prepped.

"That's also when I tend to get a lot of my work done for my job, because last year I was at home all day home-schooling Dahlila, Beau, and Ryan.

"I wake them up at 6am for school, and then everyone has their morning chores while I'm cooking breakfast.

"I put water and food out for the chickens after that and let them out of the coop so they can run around.

"They all brush their teeth, make their beds, and clean their rooms.

"I would take Scarlett, Tootie, Wyatt, Rhett, Rhiggs, and Remy to school, then come home and start home-schooling for around four and a half hours per day, but next year I'm just home-schooling Ryan so the schedule will change.

"After that, I start preparing dinner and then we collect the other kids from school, they all do homework and eat so we can leave at 5 pm to go to hockey practice because all of them apart from Dahlila and Ausy play hockey.

"We're there until eight so when they get back I get them all showered and try to have them in bed by nine, so then we do it all over again!"

Tracee credits the chore charts she has for all the children with keeping the house organised.

She said: "Everybody has one main chore apart from Remy and Ausy, and Dahlila's is laundry so she's in charge of that.

"She does two loads every single day, so we usually stay pretty caught up, and at the moment Ryan is in charge of doing the dishes after we eat.

"I try and swap around everyone's main chores every three to four months so that they can learn a new skill and get a bit more responsibility.

"They all have the same chores to do in the morning as well, so everybody needs to clean their room, make their bed, put toys away, all of that first thing in the morning.

"It's taken years and years to get this system implemented, but it's really helpful especially when you have neuro-divergent kids, which some of mine are, to have a chart with a to-do list so they don't get overwhelmed."

Tracee dedicates Mondays to creating a meal plan for the rest of the week.

She said: "Every week we're spending about £335.64 ($400) on food, so I order groceries online to be delivered.

"I definitely do not have the time or the mental space to go to the store.

"So we make a plan for the week and then I order everything we'll need for all the meals that week.

"We have two refrigerators and three freezers and just buy as we need, we don't like stockpile food that much."

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