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Janine Allis shares the five parenting tricks that saved her marriage (and sanity).

Janine Allis, Boost Juice founder and judge on Network Ten’s Shark Tank, is the first to admit she isn’t a “perfect” wife and mother. That’s because perfection when it comes to being a wife and mother is impossible.

She’s brought Boost Juice from her kitchen bench (literally) to 17 countries around the world, all the while maintaining a 20-year relationship with husband Jeff Allis, and raising four children; Samuel, 25, Oliver, 19, Riley, 18 and Tahlia, eight.

Surely there’s some trick to how Allis has led such a successful career while managing to maintain a happy home?

Glad you asked – the businesswoman relies on the following five strategies. Watch and learn.

Janine Allis shares her parenting tips and tricks. (Article continues below.)

In a recent episode of Mamamia podcast I Don’t Know How She Does It, Allis shared all the parenting tips that saved her marriage and her sanity.

1. Food ninja

Allis says she’s highly skilled at hiding both fruit and vegetables in meals she makes for her family.

“They had a spaghetti bolognese last night but 70 percent of it was broccoli. So I’ve just got this ability to go, you know what? You may not all like things but you need to eat them and I think the more knowledge you get the more you think you need to eat your fruit and veggies.”

Allis also keeps processed foods to a minimum at home. “When they’re at home you may as well keep them healthy because God knows what they eat out.”

A post shared by Janine Allis (@janine_allis) on Dec 30, 2015 at 4:13am PST

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2. Family time

As arguably one of the busiest women in Australia, Allis has long accepted that her workload means she won’t get to spend as much time as she’d like to with her family. In order to cope, she blended her work and family life together as much as possible, keeping toys in her office and taking her kids to business meetings and work trips.

Allis also focuses on quality time over quantity, like the time she read the entire Harry Potter series to her kids each night after realising she was feeling disconnected from them.

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“I tried to just put techniques in to try and be a better mum and I think the end of the day though we spent a lot of time on weekends at the coast when we could at the beach at a shack we had there and if anything saved my marriage, my motherhood, my sanity was when we went there it was the time when we got out board games and walked on the beach and so I did have, thank goodness, a sanity check.”

MM Confession: That time I was a bad mum. Article continues below video.

Video via Mamamia

3. Chores

While her children don’t do a lot of task around the house, the one chore she insists they do is to wash the dishes every night.

“Our kids don’t do a lot in our house but they do the dishes every night and seriously, even to this day, and as I said they’re all grown up. Honestly when I say to them ‘Come on, do the dishes I am’ – it feels like I’m asking them to run a marathon, what an effort it is sometimes. So it does sometimes frustrate the kids and it’s a moving target but you know

4. Clutter

The Allis home is kept as clutter-free as possible, with living areas deemed “toy free”. Everything else gets shoved into a cupboard.

“I think cupboards are a great thing. We’ve got a cupboard that’s full of – you know – you open it up and it’s full of drawing things and toys and games and board games and all that sort of stuff. I think if you’ve got somewhere to be able to pocket away – I do have a rule with my daughter that once you play with something you can’t start another game until the other one’s finished or packed up.”

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“What I find is if you don’t have that they play four or five games and there’s just junk around your house and you spend your whole time cleaning up after them.”

5. Screen time

With three children who are officially adults, Allis has lost control of when and how they use their devices, however eight-year-old Tahlia still has to follow rules.

Allis says phones have never been allowed in their bedrooms, with the families plugging them into a docking station they had set up outside the bedrooms that she would check.

“The other rule we had with the phones was that Find My Phone actually had to be on at all times and if I’m paying for the phone then I should be able to track where the phone is and if they didn’t like it, that’s fine they can pay for their own phone.”

“I found that gave me a lot of peace of mind, particularly when they were going through the teenage years.”

Listen to the full episode of Janine Allis on I Don’t Know How She Does It.



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