By Renee Malove for Work-at-Home.org
When you run a busy household, not having to go out the front door to go to work every morning can be a dream come true. Suddenly it doesn’t matter that your three year old has managed to “misplace” your car keys or your newborn has thrown up on your favorite shirt (a miraculous event that happens approximately once a day, at the precise moment when you are officially running late. (There have been times before I was a work at home mom when I was convinced babies could use disgusting bodily functions for keeping me around at least another hour while I was cleaning up.).
The ability to earn a paycheck while continuing to reign as the queen of chaos in the comfort of their own home is a tempting proposition that has been turning into a reality for an increasing number of women around the world.
If the concept of attempting to work at home is intimidating enough to make you think twice about signing on the dotted line then you’re in good company! Anyone who has ever attempted to do the dishes or fold a load of laundry while having children running amuck has experience with the productivity blockers that those precious little angels whose diapers they have changed can be. Anyone that says being a stay at home is easy has never done it. Often whole days go by without a thing getting accomplished prior to Daddy coming home at supper time, and the prospect of having to attempt anything that requires more brain power than mopping the floor while attempting to referee the wrestling match going on in the next room can be enough to make any sane person run screaming for the hills!
This doesn’t mean that working from home while being a hands-on parent is impossible; it just means that you’re going to have to work a little harder! Here are some quick tricks to help you succeed in any at home career without having to sacrifice the very reason you walked away from corporate America in the first place:
1) Get your spouse to help you. This is going to be vitally important; if your spouse is not willing to help shoulder the burden of keeping your household up and running you are going to find yourself facing a continuous uphill burden. Attempt to divide the chores in the evening, such as cleaning up the house and preparing the children for bed, so that you can have more free time to work either before your little ones are in bed or after, and have him keep them on his days off so you can sneak off to the library or some other quiet spot to catch a couple of hours of work in peace.
2) Designate a spot in your house to hold all of your work equipment and be consistent about keeping it there; that way you are not faced with the frustration of having to expend time and effort to search all over the house for it. If you don’t have the option of setting a room (or a part of a room) as an office purchase a bag and a filing cabinet, and return all of your supplies to these when you are done with work for the day. **Hint: Messenger style diaper bags make great work bags, and bottle holders will hold a vast quantity of pens, pencils and highlighters for you without forcing you to go digging through your bag every time that you need a writing utensil**
3) Establish a routine for yourself and your children. This is VITAL!! Regardless of their age your children should be willing to entertain themselves for short periods of time if they know that they’re going to get some quality time with you when that time is over. Work for an hour or so (approximately the length of a child’s video) and then take a twenty minute to half hour break to spend time with your child. When lunchtime rolls around sit down and eat lunch with them (without having your laptop open in front of you), then give yourself their naptime to work uninterrupted-they’re going to want their mommy time when they wake up! This process will be much simpler if you have school age children, as you should be able to finish most of what you need to do in a day while they’re gone.
4) Decide when you’re going to be done. This may seem ridiculous, but the simple truth is that much like washing laundry, the work is never done. You will drive yourself crazy trying to get it there. Choose a time of the day at which you’re going to say, “That’s it!” and only work after that point if there is something that absolutely cannot wait. The beauty of working in an office is that you retain the ability to leave work there at the end of the day; when it is sitting there calling out to you in the middle of the night you may very well find yourself burning out far more quickly than you would otherwise and coming to despise your new career.
5) Make a to-do list for yourself so that you know which of your work tasks you need to accomplish in a day; good time management is the single most important aspect in a successful work at home career. It is very easy to get sidetracked and allow work to fall to the side during the day because there is a television show you just have to watch, but this will quickly lead to you becoming buried in your work and spending many nights burning the midnight oil in an attempt to catch up.
6) Choose your days off. If you do not make the conscious decision to set work aside and take a day off no one else is going to do it for you, and you are going to end up working seven days a week and hating it. By the same token, play hooky every once in a while! What is the point of calling your own hours at home if you can’t take advantage of it? Have breakfast with your children and get a late start every once in a while, or finish early and have a night out. It’s all up to you!
Working from home when you have children isn’t impossible; it just seems that way! If you can find your own “groove” you’ll soon find that working with your children in the house is no different than working in an office with chatty co-workers; with the proper amount of motivation and positive reinforcement you can encourage them to leave you to your business and “socialize” after working hours, and you will be able to enjoy working from home without having to say good-bye to your sanity!
Renee Malove now works at home fulltime as a writer. At one time she was a desperate mother of three attempting to work part time waiting tables while going to school full time, but realized she wasn’t having enough time with her family. When she’s not writing, she colors with her baby or watches TV with her four year old. “I finally have the chance to be the Mom I always wanted to be without having to answer to anyone else's schedule, and this new opportunity has made my life so much easier.”
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