The 3 Must-Haves for Work at Home Moms

 

Whatever your work at home situation is, a dedicated workspace is a must! This is a no-brainer for people who are employees working remotely. If you are working for a company, it is likely that your home office set up is similar to what you would be working in if you were commuting to the office.

 

But for people who run small home businesses, setting up a dedicated office space often gets overlooked. I mean, it is really nice to sit on the couch wrapped in a fuzzy blanket while you plan your next customer appreciation event or write the next post for your blog. (And yes, I totally do this sometimes…with limitations).

 

A dedicated work space helps your brain shift from mom mode to work mode much more efficiently. When your mind and space are organized, your thoughts can flow more freely.

 

How many times has this happened to you? You sit down on the couch with your laptop and a dozen ideas in your head. And then, like a light switch being turned off, you mind goes blank. You sit, trying to recall what you wanted to get done during this time. You internally beat yourself up for not being more organized and having a list made. All you can think about now is the laundry mountain on the floor next to you. The clock is ticking and your work time seems like it’s going to end way too soon.

 

Be better to yourself, moms. Create a space that suits you so that you can have fewer hurdles to jump when its your time to focus on work. You might have a whole room with a door that closes that is your very own home office. Or maybe your partner also works from home and you share an office space. It might just be a bedroom/office that you have or even a little corner of the dining room.

 

Where ever your workspace is, make it sacred. It is not a play area for the kids. It is not where your partner sits to check on their investments. It is not the paperwork catch-all space for the family. This is Mom’s Office.

 

 

 

 

For the love of all that’s good and holy, do NOT switch laundry in between answering emails. Don’t take a quick 5 minute break to load the dishwasher. Especially don’t answer the door when your neighbor comes knocking for a mid-morning coffee and chat. Just don’t!

 

Seriously, whatever kind of work you are doing, if you want it to be productive and successful do the #1 hardest thing for a work at home mom…..FOCUS.

 

You might think your work at home gig is not important enough to be taken that seriously. But I gotta tell you, if you don’t treat it like an actual job the people around you will not either. Then you not only have your own internal challenges to overcome, you’ve got a constant flow of interruptions and distractions from other people too.

 

When you block out dedicated work hours you say to yourself, “My work is important and worthy of my full attention.” You say to others, “My work time is important and worthy of your respect.”

 

Just as important, dedicated work time gives you the permission that you might not normally give yourself to set aside all the other duties of the household and focus solely on what you want to accomplish in your career during that time.

 

When you go to an office space out of your home, you do not feel pulled to do housework in the middle of your workday. It would be ridiculous for someone to leave their cubicle and start walking around the building emptying trashcans, washing windows, or cleaning out the fridge. That’s not why they are there! Their supervisor would probably be frustrated by the time this employee took away from their productive work that they are getting paid to do in order to do this cleaning stuff that is NOT in their job description. Think about this when you are in the middle of a scheduled work block at home and decide that dinner prep needs to be done now. Honor your time. You are working to create something, grow something, do something of value. Keep that time set apart for you. You are worth it!

 

 

 

Last year when the whole world was on lockdown and I was suddenly thrown into managing the online schooling of 7 children in 3 different schools with a couple dozen different teachers and an endless schedule of classes on Zoom everyday, I didn’t have the luxury of retreating to my workspace or keeping my time-blocked work hours. My little ones needed help getting on their Zooms all.day.long and my older ones were managing their adolescent and teen emotions while trying to adjust to the new way of doing school.

 

I was still running my business (very part-time….we will talk about the magic of residual income another time) and I was in the midst of writing for a book project.

 

In order to try to keep a smidgen of sanity in the chaos, I created a sign that I wore when I had to be in the middle of all the schooling activity, but also wanted to keep my mind on what I was working on.

 

 

This created a big laugh in my family. It was a silly way to remind the kids to respect my work time even though it looked different in those strange days.

 

Pandemic lockdown days aside, getting your family’s cooperation is essential for working at home successfully. Kids need clear, age-appropriate expectations and boundaries. If you don’t tell them that you are working from 10am till 2pm and then you get frustrated by their constant interruptions, whose fault is that? If your partner gets frustrated that you aren’t doing your fair share of the household duties on certain days, days that you set aside for work but didn’t tell anyone, who is to blame for that conflict?

 

Save yourself and your family the frustration and struggle. Let them know your work hours. Tell them your expectations of them when you are working. Set a boundary for your personal workspace. If you were in your company’s building, would your spouse or child ever barge in and interrupt your work? Of course not! More often than not you will find that your family wants you to succeed. It might take some practice and adjustment for your kids to understand that there are certain times set aside when they need to leave mommy alone. They’ll catch on. Keep talking about the expectations of space and time. Remind them, “Mommy’s going to work now until 4pm. If you need anything, Dad is here (or babysitter, or older sibling, etc).”