Busy Work at Home Mom

While your kids may never become small business owners, teaching them business skills can be important for their life.  Business skills encompass everything from customer relations to accounting.  Business management, time organization, and responsible work ethics will help your kids no matter what career they choose.

A great benefit of being a work at home mom is having the ability to teach your kids these business skills every day.  One of the best ways to teach your kids is through setting a good example.  Every small business owner who works at home must be good and time management, have a strong work ethic, be a self starter, and maintain responsible action.  If your children see you modeling these behaviors, they will adopt them in their own lives.

Began when your children are young, and teach them to appreciate work and to understand the relationship between work and reward.  This can be done through chores, every day activities, and play time fun as well.

As your children get older they can begin to understand the workings of the small business.  Teach them and computer skills, task and time management, and how to prioritize the activities they need to complete in a day.  Learning about sending long-term goals and determining how to complete them is another important skill.

All of these business skills are also general life skills.  More specific business skills can be taught, especially if you intend for your small business to become a true family business.  No matter what type of business you have, kids can learn the fundamentals of how it works.  For example, if you own a mail order business or sell on eBay in or from a website, you can’t teach your children about the shipping and postage rules, basic photography skills, and how to design a web site or product description.

Some days I do not brush my hair until well after breakfast.  Makeup is reserved for only the most important of outings.  I haven’t worn a fancy dress or high heels in years.  I’m work at home mom.  Specially designed to proehl about on the floor, run around the park, and work late into the night, my fashion sense leaves much to be desired.

Some women, and then, enjoy shopping for fashionable clothing, shoes, and accessories.  They make a great to do about choosing the best makeup, getting facials, manicures and pedicures.  Of course, people have different personal styles.  I’m sure many work at home moms take advantage of these things as well.

When you are busy for 12 or 14 hours a day taking care of kids and working, you work not have the energy to make an effort with your appearance.  Here are my fashion tips for the work at home mom.

Get an easy to care for haircut.  Make sure it is long enough to tie back in a ponytail, or short enough not to dangle in plates of poster paint.  Invest in a fun selection of hair clips or scrunchies.

Do not be afraid to buy comfortable clothes.  There is no shame in having sweat pants in every color.  Tee shirts are your friends.  Think stretchy, think soft, and think easy to care for.  For the most part, your children do not care what you look like.  Just be sure to have a few quality outfits in your closet for when you go out.

That’s it.  Fashion for a work at home mom is not complicated.  You have enough on your plate without worrying about trends, high style, or maintenance.  Just be sure to keep that in reserve for special occasions.

Taking time to play

One of the most difficult things for a busy work at home mom to do is take time for fun.  As children get older and more people to take care of themselves for large chunks of time, the work at home mom can find herself pulling away from them to take care of more business matters.  Of course, it is important for her to focus on her business in order to make it grow and be profitable.  Caring for children such as cooking meals, cleaning them, and instructing them a proper behavior, are all important.  However, it is also important to take time to play with your children and to experience the joy of them growing up.

One of the major reasons why mothers decide to work at home is so they can enjoy their children and raise them the way they want to.  If you do not take time to play with your children, you will miss out on some of the best moments of childhood.

How do you make time to play in a very busy day?

Like everything else in the busy work at home moms day, playtime can be scheduled.  A good option is to take a certain amount of time after lunch or in the middle of the afternoon to do fun things only.  Not only will it help your children by giving them the attention they need and deserve, it will help you prevent burnout in your business life.

After taking a certain amount of time each day to play with your children, your children may start wanting more and more.  This is natural.  It is ideal to give your children as much time as they require to feel comfortable with the schedule you have chosen.  However, it is not always feasible when work is to be done.  Set and stick to a specific time during the day when you are playing with your children and doing nothing else.  They must understand that mommy’s time is divided and, while you must take time to work every day, you are always there for them when they need you.

It’s 9:36 AM and I’ve just finished my first cup of coffee.  As a work at home, home schooling, divorced parent, coffee is my friend.  Besides drinking my first cup of coffee, I have already started working today.  Parenting, I do continuously and without stopping.

Structuring time is not one of my strong points.  However, it is important to have some sort of schedule if you have so much to do.  While some people thrive with a firm itinerary of what they will be doing every minute of the day, I prefer something worth free form.  Using a combination of Google calendar and an independent goal-setting program, I keep track of what I need to do, what I have already done, and how far I am to my goal.  As a great lover of lists, this method works best for me.

No matter how you organize yourself, having set goals is important for any work at home person.  Some people are incredible self-starters, while others need a big much to get anything done at all.  If you are the latter type of person, you must pay careful attention to your to do lists and goals.  Operating a home based business, or working at home, is not for everyone.  If you do not have the appropriate ability to monitor your own time and get the job done, perhaps you should consider getting a traditional job.

As important as it is to monitor your time and focus on your goals, that is not to say that you cannot take breaks, take days off, or procrastinate occasionally.  The difference between working for yourself and having a real job is that you get no vacation pay or paid sick leave.  If you do not work, do you do not get paid.

It is 9:43 AM now, and I have not only finished writing this blog post, I have organized the first class of the day, put on a load of laundry, and poured my second cup of coffee.  It looks like a fabulous day.

When a Mom makes the decision to start a small business or work from home, she may turn to the search engines to find ideas.  While there is no other resource that can provide as much information about working from home and internet businesses, there is also no greater confusion.

If you search for ‘work at home’ on Google or any other search engine, the vast majority of the results will be come-ons for programs that promise the moon and stars, if only you pay them $29.95 or more.    Many people waste a lot of time and money trying out these programs and opportunities and never really make any money at all.

In between all the home businesses that cost an upfront fee, there is some real quality information about working from home.   Don’t pay any money yet.  If you look hard enough, you never have to pay for the best information about working at home online.

So, how do you decide what type of business to undertake?

The first step is figuring out what you enjoy and what you want to do.  Any preference can be made into a work at home job.  Do you like crafts? Parenting? Finance? Art? Sports? Pets?  Any subject can create income for you.

Once you have picked a topic to create a business about, you have to learn how to make money with it.  In order to work at home successfully, you always have to sell something: either a product or service.  The next step is knowledge.

Visiting work at home and small business forums is an excellent way to learn everything you need to know about working from home.  Experienced self-employed professionals are on hand to answer questions and post articles about what they’ve learned.  Instead of fumbling out and making the same mistakes everyone else has, fast forward through them by reading about other’s mistakes first.  It will save you a lot of time, money, and frustration.

My living room floor looks like a very small, very colorful city exploded all over it. Mini-figure body parts lay still amid the remains of garages, spaceships, and strange robots. It’s hard to tell who was the attacker and who was the defender.

What I do know is that, for the last half hour, my sons left me blissfully alone while I hurried to finish three articles before they needed me again. I did have to put up with loud explosions, crashing noises, and a running commentary about… something.

A work at home mom’s secret weapon is selective listening. If I let every make-believe speech enter my brain, I would never get anything done.

I struggled for a long time with the concept of being a professional. To me, a professional was a person in a suit with a briefcase and an ulcer. I work at home full time, and make a living at it. I’m not an amateur in the home business realm, so I must be a professional.

Another explosion sounds from the living room, and my younger son lets out a cry of distress. His brother has just attacked his Lego house with an alien ship.

Feverishly typing the last line of my current article, I get up from my desk chair, the invisible robe of professionalism slipping away with ease. By the time I reach the next room, I am all parent, and ready for the federation counterstrike against the encroaching hoard from Mars.

Juggling parenting and professionalism requires practice, dedication, and a healthy dose of craziness.

Sometimes the whole rush and scurry - and especially all the “Just a minute, honey. I have to finish this first.” - doesn’t seem worth it.  The daily balancing act of house and health and work and family is tiring.  So tiring!  And sometime I want to give up, put my kids in public school, get a ‘normal’ job, and be like the majority of families around here.

But then I stop to think and take some deep breaths.

I would hate it.  I would hate not being able to learn and grow with my children every day.  I would hate having to get up early, put on uncomfortable clothes, and brave the idiots on the road to get to a job I dislike.

Being a work at home Mom is tough.  But I couldn’t imagine life any other way.

My work at home or self-employed career started after my divorce.  With two boys under 18 months old, I refused to ship them off to a daycare and get some low-paying job that would ruin any time or energy I had to enjoy them.

Other work at home Moms often tell me they had the same feelings.  One of the biggest reasons for becoming self-employed at home is being able to stay with children.

Am I busy?  Do I go crazy sometimes?  Do I have moments of despair?

Oh yes!  But what person doesn’t?

As a self-employed, homeschooling, divorced Mom to two boys - one autistic - I think I’m entitled to a bit of crazy at times.

After the crazy, I dust myself off, take a deep breath, and get right back into the BEST job anyone could ever have in the world: a busy, work at home Mom.