If you are a new mother or an expecting mother, you might be trying to weigh your options as to whether or not you can be a work from home mother. We are here to tell you that it is not just possible, but feasible. With proper planning and organization, working from home is a great way to continue your career or supplement the additional costs that are associated with having a newborn baby.
Plan Every Detail of Every Day
The moment you decide that you might want to work from home, you must immediately start to plan. Whether you are one month pregnant or the mother of a one month old, intense planning is the only way in which you can successfully be a work from home mother.
From setting the date that you plan on mentally returning to work, to planning what work assignments you’ll complete during Thursday’s naptime, planning each and every detail will help you stay on track and optimize the little time you have available.
Adrienne Rowsome, blogger and professional poker player, knew exactly when she planned on returning to work after the birth of her son, Carrick—three months. And Adrienne returned back to work as scheduled, after three months, and—although “there are times when he wakes hungry and [is] not willing to wait until my ‘next big blind’”—she is back to playing Omaha hold’em with little or no interruptions.
If you don’t establish a firm timetable you’ll never get back in the routine (or start the routine) of working from home after the birth of a child.
Asking for Help to Free Your Time
“How does one get this ‘free time?,’ you find yourself asking. It isn’t easy, but asking for help is essential.
While your ego as ‘Super Mom’ might take a miniscule hit, there is nothing wrong with asking for help. Moreover, remember that even mothers who don’t work from home need help when it comes to successfully raising their children.
Look over your weekly routine and decide what some of your more time consuming tasks are, and then outsource them. Most mothers find that the cost of hiring someone to help clean their house once or twice a week can often be recouped by the work you accomplish from working from home. Besides, wouldn’t you rather doing something you love than spend that time bent over a tub or dusting the dining room furniture?
If you decide that you want to have your children around you the majority of the week, and not in daycare, find a local Mother’s Day Out. This is a short term option for mothers needing some essential quiet and focused time—an opportunity to run errands or time to go to doctor appointments. However, in your case, this would be the optimal time to meet with clients or participate in conference calls.
Scheduling
Probably the largest component of planning is scheduling. You don’t always know exactly when a baby might go down for a nap or the length of said nap; however, you can almost always plan on a nap. It is important that you know exactly how to use this and other precious, quiet times.
Without proper scheduling, you’ll find yourself using a large percentage of your time attempting to figure out how to best utilize it. Therefore, if you sit down at the beginning of the week and prioritize assignments and appointments, all you’ll have to do is pull out your list to determine what fits into your schedule.
Minimize Distractions with Technology
Don’t allow your valuable time to be squandered on Facebook or online shoe shopping. Find your poison by tracking your online activity and then block those distractions during your work hours. RescueTime is a great computer application that tracks your online activity and reports back on how you are spending your time on the internet. There is a free version, RescueTime Lite, which we highly recommend. (You’ll be amazed when you get your results back.)
Once you’ve figured out what your distractions are, block them with time management apps. LifeHack has a great guide to blocking work distractions, complete with their Guide to Apps that Eliminate Distractions.
Have an Organized Home Office
We aren’t saying that you need to have a room entirely dedicated as a ‘home office,’ but you do need a space that is all your own and only for business. Whether you have a work bench in the garage or a corner of a guest bedroom, make sure your ‘home office space’ is organized and efficient. This gets back to our wasting valuable time concept. If you are constantly looking for items, you’ll be wasting precious time looking for paperwork and supplies when you should be closing contracts and selling products.
With one in five people working from home, and those number only growing, there is no reason as to why stay at home mothers cannot be work from home mothers. With proper planning it is possible for you, too, to join the ranks of mothers working from home.
If you want to know more about some of the available jobs for work from home mothers, check out our Work At Home Jobs Board.
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