When I decided to shift to my niche on my personal blog,  I asked read­ers to leave a ques­tion for me to answer in a blog post. It’s my way of encour­ag­ing a dis­cus­sion and exchange of ideas and tips. The first question/comment comes from Jea­nine aka Nat­u­ral­Momma. Here is what she had to say:

Hi Kristina!

I have a ques­tion. How do you find enough time in your day for home­school­ing and writ­ing and meals and …?

I am mak­ing a bit of a switch, myself, in that I am want­ing to write more, work one-on-one with clients less all in an effort to (1)live my pur­pose and (2)take my biz to the next level.

But as I have begun to spend more time writ­ing mini-books and blog posts and reports and email follow-up mes­sages, my son has begun to hate my computer!

Jea­nine

My imme­di­ate response to Jea­nine was a short reply which read, “You are not alone”. I stand by that still. You are not alone no mat­ter how it feels. Before becom­ing a work-at-home mom, I worked full time as an  Eng­lish teacher (9th grade) and for my daughter’s first year, I was also fin­ish­ing grad school. I was a wreck.  I left the house at 7:30 am and returned home most nights after 9:00 pm. On the nights that I was home ear­lier she was in bed by 5:30–6:00 EVERY NIGHT! I kid you not. I barely saw her and I was miserable.

After mak­ing the tran­si­tion to WAHM I thought that life would get eas­ier. I thought that I would have more time for her, but when you work from home it is even harder to draw bound­aries at times. I was work­ing 40–50 hour weeks try­ing to build a web design and con­sult­ing busi­ness and that left VERY lit­tle time for any­thing else. And again I was miserable.

Then I tried to restruc­ture my life accord­ing to worked for so many oth­ers. It wasn’t until I took Michele Dortch’s “Get Your Groove Back eClass*” that I was able to put things into per­spec­tive. Michele runs The Inte­grated Mother blog and net­work and is also a fellow Moms of Hue writer. She pro­vides so many tips to help work­ing moms of all kinds fig­ure it out. But for me it was the eClass that allowed me to focus on what I wanted and what I needed to do to make my life work.

The bot­tom line is this, you have to de­fine what “get­ting it all done” means for you and not for any­one else. As much as I wanted to be super­mom, I learned that my house is not always going to be neat and that din­ner will some­times have to be cereal and fruit in a bowl. My daugh­ter, who will be four in April, HATES my com­puter, but she has to learn that Mommy has to work.

The biggest step that I made in the last 6–8 months is that I set a sched­ule. I sent an email to cur­rent clients out­lin­ing my EXACT sched­ule. Because my hus­band is off from his job Sunday-Tuesday, Sun­day and Mon­day are our week­ends. I do not work unless it is an emer­gency. Here are my office hours and the mes­sage I send all clients:

Sun­day and Mon­day
Closed
Tues­day
By Appoint­ment Only
Wednesday-Saturday
9am-10pm; 1pm-5pm

Please direct all busi­ness related calls to my busi­ness line. Voice­mail and Call For­ward­ing are acti­vated on this line. And as always, you can reach me by email.

I try not to work while she is awake and I am home alone. My hus­band sched­ule affords me that (he begins work­ing at 3pm). If I need to do so, I have spe­cial activ­i­ties for her just for those times. For instance, she gets to watch Wall-E on my  portable Blu-Ray player in her room. This is a treat for her because she does not have a TV in her room and NEVER gets to use the portable player. At other times I allow her to paint alone (makes her feel like a big girl) or play a game on my lap­top. Don’t get me wrong, she still man­ages to need me the most while I’m in the midst of a call with a client, but I also inform my clients that I work from home and that every day is “Take Your Daugh­ter to Work Day” for us.

I left teach­ing because I wanted to focus on my daugh­ter and because I wanted to build a busi­ness on my terms. While I can com­pro­mise every now and again, my work hours are pretty much set in stone. You wouldn’t try to get the oil changed on you car after the garage is closed, right? It’s not dif­fer­ent. If it’s a prob­lem for a client, then I refer them to some­one else. I would rather lose a client than lose my mind!

For house duties these are some things that help:

(1) Weekly Meal menus: plan ahead

(2) Crock­pot: espe­cially in the cold weather. We eat a lot of soup, stews, and chili. But works well for Pot roast, oat­meal and more.

(3) Counter-top elec­tric roaster:  Cuts roast­ing time by almost 1 hour for a full chicken. Less energy used than the oven. Eas­ier to clean.

(4) Home­school Fun Bas­ket: edu­ca­tional supplies/activities that daugh­ter does n0t play with daily. Handy for emer­gency distraction.

(5) Music: take 10 min­utes and dance like crazy with your child. Gives him atten­tion and allows for you to get some exer­cise and stress-relief.

(6) Include your child in as many house­hold activ­i­ties as pos­si­ble. My daugh­ter loves shoot­ing bas­kets with dirty clothes into the washer. She puts the sil­ver­ware away when the dish­washer is clean. She feeds the dog.

(7) I give my daugh­ter a damp cloth and she dust the wooden fur­ni­ture. She’s been doing it since she was 2.

Jea­nine, I hope this helps. There is no exact sci­ence; trial by fire is the only method that I know of for fig­ur­ing this out. Don’t be so hard on your­self. Just take things day-by-day and it will work out.

Kristina Daniele

Kristina, Founder and Oz of We of Hue is one of many doing it across hues-homeschooling, wifing, mothering, and business building. She is a web designer and social media consultant with a love of building communities on line. She looks forward to intelligent conversation that is eye-opening and statement-making.

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