Keep It Together! Looking After Your Family (When You’re Working From Home Too)
If you’re someone who is working from home, you know how difficult it is to keep everything together, not just the business, but your family! And while a lot of parents do it successfully, it comes at a price. Some mothers feel they are barely hanging on, whereas others are keeping everything running like a tight ship. If you are the former, it’s all about the few simple things…
Organization
Structure is your ally. If you are someone that goes into a problem without any means to solve it, this is going to cause more stress, and it will take three times as long to get anything done. When you run any sort of operation from home, you’ve got to ensure that it’s as precise as a Swiss watch. If necessary, have a calendar, and block out parts of your day, so you know what needs doing, but also, don’t work against your instincts. If you work better at certain times of day, structure everything around that! And in addition to this, we have house duties to maintain, dogs to walk, babies to feed and so on, it’s about a very delicate balancing act between the two.
Clear Boundaries
If you need a two-hour block in which to complete something, then everybody else in the family needs to respect this. It’s about highlighting where the boundaries are, and what will happen if they are crossed. It’s about respecting your privacy, so you can get these things done. You need to have these boundaries, either by communicating this to the family or by having a space for you to do the work. A home office is essential, because it gives you that peace and quiet in which to focus. If you have children that make a lot of noise, and they are constantly interrupting, there are little things you can do to help block out that noise, such as noise canceling headphones, but the real deterrent is making sure the children respect the boundaries.
Prepare For Chaos!
And of course, it doesn’t always go according to plan! If something happens and it needs fixing right away, your structure and organization can go down the drain! Sometimes we can’t physically do everything to keep the household ticking over. And if there’s a real emergency, like the children getting sick, or from the business perspective, there are urgent deadlines, you have to ensure that there are ample supplies in the house to keep the kids and pets at bay! If you’re not able to take the dog out, perhaps dog diapers can help minimize the potential for much mess in the house. Or if you need to get something done to a tight deadline, then bribery of your children with chocolates may be the one true answer! It’s important to know that no matter how much you plan, things can go wrong!
As if looking after your family isn’t working that, if you’re trying to get a business off the ground, or you work from home, it can feel like stress upon stress. But it doesn’t need to be like that and remember- cut yourself some slack as well! You’re working very hard!
