Balance Work And Family

Are You Walking The WAHM Tightrope?

As a Work At Home Mom (WAHM) your goal to balance work and family can feel a little like walking on a tight-rope. Balancing your work-time and your family-time can easily become overwhelming. However, with a little planning, organizing and effective communicating, it can be done. In fact hundreds of thousands of moms around the world are Work At Home Moms.

As a WAHM you are already ahead of the game because you've cut out some of the hurdles of working outside the home. You no longer need to worry about commutes, expensive wardrobes, childcare costs and the challenges that come when your child is sick and you have to miss work to care for him/her.

The following are some ideas to help you balance work and family...

Change When You Work

When you have an Internet based business, you have maximum ability to set your own hours, so really take a close look at when you are trying to work. If you can handle doing some work at "odd hours", it will help you to be more available for family time when it's best for all of you.

If you're a morning person, try to get up an hour before your family does and take advantage of this quiet time to focus on your business. Even if you just get the "light" stuff out of the way, you'll feel that you got something accomplished during this time.

Night owls can take care of e-mails and other administrative tasks after they have put the kids to bed. We're not suggesting doing this every night, but trying to choose a few "family agreeable" nights a week to work late can help to balance work and family time.

Work While You Wait

When you pick your children up from school and activities, use the time you spend waiting for them to do a variety of tasks. Pack a work bag for the car with things that can be done in short snippets of time and which you don't need your computer for. Practice doing this for one school year and by the next one you'll be amazed at what you can get done with all those five minute waits!

Prepare Meals Together

During the week, when schedules are busiest, planning easy dinners can make a huge difference. Let your kids help out in the kitchen while you cook too. It's a great way to spend time together and you'll be teaching them important life skills. There are plenty of "kid friendly recipes" and "quick and easy meals" to be found online if you need some inspiration on what to make.

A Family That Works Together Plays Together

Blend family time and work time by getting your children involved in your business. Smaller children can do lots of little tasks such as stamping postcards or adding mailing labels. Older children can distribute fliers. Teenagers can take on some administrative tasks such as data entry. Most kids these days are whizzes on many software programs. Tap into their skills and watch their self esteem grow! With a little scrutiny, you'll likely be able to find all kinds of small work tasks which kids can do and that will amount to a big help over time. Don't discount the small stuff ;-)

Schedule Family Time... If You Must

Set aside some time each day to spend with your husband and children with no distractions. You don�t have to go anywhere special. The time can be spent reading a book, talking or playing a game. The important thing here is to let your family know that they come first, the business comes second and that you are trying to balance work and family for everyone's benefit.

Erin: Not too long ago, I found myself working so hard that the only time I spent with my children was driving them to and from school, sports and activities. It was definitely not quality interacting time. It's really easy to slip into this pattern, particularly if you are trying to replace a career income or are struggling to make ends meet.

One way I broke out of this was to talk with my children and agree on some things we could do together to help me (us) balance work and family. Here's a couple of things that we did to help you get ideas for your own family...

I used to love to cross-stitch and taught my daughters how when they were younger. Because I've been so busy working the past few years, none of us kept up with this even though we all enjoyed it. Well we got the idea that we'd pick out a project and each have a section to do. Once completed, we'd put it all together to make a keepsake we could hang up and enjoy for years to come. We spent time...

deciding on a pattern we all liked
picking out the materials
getting ready for our project
reviewing how to cross-stitch since it had been a few years

Do you see the operative words here? We "spent time". Sometimes we will cross-stitch together, sometimes just when we each feel like it. We are able to encourage each other and provide accountability just by asking how each other's section is shaping up too. All this equates to more time together... without mom working.

Another example is my son and I decided on a book we would both like to read. We bought two copies and are reading a chapter a week and then spend time talking about what we read. We spend time together discussing and choosing the books and we spend time together talking about them. This works well for us.

Now it's your turn to think of ways to balance work and family. Look for ways that you and your family members can carve out time in your busy lives to "spend together." Life is NOT all about how hard you work and how much you need to make, even if it seems like it sometimes.

Are YOU Doing Too Much?

Remember, you became a work at home mom so you could spend time with your family, right? If you find that you aren't spending any time with them, you may be trying to do too much work like I was (and still sometimes do). Take a step back, discuss things with your family and make some choices to help balance work and family.

Another thing that can help is considering hiring a Virtual Assistant and do some outsourcing. Yes, even if it's a part-time biz you are running! And yes, even if you are struggling to make ends meet.

For a long time I thought I couldn't afford to hire a VA even though I dreamed about how wonderful it would be. As I began researching the (crazy) idea, I realized it wasn't so crazy after all. It was actually doable... in baby steps.

First, I decided to make a plan to re-invest $50 a month back into my business by hiring a VA to do a few hours of work a month. This may not seem like much but it was enough to push my business to the next level. I've since added a little more money into my "VA fund" every couple of months as my income increases and now my VA works 10 hours per month. It is my hope to continue adding VA hours over time. You can try doing this too!

There's a lot of work that needs to be done for an online business and some of it is easy, just time consuming. Consider outsourcing some administrative tasks to a college student or another work at home mom even if it's only for a few hours per month. I can assure you, it makes a considerable difference and will help to balance work and family.

Step Off The Tightrope... You're On Steady Ground Again

So, enjoy your family, work hard when you can and continue to reassess your goals. My hope is that you'll soon feel like you're off the tightrope and back on steady ground.

For moms who want a unique, all-in-one site-building, site-hosting and site-marketing product and a step-by-step business building process (includes domain), we highly recommend Site Build It!. Thousands of moms have found SBI! to be the perfect solution to their quest to work at home.

Subscribe To Niche Build It! News

Return From Balance Work And Family To Niche Build It!