More and more women have found a way to work from home in order to be more available to their families. However, now that they have found jobs or businesses to run, they’re starting to realize that working from home is not as easy as they thought it would be. Separating their work lives from personal lives and family obligations is a major cause of stress and disorganization.
Try these tips if you suffer the stresses of working from home:
1. Separate your work space from your family space. When your work space is your dining room table and this is where your family gathers for each meal, it is increasingly difficult to turn off your brain from work and focus on your family.
Rather than becoming disconnected from your family, try to find an area within your home to have your office so that it won’t interfere with your family life. Some examples of good office space are a spare bedroom, a corner of a finished basement, an attic, or loft space. Even small closets can be outfitted with a small desktop and electrical outlets for your computer. When these are not an option, set up shop in your bedroom to keep it away from the family areas.
2. Stay organized. A messy desk can be a huge distraction when trying to work. Even if you know where everything is on your disorganized desktop, having organized files and a place for everything will help make you more efficient and productive.
To achieve that clutter-free desk, use inexpensive organizing items, such as baskets with separate compartments, to help organize the odds and ends on your desk. You can keep rubber stamps, letters, invoices, pens, pencils, and the like in here. Organization makes finding things much easier, which results in a more relaxed work day.
3. Keep your business phone separate from the family phone line. No matter what your business, you have a certain professional image to uphold. That image could easily be shot if your child answers an important client call or picks up the extension during a conference call. Even if your clients know that you are a work at home mom, they don’t necessarily want to hear the kids when speaking to you.
The same is true for the computer. Ideally, you should have a business-only computer or laptop which is completely separate from the computer the kids use for their games. However, budgets do not always allow for this option. In that case, make sure that your business and job files and documents can’t be easily accessed by anyone but you. This will help prevent the stress of family members stumbling on a client’s important files and accidentally deleting them.
4. Using calendars or planners can help to keep track of business appointments or deadlines and family appointments. No more double booking client meetings or making the kids’ dentist appointments on the same day as a big presentation. There are numerous choices of calendars and planners on the market, both traditional paper and contemporary electronic planners. Try out both and find which solution works best for you.
5. Consider hiring a sitter on days you have a lot of work to do. Being a work at home mom gives you the benefit of controlling your own schedule and having a sitter keeps the kids away from your office. During this quiet time you can focus on your work and it gives your kids a chance to have fun without you feeling guilty or having them unsupervised.
Mixing business with family in the home setting can be a major source of stress. Keeping the business side of your life organized and separate from family is crucial to successfully keeping your stress levels down and your sanity intact. Plenty of moms find that balance of work and family time but it will be different for everyone. Be prepared for some routine changes as you figure out what works best for your own family.
About the Author: Aurelia Williams is a certified life coach and author of Real Life Guidance to Balancing Work And Family an Easy Step-By-Step Guide To Balancing Your Work And Family Time.
This is a good article! Just what I needed…to know other WAHM’s struggle with keeping their work separate from their family life. It is difficult, but it can be done. We have an “office” with one computer right now, but hopefully this week my laptop will come in, which will be for my business.
My kids are teenagers and young adults so I have the issue of transporting them around. You can read a post I wrote just yesterday on this very subject at http://marylutzprovbs.com.