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Work At Home Mom
Advice & Tips

Work at Home Moms: The Importance of Priority and Time Management

By: Audrey Lynn

For work at home moms, twenty four hours a day is never enough. Juggling between children, family and your career or business is a delicate skill. It is important to remind ourselves that we stay at home to give the best care to our children. So trading your quality time with your children and family with your business or job is never an option. Moreover, what about time to ourselves? That is important too. Having so many things to take care of, to avoid burn out and over stress, we have to learn how to prioritize and manage our time. In order to manage your time effectively, the first thing is to decide what your goals and priorities are. The next decision is managing your priorities efficiently. You can do this by determining what is more important to you. By listing the list of priorities starting from the most important, you can then analyze how much time you should spend on a particular task in life. Keeping a journal is very helpful to make a list of to-do tasks and an estimate how long you will spend on completing them. You should include activities such as working, sleeping, relaxing, exercising, learning as part of your list. You can then go on to evaluate the use of your time and determine the best schedule for making better use of it.

Next, after you have a working list of priorities, you need to match your available time to your list of priorities. While the time spent on each of the task at hand is important, you should also ask yourself if you are spending enough quality time on each task? A good example of this would be that if you are taking up part time courses, are you studying during your productive time or are you studying during a time which you can get easily distracted.

Here are some practical tips of using your time more effectively. Break down large tasks into smaller ones and tackling each individual part one at a time can ease the stress considerably than facing one huge task.

Get rid of routine tasks, if a task is done just out of routine instead of necessity then eliminate it if possible. Look at your habits to see if they could be changed, maybe you could do certain things different ways and save yourself some time in the process. Evaluate yourself to determine if you are a morning person or night person and organize tasks to use whatever time suits you best. Learn to say the word “no” when asked to do something for someone. Since we work from home, we are easily taken for granted that we are free to run errands for others. Be firm especially to those who know you cannot refuse them. It is alright to do favors once a while but remember your priority.

Last but not least, do not forget to give yourself "Me" time. This is the time you allocate for yourself. It does not need to be long, but just some personal time daily to do what you enjoy most. It may be having a relaxing bath, a facial at home, meditation, exercising or any activity which can help you relax and calm your mind. I find this "me" time very helpful in keeping me focus as well as minimize stress.

In conclusion, working from home is one of the best choice for any mothers who want to be at home for their children. However, time is often a constraint. Learn how to manage time effectively and you are on your way to be a successful work at home mom.

10 Tips On Working At Home With Young Children

By: Angie Hewerdine
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Working at home can be stressful, especially with small children in the house. Where is the balance between work and home when home IS work? Here are some suggestions to help both you and your kids make the most of each day at the home office.

1. Try to get up at least an hour before the children. This gives you some quiet time to assess your daily priorities, stretch your body and mentally and physically prepare for the day ahead. This is YOUR time. It is of the utmost importance. Meditate at least 10 minutes in the morning. Visualize your day going smoothly.

2. Make sure that your children have your full attention when they first wake up. Give them hugs and kisses. Make them breakfast. Enjoy some snuggling and laughter. These are precious times that will not always be here. Give your children the gift of being present in the mornings.

3. Develop a routine with your kids. Keep your schedule essentially the same every day, but don't be a slave to the clock. Each morning, set up a selection of fun things for them to do that will keep them happily entertained such as crayons and markers, table toys, play dough, watercolors or a small indoor sandbox with digging toys.

4. If you can afford it, hire a nanny or a school aged mother's helper to come into your home for just a few hours a day to play with and attend to your children. This gives you total solitude at least for an hour or two, even if only a few times a week.

5. Don't devote a set block of time to your work each day. Instead, have certain objectives, such as "I will work for 4 hours today." Work during nap time. Sneak a few minutes during lunch or whenever the children are happily playing.

6. Allow for some flexibility, but don't just abandon your work if the kids are not cooperating. You can be creative. Take them outside for a while. Let them be active with you and they will most likely give you the downtime you need to get some work done later on.

7. Let the kids help with small tasks. Let them staple, paper clip and help you "sort" or cut. They may not actually be assisting you with your work, but they will enjoy it and it makes them feel important, as if they are helping Mom with her work. Be sure to thank them for their help.

8. Try to save things that can be done after hours, such as internet work, filing, paperwork, checking emails etc. for when they have gone to bed. You will find that an hour of quiet working time will enable you to catch up on your day.

9. Stay in the present moment. If a kid needs a hug or some juice, don't put them off or push them away. Remember the reason we wanted to work at home in the first place? So we can spend more time with our families. Give the hug...get the juice. Do it lovingly and be grateful for the opportunity.

10. Enjoy the journey! Life is too important to waste being stressed out about your business. Our children, their happiness and comfort are far more important that our business. The little things will take care of themselves when we are in the frame of mind to enjoy what we are creating for ourselves.

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Stay At Home Mom's Need To Work, Too

By: Gena Biem

It is just about every mother's dream to be able to stay home and care for their children. Unfortunately, this dream is becoming harder and harder to obtain. Within every minute of every day the price of our necessities is rising. It's not just the fuel that we use in our cars and to heat our homes, but every other utility, household product, and now more than ever, the food that we eat.

Because of this, many stay-at-home-mom's are now scrambling and searching for a "perfect" home-based business. They don't want to lose their dream. They finally managed to cut-back to the bare-minimum, they have learned how to frugally cook and thrift shop like the pros, there is no way they can trim the budget any further; and yet, after all their hard work they are finding themselves in a panic over their finances once again.

The variety of home-based businesses is much larger than it used to be, and according to my research a new online business is created every 10 seconds. You can imagine how confusing this can be for someone with very little business experience. Because so many mothers are now looking for online businesses I have pin-pointed some questions you may want to ask yourself before deciding on a particular business.

1. How much do I have to invest?

2. On top of the initial investment, do I have to purchase a certain amount of product each month?

3. Do I have to sell anything? If so, how do I go about selling my products? Will anyone be available to help me when I have questions?

4. How will I be paid? How often will I be paid? Who will pay me?

5. Am I paid on commission? Is the company considered to be an MLM? What is an MLM? If it is an MLM, how many levels will I be paid for?

6. How do I advertise? Do I have to pay for advertising? How much will I be able to budget for advertising? Is it possible to "successfully" use free advertising?

7. Do I have to have long-distance available on my phone? Can I afford to pay for extra fees on my bill? Do I need call-waiting, DSL or three-way calling? Will I be able to keep my children quiet while I'm on the phone?

8. How long will it take before I start to see a profit?

9. Do I need a website? Does the company supply a website? If not, who will help me create a website?

It's important to understand that ANY business online can be successful as long as you learn it, practice it, and master it. Whether it's a business that requires 12 hours of your time a day or just 2-3 hours, you will have to commit to learning it inside and out. An online business is still a business and it should be taken seriously.

If you're thinking about starting your own online business I suggest you do your homework. Explore as many areas as you can and most importantly ask questions. Decide what's most important to you, is it the amount of hours you'll need to work each day or how much you will have to invest just to get started? It may be confusing, but it's actually a good thing there are so many business opportunities available to us, it means there really is a "perfect" business out there for each of us!

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