What I’ve Learned During 7 Years Working From Home
Posted by Debbie Dragon on November 23, 2009
This week, my oldest son turns 7. During those 7 years, I’ve worked out of my home as a freelance writer and content marketer. Like most people, I started on the quest to work from home when I was pregnant with my first child because I really didn’t want to put him in daycare but financially – we needed my income. It wasn’t always easy and we made some sacrifices to make it happen, but I fully believe it was the best choice for our family.
Here are some things I’ve learned during 7 years working from home:
If you only have 2.5 hours per day when your oldest child(ren) are in school and your youngest is in preschool, you can’t use that time to do housework. Whatever your unique circumstances are, if you have a few hours when the kids are out of the house – that should be 100% dedicated to work time. The dishes will still be in the sink and the cracker crumbs still on the floor when the kids get home – but it’s easier to clean up the house with kids underfoot than it is to concentrate on work while they’re tearing through the house. You can turn housework into family time, with everyone pitching in to get the chores done quickly so there’s more time to play. But, ALWAYS choose to work when the kids aren’t home over catching up on housework!
Just because you work from home doesn’t mean you won’t need babysitters to help you once in awhile. I can multi-task with the best of ‘em, but there are times when the projects I’m working on demand my entire attention, and it’s just not possible to keep one eye on the kids and one eye on the work.
Even though you tell people you work from home, unless they too are a work-at-home business owner, the implications of “working from home” won’t really sink in to them. Friends, family and neighbors – particularly other moms – will call on you to help them out with errands and babysitting. You’ll learn to say no to some of these requests from others for help – otherwise you’ll never have time to work.
The television isn’t as evil as people might want you to believe it is. No, I don’t condone parking your kids in front of the TV all day, every day, but I’m a firm believer there is absolutely nothing wrong with age-appropriate television viewing now and then. I especially think it comes in handy when the kids are unexpectedly home from school or an event is cancelled but your deadlines don’t get changed to compensate for the new home schedule. My children have learned quite a bit from preschool and elementary school aged television programming and even the sponge parents love-to-hate but all kids can’t help but love – Spongebob – has done nothing to harm my kids.
No matter how hard I try, it doesn’t seem possible to keep a strict work schedule. I’m still undecided if it’s the type of work I do (kind of creative, pulling words from my mind and filling up a blank page) or if it’s just working from home in general – but it seems impossible to create a schedule and stick to it day after day. So I’ve learned to be flexible. If my intentions are to work from 8 until 2pm, but when 9am comes and my mind isn’t cooperating – I may switch to bill paying, organizing, cleaning, or anything else to give my mind a break. The only way this is possible is to make up for that time during non-work time. So after the kids are in bed, I often find myself making up for the missed hours earlier in the day. This works for me – but it may not work for everyone. It seems to me you have to be aware of your own productivity and needs and be flexible enough to accommodate them whenever possible.
I’m sure I must have learned more than that over the last 7 years – but these are the areas of working from home that stand out to me the most. These are things that I didn’t have any clue about before I started on this journey, and hopefully my discoveries will help some of you who are looking to work from home.
Moon Loh said,
You are right! Not every moms can truly understand how a WAHM really “work from home”. Sometimes they might feel that we are “quite free” at home. It’s not true actually, we have our own schedule to follow and tasks to finish. Also, we need to be flexible like you said, when the kids need us, we have to adjust our timing and get back to work only when they are fall asleep.
7 yrs.. I just start my WAHM journey this year.
Moon Loh
Rachel Karl said,
Debbie, this is SO true! I am having to learn the hard way all the things you mentioned above.
Now, if only there were some magical formula for honing in on that “productivity zone” when the kids are gone for those precious few hours!
Rachel
Debbie Dragon said,
Tell me about it Rachel! It seems never to fail that I feel most productive about 3 minutes before the kids are due back!
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