Work at home mums - managing your time

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Work at home mums have the mother of all jobs in attempting to balance their time between work and children. Children are demanding and noisy by nature and trying to juggle work tasks, the housework and requests for drinks, food or games can be a constant battle.

The key to efficiency for work at home mums is good time management. There's no way to avoid your children distracting you unless you've got alternative child care facilities and it can be hard to get back into the swing of things 'at work' once you've made the peanut butter and jam sandwiches or kissed that bruised six-year old's ego better.

Establishing a work schedule is essential. Each day you need to list your goals for that day and prioritize them in order of importance. Some of these jobs will require a quiet block of time in order to be completed and you need to schedule these for the time when the baby is asleep or the children are at school.

Other jobs can be done in short bursts and these are the ones to schedule for that time of the day when you hope the children are going to be quiet but you can pretty much guarantee you'll still need to give them attention.

Another reason that work at home mums need a schedule is that clients need to know when they can contact you. If your mornings are your quietest time let clients know it's a good time to call, and use an answering machine to screen calls at all other times. You can always pick up if it's something essential.

Being ultra organized in your housework pays off as well. Maximise the time you have available for your work by preparing simple but nutritious meals for the kids and making sure the washing doesn't pile up and become an appealing alternative to your dreaded accounts.

Keep your daily list of tasks on hand so that when you do get distracted by family responsibilities you can easily get back into the flow of work when you get back to your desk. Cross off tasks as you complete them and use the list as a reminder for what still has to be completed that day.

It's easy to overestimate how much productive time you'll have at home especially if you have children, so you need to be realistic in your goals as a work at home mum. Prepare well, set reasonable goals and focus on keeping a good balance between work, family and personal time for the best solution.

© The Pink Fridge Online Magazine 2008 - Work at Home Mums