Work at Home Mom: Juggle Your Career and Family While Keeping Your Sanity

Having a career which allows you to work from home can be both rewarding and luxurious. The freedom to be your own boss, create your own hours, and procrastinate as you please can be very joyous to the self-employed, freelance writers and various other individuals who find that working at home is the career path they wish to travel. Working at home is a decision that comes with many challenges though, as you must be able to work hard, promote yourself and your work and often abide by deadlines. Those challenges can be made more difficult for those who are trying to juggle a family amidst all of the chaos of working from home. By setting boundaries that clearly separate work from personal life, you can successfully manage to balance the two while keeping your sanity in tact and your production levels high.

Define Your Spaces
Dedicate a room to your work, and keep it contained. For any work at home job, having a space in which you can go to get away from the commotion of day to day activities is critical. Avoid developing the habit of working wherever you happen to be. When you are constantly distracted by the activities of your children and spouse taking place around you, production levels decrease significantly leaving you working harder yet less efficiently than if you had a dedicated work space.

Be the Early Bird
No one likes to wake at the crack of dawn. But as the old saying goes, "the early bird catches the worm." Finding adequate time throughout the day to work can prove difficult when you have children. Being an early riser is a great way to provide yourself with some extra time to dedicate to your work, with the added bonus of a silent home. Set your alarm 1-2 hours before the rest of your family awakens to start the day. After a good nights rest, your ideas will flow smoothly and the quality of your work will be of a better degree.

Brain Food
Spend meal times with your family. Allowing your children to assist you in preparing the meals for your family is a great way to gain some quality time with them. Let your work rest during these times and take the opportunity to talk and connect with your children and your spouse. By having a routine of eating meals with your family, you are assuring them as well as yourself that you are indeed able to control the boundaries between your work and personal life.

Be Consistent
While working at home does provide the luxury of setting your own hours, when you're juggling children and a relationship it is helpful to maintain at least a semblance of a routine with the hours you are devoting to your work. Take the time to create your own work schedule, and abide by it throughout the week. Make it clear to your children and spouse that this is your time to work and that family time will follow. This way, you are able to produce throughout a regular time period, and prevent yourself from withdrawing from family in order to work at inconsistent times.

Take a Day Off
Set aside one day per week, perhaps a Saturday, and spend the entire day with your family. Take the children to the zoo, see a movie together, or enjoy the day at the park. Whatever you choose to do, your family will be grateful to have this time with you without interruptions from work. Spend the evening with your spouse. Relax together with a movie, or go out to dinner. With all of the work it takes to successfully manage working at home, you and your significant other will both be appreciative of the opportunity to reconnect on an intimate level.

Working at home is a huge responsibility to take on and requires a lot of time and effort to become successful. By establishing control of boundaries, you will soon find that these small changes in your daily routine can help you to keep your production levels consistent, as well as reconnect with your family.