Tips for Work at Home Homeschooling Moms
I’ve been surprised in the years that we’ve been homeschooling to find out just how many homeschooling moms also homeschool. The majority of them work from home but some of them even manage to work outside the home!
There are a variety of reasons mother’s homeschool and work, for some they really aren’t given any other option and others make the choice.
For me working at home has been a choice I’ve made. Originally, back before we even had kids I told Jared that after the one year maternity leave we get here in Canada I would want to go back to work. Sometimes I feel like I blindsided him a little when I think about how we now homeschool and I work from home. Pretty much the opposite of what I told him, definitely the opposite of what I thought life would look like.
Today I wanted to share a little bit about what working from home while being a homeschool mom really looks like, plus some tips for those who are thinking about traveling down this road.
I hope to eventually share a work at home, homeschooling mom day in the life but my days start fairly early and at this point in the winter we have zero light for a few hours each morning, so hopefully once the sun starts rising sooner I’ll be able to do so. Though, you can get a little idea of my day from our homeschool day in the life.
THE WORK I DO
First I should start off by sharing what kind of work it is that I do. Well, I blog over here. This includes regular blog posts, emailing companies, writing sponsored posts, creating products, writing my weekly-ish newsletter, posting to social media, etc. In addition I also run Intentional Bundles, that includes a lot of working with other content creators, lots of emailing, organizing bundles, creating sales pages, graphics, etc, etc, etc.
Now that you have a bit of an idea what it is that I “do”, you can take that into consideration while reading the rest of this post.
TIPS FOR WORK AT HOME HOMESCHOOLING MOMS
#1 BE FLEXIBLE
The biggest piece of advice I can give is to be flexible. You can plan out your entire day but honestly, when does a day actually go as you’ve planned? Or maybe it is just me. I know some WAHM try to have actual “office hours”, whether or not this actually works for them I don’t know, but I know if I tried to have office hours it wouldn’t work well. Right now I need to be flexible and work when I can, which leads me to . . .
#2 USE SMALL POCKETS OF TIME
While I would like to have something like a solid four hour chunk each morning to get some work done it doesn’t usually happen like that. I usually end up working when I have the time, for me, in this season, that means working when the kids are playing together. That generally means a bit of time in the morning, a bit of time in the afternoon and sometimes a bit of time in the evening.
#3 GET UP EARLY
I do try to give myself a little bit of extra work time by getting up early. Thankfully Raeca has stopped waking up at 6am every morning and now I usually have about an hour each morning before the kids are up to get some things checked off my list for the day.
#4 COORDINATE KID SWAPS
This is not something I have actually done but I love the idea of. You can take the idea of a “kid swap” and put a “co-op” twist on it to make it even better. If you know another work at home homeschool mom you could pick a day or two a week to swap kids; whoever has the kids can do some kind of learning activity with them and whoever is kid free can have time to work. You can switch roles the next week or you could do two days a week so you each get a day to work. This does sound like an ideal world possibility to me and not something that will actually happen but I wanted to throw it out there in case it would work for someone!
#5 SCHEDULE YOUR WORK AS MUCH AS POSSIBLE
This may sound contradictory to my “be flexible” point above but I don’t mean you should schedule your work time but your actual work, if it is possible. As a blogger I can write blog posts whenever they work for me and then get my site to schedule when they go live. As someone who will often feel motivated to write a ton of ideas at once this works really well, that way I can write a few posts and schedule them out and then have a couple of days where I don’t need to write any posts. That way when inspiration is lacking I’m covered.
#6 TAKE BREAKS TO HAVE FUN
Being a WAHM does not mean your day needs to be all work and no fun! Be intentional with taking time to actually have fun with your kids too! This is something I have not been great with and it is a major goal of mine for the next year.
Do you have any tips for homeschooling WAHM? Leave them in the comments below!
