Three Things to Know . . .

So this is fun right? Maybe “3 random things” will become a thing around here, maybe not. We’ll see. In the meantime, I’m excited to share with you

Three things to know about working from home as a mom.

It’s really, really hard. I know, I can hear you now. “Hard? Are you kidding me? You can roll out of bed and work in your pj’s all day and not have to fight mail room Bill for the last bit of coffee? And you call this hard?” I hear you. It may sound a little like I’m complaining. I’m not. I’m just telling you how it is. Yes, you can roll out of bed and work in your pj’s all day, but here, there’s the daily fight for my attention. With Elsie in school, it’s worlds easier—both boys are very happy to play legos, look at books, or play on the “green iPad” (kindle) while I work, however, they are still boys so there are still fights to break up, diapers to change, and mouths to feed (and then feed again). Even if you don’t have kids, there’s the fight to stay off social media all day, not binge on Netflix instead of working, not go out to lunch and run errands all day and the list goes on and on. Which brings me to my next point.

You have to set schedules and boundaries. Working a 9-to-5 comes with somewhat of a built in schedule. You come to work at 9, get an hour lunch break, work until 5. Go home. Repeat. That’s not always how it is when you work from home. A good chunk of my work happens before noon. A little before Elsie goes to school, and a bunch before Andy goes to work. By the time Elsie comes home from school, unless I’m just under a massive deadline for something, I can’t work anymore until after bedtime. Yup. Sometimes I work after bedtime. The big picture here, is you need to figure out what works best for you, and your family, and stick with it. Those are your “work hours”. Don’t take personal calls or work on other “non-work” things during these hours. Protect your working hours! Except for when the third thing happens . . .

Remember. Sometimes your schedule and boundaries aren’t going play nice and it’s ok to drop them. There are days where Oliver is sick or Drew just needs to cuddle and nothing you do is helping you get your work done. Every once in a while it’s ok to drop your perfectly planned schedule and just be. I remember a particular challenging week. There were sick kids and unexpected family visitors and more bouts of randomness. My boss, in all her wonderfulness said something to the fact of, “It’s ok. It’s fine. Family comes first. The job, the work, it’ll be here. Family, your kids, they are what’s most important.” So it’s ok to not be perfect on top of things all the time. It’ll be there tomorrow for you to pick back up.