Sanity Savers For the Work At Home Mompreneur

Recently we met with a mompreneur who was feeling overwhelmed by the competing demands of her business and her family - something any work-at-home mom can relate to. We asked her where her office is located in the house. When she replied that she works from her bedroom we had an ‘aha’ moment. This woman is literally sleeping with her business. No wonder she feels stressed, she never gets a break!

Running your own business means there is always work to be done. Add motherhood to the equation and some days there’s barely time to catch your breath. What’s worse, when we’re trying to do it all, we can end up not being very efficient at anything. So what’s a busy mompreneur to do? We think that setting yourself up to provide as much separation between your ‘work life’ and your ‘family life’ is one of the keys to success. Here are some simple tricks for creating some sanity-saving, efficiency-boosting work/life boundaries:

Set up a Family Command Centre. If you’re like us, you’re totally inundated with papers, forms and e-mails that have nothing to do with work at all. We can never believe how much administration our kids require! Find a spot in your home where all kid-related things go. This could be a corkboard in the kitchen, a colour-coded file box in your office or even a front-hall organizer. Set aside 15 minutes each day to take care of the family admin and we guarantee it’ll make everything saner!

Set ‘office hours.’ It may sound silly, but taking time to figure out when you are ‘at work’ and when you are ‘home’ can not only make you a lot more efficient, but can go a long way in managing your family’s expectations. By coming up with your office hours and even posting them for the family to see, it’s clear to everyone – especially you – when you’re hard at work, and when you’re available to the kids.

Get the technology you need. Every mompreneur needs the right office equipment to keep things running smoothly. Having an all-in-one printer, like the Kodak Hero printers, that works with cloud technology and allows you to wirelessly print, copy, scan and fax can really help. Also invest in other tools that help you be in more than one place at once – like smart phones, laptops and cloud technology. After all, if you have to be at hockey practice, you may as well be able to squeak some work in at the same time. Mompreneurs are multi-tasking mavens and the right technology can help you squeeze even a little more efficiency out of your busy schedule.

Raising your family and your business is always going to be challenging – but by establishing some easy systems and making sure you’ve got the tools on hand, your multitasking might just get a little easier. Now if only there was a system or a tool that would make dinner!  

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