A Guide - How to Balance Working from Home with Motherhood

Working from home is worthwhile for new mums who want to earn but don’t want to sacrifice time with their newborns. Being a work-from-home mum does come with its fair share of problems, though. If the right kind of balance isn’t achieved with regards to this kind of venture, everything can become incredibly difficult, incredibly quickly.

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To see what you can do to balance working from home with being a mother, consider the following guide:

Find ways to relieve your tension

Having to get on with your workload while dealing with the wants and needs of your child will stretch you thin. If you’re not careful, it will stretch you to the point where you are stressed and unhappy.

To avoid packing your work-from-home venture in before it’s gotgoing, you have to take looking after yourself very seriously. More to the point, you have to find ways to relieve your tension throughout each working day. It can be five minutes spent here and there watching a video on the Internet or it can entail you taking twenty minutes to yourself every few hours to sit down and have a cup of tea — whatever helps you to escape from all of your stresses, make sure you find the time to indulge in it. If this means taking on less work or easier deadlines, then so be it. If you’re tense, your work won’t be up to the standard required, and that’ll only ever see you worse off with regards to your career.

Have the equipment you need on hand

You’re going to make this venture even more difficult than it already is if you’re constantly having to leave the house in search of the equipment you need to do your job, so make sure everything is always within your reach.

Here are some of the basic tools you should have on hand at all times:

• A laptop, desktop computer, and/or tablet

• A printer, scanner and spare ink cartridges — you can source quality printing equipment and goods for a reasonable price at Cartridge People

• A dedicated phone line

• A strong Internet connection

Be flexible at all times

Flexibility is key if you’re going to make working from home and being a parent at the same time work for you. This means that you have to keep your schedule as open as you possibly can, mainly because you never know what problems are going to befall you. Your child could have a particularly difficult night sleep, for instance, which forces you to get up and start your working day later. Being able to work whenever you can, makes it much easier and less stressful. 

If you have a flexible timetable, the hours missed in the morning will not impact your day too much going forward. Of course, you can also rely on family to help you look after your children, or if they are at school, work during school hours and finish before they return home.