*This is a collaborative post.
You can build and run a little empire of your own straight from home, never having to pay for office overheads or lengthy payrolls. Instead, you get to work out of your own space in a comfortable, flexible, and relatively budget-friendly way. It’s no wonder more and more people are taking career power into their own hands and making a profit on their own terms!
However, even a home business has its troubles. If you’re a parent who has young children to take care of during ‘work hours’, this trouble is going to rear its ugly head in a way few other home business owners will have to think about. After all, your kids need your time and attention as well, and the feeling like you’re a bad parent because you need to spend a few hours working with clients is the most demoralising feeling in the whole world!
That’s why we’ve put together a little guide on creating a peaceful and private working space that’ll help you to keep your professional life and your personal life away from each other. If you can get your work done without the kids beating down the door or complaining that their siblings are being mean, you’ll be able to keep a much straighter head on your shoulders!
Don’t Try to Be Perfect
You want to be the best business owner you know, of course, and you want to be the best parent you can possibly be, naturally. However, if you try to aim for both of these things at the same time, you’re going to overstretch yourself and become more likely to fail. And honestly? You’re already a pretty great parent and self-motivating business owner!
You’ve got nothing to prove to yourself here, so try to take things slowly and don’t try to be perfect on either side. Prioritise the tasks that need to come first, such as getting the kids off to school, giving them a hug when they’re sad, and finishing that email to a well-paying client, and then let the rest be played by ear.
You’re less likely to let things slip when you let go of the image of a perfect work/life balance in your head. No one ever achieves that balance straight away! It’s going to take time to get used to things, and you’re going to make a few mistakes, but you know what? That’s OK! You’re juggling two big things in life right now and no one can blame you for getting a couple of things wrong along the way.
Set Some New Rules
So, you’re about to become a home business owner. You also need to tell the kids that this is your new job. That means you’re going to need to set some new rules, especially if they’ve only ever known you to leave the house to get work done, and will be unsure about how to behave if you’ll be working from home from now on.
Sit them all down together and let them know what working from home means and how important it is to you. Make sure they understand just how serious your job is going to be, and why that means they need to respect a couple of new rules whilst you’re all in the house.
For example, if the door to your office is shut, it means they can’t come in or knock unless it’s a real emergency. If the door is open, on the other hand, they can walk right in to come and talk to you.
Give them some time to get used to these new rules, as they may forget and make mistakes in the first couple weeks, but also make sure you enforce them every single time.
Get Important Stuff Done When the Kids are in Bed
Working during the later hours doesn’t sound all that enjoyable, but if the only time you really get to yourself is after the kids have gone to bed, this may be the best working setup for you. Working from home is all about flexibility, after all, and that often means moving your schedule around to less traditional hours.
You may even find that that’s the time your brain comes alive and work tasks become a bit easier – a lot of us are night owls without even knowing it!
But seriously, put the kids to bed, make sure they’re tucked up and cosy, and then get to work on your home business. You can give yourself at least two hours every evening to get things done, before you kick back with a pre-bedtime TV show yourself. It may take some getting used to, but sometimes lifestyles have to change in order to make life a bit easier to achieve the things we want!
Put Your Office in the Garden
Have you got a garden attached to your home? Then you’ve got the chance to build your office out there, making it separate from the rest of your home and thus your personal life. You can then nip in and out of the office as and when and the kids may even be none the wiser – that’s a great combination for peace and harmony within the home!
Indeed, an office in the garden is a great idea for the modern home business owner. You don’t need to find space in your actual house to fit a desk (and some privacy to get your work done), and you don’t need to shut and lock the door behind you to stop anyone from barging in.
Set up the office in the way you need – maybe with a rug on the floor for some extra insulation – and then get to work without a problem. And sure, you may need to enforce the rules we spoke about above to make sure the kids stay out, but it’ll still be better than trying to work indoors!
Budget for Childcare
If you’re going to be running a business of your own, and you’re already turning a nice little profit from it, why not think about investing some of that into childcare? If you can get a babysitter or childminder round for a couple of hours on a Saturday or infrequently throughout the summer holiday, you’ll have a lot more time and peace to get work done.
It’s perfectly OK to still be in the house when you’ve hired someone to take care of the kids for a bit. All you need to do is tell the kids they need to stay with the sitter, shut the door behind you, and then reinforce this rule if the kids come through the door anyway.
You can also think about sending the kids to an after-school club a couple of times a week during term time. This can give you an extra hour or an extra 90 minutes to get things done during the busy midweek sessions all business owners have to deal with.
Schedule Content Ahead of Time
One of the most innovative tools the online world has given us is the chance to schedule content if we run a website or social media profile. Take full advantage of this as a working parent running a business at home with the kids around.
This way you can make sure the content goes out as and when it should without worrying that you’re away from your laptop or phone during peak posting hours. You’ve already got it set up to publish, and any reactions you get to the new content can be dealt with later on.
Keep Business and Personal Completely Separate
We noted this in the intro, but when you’re unable to keep your business and personal life completely separate from one another, things start to get complicated and go wrong. That’s not something you can really afford as someone trying to raise a family and run a home business at the same time.
Whilst it’s OK to have a few accidents and mistakes and slip-ups here and there, you don’t want them to become the running theme of your work/life balance. So take time to draw up these lines of separation and routinely check they’re still working for you.
If the kids need more time from you, something needs to change on the business side. If your emails are piling up, something needs to change on the personal side. The balance should be flexible too.
Want to run a business from home but you’re worried you won’t be there for the kids? Use tips like these to make your career dreams come true. You’re never going to be a bad parent for wanting to provide for your family, and all you need right now is a bit of peace and quiet to get things done. You can achieve that with a few new rules, clever office design, and even a bit of professional childcare here and there.
Incredibly good advice for anyone working from home. I like to see mums setting up businesses from home and doing well. I salute each and every one of them!
Can see how this can be difficult especially now it’s summer hols – great ideas
Lots of really good advice. It must be very difficult during school holidayto try and juggle both