A Typical Day of a Work at Home Mom?

March 12, 2008 | By Kristen | In Chaos of Life

Hi! If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. You'll get all my posts plus private posts plus special offers I occasionally share with my subscribers for free!

Lego Queen

I haven’t finished writing the article I wanted to post today, but I can’t believe how long it’s been since I posted so something is better then nothing, right? I have so many friends ask how I balance four kids under the age of 8, work and life… people think I have it all together, boy do I have them fooled!

Here is what my day looks like today:

Up at 5:00 to feed baby. When she goes back down I start coffee and jump in the shower. While in the shower I prioritize my day and what needs to get accomplished, press releases sent out, laundry done, get out some Easter decorations….

6:00 all kids are up and I start to make breakfast and husband/kids lunches. I’m embarrassed to say, that this process takes a full hour because no one wants the same thing and when I pack lunches they seem to unpack what I pack because they don’t “feel like that today” so I have to re-pack with “what they feel like”. Oh yeah, feed all the dogs and cats and empty dishwasher that I started before I went to bed.

7:00 it’s the getting dressed shuffle and doing the final back pack check (can’t wait until we don’t need to fit snow pants & boots in those bags!)

7:50 Shoes and coats are on, pack the baby up in her snowsuit and we head to the bus. Today, the kids slept late so I decided to drop them at school so we actually didn’t leave the house until a little after 8.

Leaving the house today, one of the bunnies that lives in our yard was squashed in the road at the end of the neighbors driveway. Sadness….poor bun bun.

Morning Errand- take the babies to the hardware store looking for “something” that he wants me to track down. My luck, they don’t carry it even though I looked it up online (to avoid going through all this work) and they said they did.

Returning home I see that no one has removed the rabbit (even though all the neighbors sat at the bus stop most likely staring at it). So what do I do? Pull in the driveway, get the shovel and go pick up the rabbit. I bring it back to the house and dig a hole and bury it. This took approx 15 minutes and yes, my three year old watched. That’s life, you go in the road, you get squashed, lesson learned. He was happy it wasn’t his rabbit (that no one else seems to take care of but me…)

Home I jump on the computer for a quick email check. Jump to a couple Dlist blogs to post a couple comments for back links. do my post and check the RSS feed for news worthy of an article. I accomplish this in the half hour as the baby plays with her floor mat gym and Dylan has a second breakfast while coloring next to me at the counter.

That’s my day so far, here is what I “plan” on happening for the rest of day. Only tonight will I know if this is what actually happens.

Now, I will head up to the attic to pull out the Easter decorations with Dylan and then I’ll put him in charge of setting up some decorative baskets for the shelves. Then the baby will be ready a snack and a nap so I’ll feed her, put her in the car seat and we’ll head to the Library. While she sleeps and Dylan plays I’ll fire up the laptop and submit the Press Release to my goal of 10 outlets for this morning.

We will then walk from the library to the auto shop where I need to drop off a check and walk back to the library. Keeping my fingers crossed it has stopped raining by then so we can get the outside walk in.

We will return home for lunch and “quiet time” and I will run a couple loads of laundry while we eat lunch. Dylan will then play a game or look at books while I get my five articles written.

Fold and put laundry away and get after school snacks ready.

Get one kid off the school bus, give a snack then we need to pack everyone up to go pick the other one up from after school Cheerleading.

We will arrive home around 4:30, just in time to start cooking dinner. Kids will sit at the counter and complete homework while I cook and we will eat about 5:30. Then upstairs for showers, and family play time and reading. The kids go to bed about 7:30, although, with Daylight Savings time, this has been off a bit but we’re hoping to be back on track.

I clean up the kitchen, put the baby in her jammies and give her a last feeding (by the way, through the day she goes with the flow and is generally on my hip). By then the husband is home and will rock with her for a few minutes then puts her to sleep while I’m cleaning the kitchen.

Now, about 8:30-9:00 I sit down to do more of my work To Do list. I’ll work until about 11 go to sleep for a few hours and get up to work around 1 a.m. to 4 a.m. Go back to sleep from 4sh to 5:30 and TaDa, my day starts over!

There you have it, the schedule of a typical day for this work at home mom! After reviewing this I notice that my husband is not really mentioned… but really, he leaves to work at 7 a.m. and returns around 7 p.m. then eats his dinner while I have the kids upstairs getting ready for bed. He generally will come up and read a story but then takes over the baby duty while I clean the kitchen. I work on my laptop at the counter and he sits next to me and watches the kitchen T.V. and we talk as we go.

Yes, it’s distracting, that’s why I generally do thoughtless type of work like emails, keywork & niche researches, directory submissions, while he’s around and I save my “thinking” work for the middle of the night when the house is quiet and I don’t have someone pulling or yelling “I want” “I need” “mom” “did you”…..

It’s 5:30 and I hoped on to check for an email I was waiting for. Funny that I talk about my lack of sleep but the only way I can get anything done since I just read a post from WorkAtHomeMamma that goes into the details of sleep patterns but more important, I know I’m not the only sleep deprived work from home mom!

Like my Post? Maybe you would like to Buy Mama A Java! It will help to keep me reading, writing and scooping out the info

Tagged:

2 Responses to “A Typical Day of a Work at Home Mom?”

Laura Spencer on March 12th, 2008 5:49 pm

Wow! You have quite a long day… Thanks for sharing your schedule.
legit work at home program on March 25th, 2008 6:03 am

Thanks for your offers. I am working with a legit work at home program and I love it.

Got something to say?