Tips For Balancing Working At Home And Life

If you, like me, work from home and have a family you probably know how real the struggle can be. Balancing Working at Home and Life is not easy, but it certainly can be done with these tips.

Tips For Balancing Working At Home And Life

Working at home is one of the most rewarding challenges that any parent can go through. Working from home doesn’t mean you have all the freedom in the world. In fact, when you work from home you need to learn how to balance your work and your personal home life.

Especially when there is laundry, cleaning, and shopping to do. Knowing how to find the perfect balance in your work and your home life that works for YOU, is essential for any parents sanity and happiness.

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How To Balance Working From Home and Family Life

Here are a few tips that have helped me along the way and hope they do the same for you.

Create Set Work From Home Hours

When working from home, one of the biggest struggles you will have is that your clients may think they can call on your at all hours of the day for work. Whether this is via phone or email. Set standard work hours and make sure your clients know that you are unavailable outside those times. 

For some work at home individuals, that means you work the traditional hours of 9am-5pm. For others, this may be a day that is split up with a few hours in the morning, afternoon and some after kids go to bed at night. Whatever YOUR hours are, make sure your clients know that there are only set times you can be contacted for answers so you don’t feel like you are constantly working while you should be resting or spending time with family. 

Create Separate Work Social Media Accounts

One major issue that you may find if you work in the online world of blogging, freelance writing, or things like being a virtual assistant is that using your personal social media accounts as contact points can be frustrating. Create a separate work social media account for your clients to use, and keep your private account private.

This includes not accepting friend requests from clients. This will help you to have a private life, and not get pulled into work things when you are using your downtime for browsing.

Use Alarms To Schedule Your Day

One great way to keep on track when working from home is to set alarms for yourself throughout the day. This helps you to stop and take time for little household chores, breaks to relax, and even simply to go back to things like email or checking your to-do list. Alarms help you stay on schedule which results in more time to spend with your family at the end of the day. 

Create A Work And Home Schedule For Your Day

Whether you prefer an app, online calendar, or a paper calendar, make sure to schedule your day. Knowing specifically what needs to be done will keep you on track on your work list and chores around the house. This and setting an alarm go hand in hand. 

Here are a few of my favorite resources that I can’t live without on a daily!

• Asana is a free online calendar that allows you to create a daily schedule. You can even use this with other team members.
• Trello is my go-to online calendar lately. I love how easy I can move tasks around for work or home. This is perfect for my hubby to see our weekly schedule or for my mother-in-law on days she’s helping out with the girls.
• Rescue Time is a great tool to let you know how much time you are spending on specific tasks. Including social media and websites that are not helping your work time.

Take Regular Days Off

Working at home often means you spend a lot of time working on the weekends. Make regular days off.  This can be a day just for you in the middle of the week, or the traditional weekends off to spend with family. The important thing is to allow your body and mind to recuperate properly each week with time off.

You have the ability to create the perfect schedule that not only suits your business but your family as well. Take advantage of this opportunity and on those days off, enjoy every second.

Learn To Say No

This is a serious issue for many who are working at home. Taking on more projects than you can manage can put you behind. You may also find that friends and family tend to want to take advantage of you since you are, “just at home” all day. Saying no and refusing to take on projects, or simply putting your foot down to friends and family during work hours is vital to keeping that balance between work and family time.

Remember, you are only hurting yourself by not saying “no” and by not keeping your work time, work time. The reason you work from home is so that you have the flexibility to work when you want to work and spend time with family and friends at your leisure.

Balancing working at home is not about balancing it all, but it’s more about finding that middle ground. Remember, life is not about the schedule, or the list, not even what gets done today. Instead, it’s about enjoying life’s moments.

Isn’t that the reason you work from home in the first place? With the right tips and concentration, you can have a highly successful work at a home career while enjoying family life.

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What are some of your work from home tips?