• pinterest
  • Facebook
  • Twitter
  • Shop BPC
  • Affiliate Disclosure
  • Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar

Busy Parents Club

Seasonally inspired blog for busy moms

  • Start Here
  • Motherhood
    • Work From Home
  • Kids
    • Children’s Books
    • Homeschooling
  • Home
  • Food
  • Art & Culture
    • Weekend round-up
    • Books
    • Tv & Movies
  • Shop
  • Show Search
Hide Search

How To Work From Home With kids

Rebekah · April 30, 2020 · Leave a Comment

These tips for how to work from home with kids will help you to be more productive during your day when you are working from home with kids.

Working from home with kids can go from dream to nightmare real quick. You have a client deadline, the kids are giving killing each other their best shot, and suddenly it is 4:00 and you haven’t even thought about dinner yet. Before you let more days spiral out of control here are my top tips for work at home moms that will help you be more productive and less stressed during your day. ( hint it’s not about managing motherhood and work separately, it’s about harmonizing them.)

This post may contain affiliate links. Thank you for supporting this blog at no cost to you.

TIP 1: IT ALL STARTS THE NIGHT BEFORE

 Look at your work tasks the night before and choose three things that absolutely have to get done that day. If there something that has a deadline for tomorrow I would choose to do that this evening. Leaving a deadline on a day when your kids are home anything can happen. You don’t want to risk it. Next, choose those top three tasks that you really want to get done tomorrow that will move your business forward. Write those down your calendar. Don’t be tempted to add more. If you have extra time you can add more during the day. And you want to leave room on your list for the unexpected, because you know he’s showing his face at some point.

TIP 2: WRITE DOWN WHAT YOU HAVE PLANNED FOR THE KIDS THE NEXT DAY.

This can be as loosey-goosey or as strict as you like- whatever works for you. I like to make a basic plan of AM and Afternoon activities. You can ruin a work at home mom’s day REAL fast having no idea what to do with the kids that day. I find that if I schedule in a few activities that we do together, they are much happier and content chilling on their own afterward for a bit of time (this pops back up in tip 5!) Plus, I don’t feel bad when I take work breaks because I feel like the kids and my work aren’t fighting for attention.

TIP 3: HAVE A PLAN FOR DINNER! 

I cannot stress the importance of this tip for you if you work from home with kids. I meal plan every Sunday night and make a menu for the week and then I shop for it. I’m not the best at pre-prepping food- washing, chopping etc.- I’d like to be but I just don’t ever seem to do it. But I do schedule meals that are easy to make relatively healthy for the week. Sometimes I give myself a break with pizza and take out- usually pizza Friday and take out either another weekday, or I alternate between take- out and pizza night on different weeks and then I usually have a leftover dinner one night so really it’s only five meals and I am making each week.

When I know I have my meals planned I can make sure I have everything in the morning ready to go and if I need to I can pop ingredients in the slow cooker, AKA mommy’s sous chef, and it just makes life around 4 o’clock so much easier.

Get the FREE Busy Mom Meal Planner

Enter your email to instantly download the free meal planner (plus tons of how-to tips for what to keep in your fridge, freezer, and pantry!)

Thank you!

Click to grab your busy mom meal planner!

.

TIP 4:  TAKE CARE OF YOUR HOUSE TASKS IN THE MORNING.

This is another biggie for me.  I like to do these right after breakfast. I finish up breakfast with the kids and let the kids finish eating and have a little bit of free time before everybody gets stressed to start the day while I do these chores. These house chores can be anything you feel needs to be done every day. For me, this absolutely means emptying the dishwasher that was run the night before after dinner, putting all the dishes in the dishwasher that are in the sink from breakfast in the dishwasher,  wiping down the kitchen counters, throwing in a load of laundry, wiping down the bathroom and making the beds.

It usually takes me about 15-20 minutes to buzz through these. Each week I usually have an extra task I throw in there that I sometimes do at the end of the day, but those are my top morning to tasks that when they are taken care of I feel like I’m a clean space and I can work and take care of the kids. It just feels really good in my brain space. You can sign up for our organizing newsletter below and get weekly tips for keeping your house in order in a way that is actually possible for busy moms to achieve.

Join The Organizing Kids’ Spaces Challenge

Enter your email to declutter, organize, and transform those impossible to keep clean kids’ spaces- playrooms, bedrooms, toys, books, craft areas, and more.

(NO spam, just organizing tips that really work)

Yay, You’re In!

Click here to get started!

.

TIP 5: INTRODUCING, NINJA WORK. 

Now I am going to introduce you to a technique I like to call ninja work. You may all have your own version of this, here’s how mine goes. I used to have this idea in my head that if I planned an activity out for my kids and set them up with that I would have a set amount of time to work. This may work for some people, but it has not worked for me.

Believe it or not, this “set planned work time”  has actually worked in the reverse. I have talked to a lot of work at home moms who say the same exact thing. It usually goes something like this: You set your kids up with an activity. You think said activity will take about 20 minutes to half an hour for them to complete. You are ready to get a complete work task finished in this time.

But, what happens more often than not looks more like this: your kids half-ass do an activity and then ask you 500 questions, need a snack, and must go outside immediately. Oh and I forgot to mention you completed zero tasks.

This is where the next tip for how to work from home with kids comes in. Ninja work is here to save the day. Here’s how it goes. Instead of setting them up for me to work, I observe my kids and see where they are at in the day.  At some points they are very happy playing with each other, or involved in a task individually, or watching a show or playing a game on their iPads- it doesn’t matter what, I can just tell they are engaged. I also like to make sure they have just eaten. When I see this sweet spot I just sit on my desk, I open my computer, I look at my top three tasks for the day (that I have written down the night before),  and then begin to do a task. This has always given me at least 20 minutes to half an hour of solid work.

I don’t know if kids instinctually need to ask a question when I say I have to do some work or not, but when I just do it unannounced, they don’t seem to notice or have a burning urge to interrupt. I think the key is in your observing your kids. Instead of preparing them to be ready for mom to do some work, you can observe and pretty much know that they are in a place where you can give work a green light for a few. This is really a big part of harmonizing work and motherhood rather than “managing” them as two separate parts.

Get Weekly Tips On Working From Home

Signup for our best tips and tools to make working from home easier and more productive!

Thank you!

You have successfully joined our subscriber list full of work from home moms!

.

TIP 6:  CREATE AN EVENING CLOCK FOR YOU AND YOUR KIDS TO FOLLOW.

In its simple form,  this is an analog clock that you color code to time block different parts of your day. Ours is color-blocked from 4 PM until 8 PM. Ours includes time blocks for make dinner (for me, and free time for the kids) eat dinner, cleanup, family time,  bath and shower time, kids’ free time/bedtime snack, and then our bedtime routine. This helps everyone to stay on track- parents and kids included- and makes for a much smoother evening and morning. Having a clock that even younger, pre-reading kids can follow is a great way to incorporate individual accountability for each family member.

As a work at home and homeschool mom I often remind my kiddos that in order for our family unit to function as it does, everyone must work together to make sure everyone’s needs are met. Here is a good example of a color-blocked time clock- I bought this simple clock to use for this.

CONCLUSION

I hope these tips for how to work from home with kids that I swear by will help you have smoother and more harmonized days. Let me know if you try any of these and if they work for you. I’d love to hear any tips you have found that really work for you as well!

Don’t forget to pin this post so you can reference it later!

Know someone who would like this? Please share it!

  • Pinterest
  • Facebook
  • Twitter
  • Print
  • LinkedIn

Related

Filed Under: Work From Home Tagged With: how to work from home with kids, work at home mom, work from home mom, work from home with kids

About Rebekah

Rebekah is a work from home mom of 2 unschooled boys who currently lives in Northeast, PA. Ghostwriter (spooky!) by day, blogger by night.

Reader Interactions

Click here to cancel reply.

Please Login to Comment.

Primary Sidebar

Hi, I’m Rebekah

Rebekah Griffin @ busy parents club

About | Contact

Get ready for the week ahead

start here busy parents club
Motherhood Busy Parents Club
Kids Busy Parents Club
Home Busy Parents Club
food busy parents club
art and culture busy parents club
Shop Busy Parents Club

Disclosure

In order to grow my small business, I participate in several affiliate programs. I only share products and services I genuinely like and think you will, too.  If you make a purchase from my site you are helping to support this site at no cost to you, thank you 🙂 You can read our Disclosures and Terms of Service Here.

alliance for self-directed education member badge

Instagram

My literal tree hugger. We really like this “eyeball tree” 👁 🌲 and so we took many, many pictures.
Taking this out for a walk today. You. Can just start to see the buds forming here in NEPA.
Current obsession: peach dahlias, peach asters 🌸

Copyright © 2021 · Daily Dish Pro on Genesis Framework · WordPress · Log in