Working from home is a hot topic among moms.
Many moms want to work from home, but don't know where to start. Others don't know how work-at-home moms manage to work at home, homeschool, and tend to the house.
I want to share what I do to give you an idea of how we make it work for our family. It has taken many trial-and-error periods to find something that works well for us, but we have settled into a fairly workable groove.
Simplified Homeschool
We are year-round homeschoolers, which helps alleviate a lot of stress trying to pack it all in.
Because of this, we do not do every single subject everyday. I have broken down our lessons to focus on 4 subjects a day. This allows us to study each subject more thoroughly and not feel like we need to rush through them to get to the next one. In addition, it allows my children to pursue their interests because they in fact have time to.
When it comes to homeschooling, I have learned that is less is more. I have tried the Classical Education approach and while it's a fine method, it just doesn't work for our family dynamic. So I went back to my first love: Charlotte Mason.
Another thing that I am working toward is helping my children become independent learners. Having seven children at varying age levels can definitely stretch me when I don't empower my them to work on their own, they don't pursue their own studies.
My two youngest still require my full attention for lessons, so I spend about an hour in the morning with them. And then throughout the morning I offer help where the other children need it. They each have an assignment sheet they work from. Then I spend another hour working with my two Ghanaian girls as they continue to strengthen their English and reading comprehension skills.
Work Schedule
One of my greatest challenges of working at home is I don't have any real set hours. I plug in when I can and work. I'll do some in the morning, in the afternoon, and at night when the children are in bed. This actually proves to be quite stressful because often when I'm homeschooling or cleaning, I have tasks in the back of my head for clients that I also need to accomplish. So I am currently working through this dilemma.
Since most of our lessons are complete by lunch time, I am considering using the afternoon as my work hours while the children pursue their creative outlets and interests. I just bought a new planner that I am looking forward to digging into for my work related tasks.
So my goal is to work in the afternoon and free up my mornings to focus better on homeschooling and cleaning, and free up my evening to focus on time with my husband.
Sometimes I work Saturdays if we don't otherwise have plans.
While tasks are getting done, having a more streamlined schedule will help free my mind of stressful clutter.
Work at Home Myths
I think in order for one to see the workings of a family with a work at home mom, one has to let go of some of the myths surrounding working from home.
For example, homeschooling doesn't take all day -- even with seven children.
Because I have seven children, there are lots of hands to help with cleaning, so I am not doing that alone. I wasn't always in a season where I had older children, so it's not uncommon for work at home moms with smaller children to let some cleaning slide until the weekend.
I do not work full time hours. I work 2-4 hours per day. Obviously my work as a mom is still work and fills the remainder of my hours. But as far as writing for my blog and working tasks for other bloggers, it's about 2-4 hours per day.
Hopefully this gives you a fair picture of my days. I have a more extensive version of being a blogger and stay at home mom in my eBook, Blog at Home Mom.
What burning questions do you have? :)