6 Tips For Finding Balance As A Work-At-Home Mom

If you’ve followed my blog for a while, you know that I started out mom life as a stay-at-home mom. I had four kids in less than three years. They are my world. In many ways, I still consider myself a stay-at-home mom. But sometimes life has a way of surprising you.  The unexpected blessing of this blog and my online fitness business have resulted in me working part-time, and I truly feel like I’ve found my sweet spot. I get to enjoy this stage of life with my kids while they’re little, and I also have an outlet to use the skills and abilities I’ve been given in a different capacity.

It’s been an incredible journey, but it hasn’t come without bumps in the road. After being a stay-at-home mom for four years, it took some time for our family to adjust to me not being available 24/7. I’ve felt all the emotions, from guilt to resentment to stress to gratitude. Within the last few months I feel like I’ve finally started to find my groove, and while I certainly don’t have it all figured out (just ask my husband), I’m excited to share a few things that have helped me to find balance.

Before I get started, I want to give a big shout out to Dell, who graciously offered to sponsor this post. They believe in supporting moms by giving them tools to get things done efficiently. In a world where mom life can get lost in the mix, I’m extremely grateful that Dell has made it a priority to create products that cater to busy families!

5 Tips For Finding Balance As A Work-At-Home Mom

1. Set official work hours. When you run an online business or really have a business of any kind, it’s tough to turn it off. There’s always something you could be doing. I’ll get an email from a client and immediately feel like I have to respond. I’ll get a text message and my phone feels like it’s screaming at me to text back ASAP. I heard a quote recently that went something like this: “Be sure you are disappointing the right people.” Wow. It’s so easy for me to say my priority is my family, but when it comes right down to it, I can easily let them play second fiddle to my work. So, I try to have specific hours every week when I get my work done and block them out. Communicating those hours to my husband and making sure we’re on the same page is important so he can hold me accountable and tell me to shut it off.

2. Turn off phone notifications. One of the best decisions I’ve ever made was to turn off social media notifications on my phone. There are two reasons for this. First of all, notifications were hijacking my day. I wasn’t able to stick to my “work hours.” So first and foremost, turning off notifications helps me to stay in the moment. Second of all, my clients and readers are taken care of better when I turned off notifications. Why? Because now I only check them when I have time to respond. Before, I’d see an email, then my baby would scream, and I’d forget to come back to it. I know turning off notifications feels like a big deal, but it will CHANGE your life for all the right reasons.

3. Find reliable childcare. For the longest time we didn’t have childcare. I worked early in the morning, during nap time (assuming they actually slept), sometimes after they’d go to bed and whenever else I could squeeze it in. When you’re starting up a business and don’t have much cash coming in, sometime’s that’s the only option. However, as soon as I started to make money, I reinvested it into my business in the form of child care. I was really nervous about this. In fact, it took me a few months to actually pull the trigger because I felt guilty. Should I really give up time with my kids? Is it bad that I want to work? Will I miss out on some of life’s most important moments? What I realized, though, was that when I was home and trying to take care of them and work at the same time, I was already missing out on those moments. I was distracted and stressed, always feeling half there and half somewhere else.

We hired a nanny part-time, and overnight things went smoother. I could work knowing that someone’s full attention was on my kids. When I was at work, I was at work. When I was home, I was home. My attention wasn’t split anymore, and my income more than doubled within a couple months of hiring her.

4. Revisit your “why” weekly. I chose to start working part-time because I felt something deep in my soul telling me to. I started this blog out of a desire for other moms to know that they aren’t alone. I feel most alive when I’m encouraging someone else, which is why the online personal training field was a great fit as well. However, with any job, there are always going to be those days when we question if we should be doing what we’re doing. When we hit road blocks or discouragements along the way, it’s so important to remember why we started in the first place. I make it a point to circle back to my mission and vision statements weekly so that I can truly serve my readers and fitness clients from the most sincere place in my heart. This also helps me to get rid of mom guilt because I know that what I’m doing has purpose.

5. Constantly evaluate the emotional state of your family. I feel like I can always tell whether or not I’m working too much by taking a good look at the moods of my kids and husband. When I feel balanced, they feel balanced and cared for. When I’m working too much, they feel that too, and those are often the weeks when they cry more and act out more, because we haven’t had enough time together. Those are also the weeks when Jake and I have those tough conversations about how I need to work on having more balance. Having open communication about how it’s going is key.

6. Use efficient tools to get your work done. When I was starting out, I used a half-broken computer. I spent so much time rebooting it, and waiting for it to unfreeze. I also had a phone that didn’t have enough storage so I always found myself wasting time deleting pictures so I could get my tasks done! Another trick I’ve learned to keep from being distracted is to not have all my emails go to my phone, which is why its important to have a computer I can rely on. When Dell sent me this XPS 13 laptop, I knew it was going to be the perfect fit for our family. I work from home or a coffee shop most of the time and am constantly on the go. This laptop is the smallest 13 inch laptop on the planet, so it’s super mobile. It came with an awesome case too so I can keep it protected from tiny fingers.

It’s the world’s first and only laptop with InfinityEdge display, meaning that it’s a 13 inch laptop in an 11 inch form because it uses the whole screen! The first reaction I had when I opened it was, “This screen is huge!” It also has the longest battery life of any 13 inch laptop, getting 18 hours of run time on a single charge. Another feature I really like is that it has an Intel 6th generation core i7 processor which means it’s speed is fast enough to keep up with the millions of things I’m trying to multitask. The touch screen is also a huge plus! I’ve never had a computer with a touch screen before but it comes in so handy, especially when I need to sign e-documents and such.

My husband has also been using it as he’s gearing up to start a real estate business. He’s love it as well, and we both agree that we’ll definitely be going back to Dell the next time we need another laptop.

Dell truly is excited to support moms who are busy trying to find balance. I had the best time partnering with them on this project! They are giving away a $100 Visa gift card to one lucky Mommy’s Me Time reader!

Simply visit their website for this computer here, and leave a comment below sharing which feature you think you’d appreciate the most if you owned this laptop!

I’ll choose a winner a on Thursday, January 28th! You must have a U.S. address to enter.

This is part one of a two part series to encourage working moms! You can expect the next one in February!

XOXO,

Amber

P.S. For more reflections on parenthood and life, follow us on Facebook (Hun Let’s Run) and on Instagram: @ambermariekuiper and @jakekuiper! We’d also love for you to subscribe to our Hun, Let’s Run Podcast! For more info about joining our fitness community as a customer or coach, please email us at amber@mommysmetime.com!

I partnered with Dell and received this XPS13 laptop for free. All opinions are my own.