Juggling a baby and a
business? Yep. And the rest.
I am currently writing some product labels for a well-known
website. I’m also about to start cleaning our shower, thinking about baby snack
time and chasing an eleven month old round the half-renovated living room. I’m thinking about making dinner too (have just extracted frozen minced beef from
freezer) and also that I need to pay our outstanding gas bill before we change
suppliers. I’ve just made a makeshift draught excluder from a bed I just took
delivery of, because we have a wide open chimney and the temperature has
plummeted and me and said baby both have frozen feet.
I am also updating this blog.
Confused?
I’m not. This is my highly
(mostly) organised life. This is what I aspired to and this is what I have
become. And you know what? Forget moaning about it. The only thing I moan about
is how I need more time because there are not enough hours in my day. But I would
not change it for the world.
I have a little baby, a business and my husband has an
exhausting and demanding job. He is also renovating this house in his spare
time. Wow! So I take care of the vast
majority of household tasks whilst trying to grow my business so I can continue
to have a viable career and so we have a little more cash coming in.
So how do I juggle a baby, a business and everything else?
1. Make lists
I plan my day by making a big
list over my morning coffee. I put far
more on this list than I can ever achieve in a day, but it drives and keeps me
going. The feeling of ticking just one more job of that huge list is amazing.
That list gets carried over to the next day, with new important tasks added
on. Nothing leaves the list until it is
done and that can sometimes be three weeks later. I know this against conventional wisdom but
you did ask how I do it all. This is how I do it. This way nothing gets missed,
nothing falls off into obscurity if I don’t manage to complete it on the allotted
day. And I keep going and keep organised.
2. Priorities
Each week I make sure I set aside
one whole day for me and my boy to go out and have fun. He goes to a relative
one day per week to be spoiled there, so that day is totally devoted to work.
Sunday is always family day and Mondays I tend to give the house a deep
clean. The rest of my hours are
organised on an as-need basis. This
means that no one area gets neglected and I can manage the other hours and days
to focus on any area that needs more attention than others. My husband and I also try to go out at least
once per month but evening babysitting is a bit of a nightmare so this is quite
rare, sadly.
3. Forget pressure
When my son was born, I was
adamant I could do it all. I got into a real state and almost had a breakdown
when he was around four months old and had to temporarily shut down all areas
of my business and take a break. Seven months later and that is a distant
memory. I had put so much pressure on myself and had a little demanding new born
to content with too. It was so unhealthy so even if your children are older,
never put too much pressure on yourself.
You can only do so much and the key is not to work faster or harder or
to do more in less time. It’s to work as smart as you can and be as organised
as you can so that tasks in themselves actually take less time. Flylady has
been a revelation to me and means I spend only 6 hours per week on one day per
week deep cleaning my entire house. A few minutes per day keeps most things in
check.
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