WAHM: Staying Organised
So you’re a mom. You have kids, you work from home, and just when everything is going fantastically well, you get a bunch of holidays thrown into the mix, a pile of wonderful work that is both challenging and exciting, and you really have no idea how you’re going to get everything done. Then, one of the kids gets the flu, and well, the craziness ensues.
Welcome to the life of a Work At Home Mom!
Just when women were breaking through glass ceilings in the corporate arena, all over the world, we go and decide that it’s not enough to simply become managers and She-E-Os, but now, we *really* want to have it all, and we go and give ourselves the most difficult position of all.
It’s called, ‘I-Want-It-All’-syndrome, and it affects women who have left the corporate world, to have kids, and then decide to work from home. It doesn’t matter what you choose to do from home, but if it’s work that brings you a much appreciated income, and you arrange your schedule around the needs of your children and spouse, and you have a household to run as well (those without full time cleaners and nannies – yes that’s us!), then congratulations! You’ve just signed up for the ride of your life. A rollercoaster ride that will be absolutely exhilarating in places, downright terrifying in others, and best of all, you-cannot-get-off.
Hurray!
The key, to maintaining at best a sense of calm, and at worst, simply your sanity, I have found, is organisation.
Keeping your life organised through the use both real and electronic diary’s, calendar applications etc is absolutely essential to maintain order.
My own personal system consists of a regular diary in which I plan my day using a pencil.
Call it a first draft if you will. A statement of intent.
It’s also the place where I jot down any information taken down during the day, like telephone number from new contacts etc. It might sound archaic in this digital age, but I prefer to think of it as a fail-safe back up, in the event of a power failure.
From here I transfer any contact details into Apple “Address Book” application, and any appointments into iCal, Apples built in Calendar application.
Even though these are perfectly good standalone applications, they also work fantastically well together, and of course, your mail application also works seamlessly with both of these in terms of accessing email addresses and confirming appointments.
Even better, they can also be sync-ed with an iPhone and also Blackberry (which I do) so you carry all your contacts, to-do’s and appointments around with you in your handbag.
It definitely makes life a lot easier, and a lot less stressful, and you are less likely to forget things if they are easily accessible on an item like a smartphone. I set my reminders with alarms so that whether I am sitting in front of the iMac, or out doing a quick grocery shop, or on a school run, that I am is instantly reminded of tasks which require completion.
It is in this spirit of organisation, and efficiency, that I have decided to set up a weekly posting schedule on NessWorld, rather than trying to keep up a daily post. That way you’ll always know when to tune in for the latest updates, and I have a whole week to work on a post that is helpful, informative and as chock-full of information and news as possible.
Kicking off the weekly postings, which will be on Tuesdays, will be a guest post, from highly esteemed blogger and professional writer, Kristi Gaylord who is a WAHM with a pre-schooler, and toddler twins!
In Kristi’s post tomorrow, she talks about the benefits of social media marketing for WAHMs, and how we can use it for networking to support one another.
Check back tomorrow!
read moreOnline Grocery Shopping: Saving a Packet, or A Total Racket?
This week I decided to try online shopping. For groceries rather than the kind of items that one would usually shop for online, i.e. dvd’s cd’s etc.
With both kids home during the school holidays, the idea of loading up the car with all assorted paraphernalia simply to pop to the shops for groceries, having to wrangle them both into a trolley and then having no space left to actually put stuff, *really* didn’t appeal to me.
You know what I mean right?
So I thought I would give one of our local stores the benefit of trying out their online shopping facility.
The website in question was easy to use, and fast to figure out the navigation, and I was able to get my shopping fairly quickly.
The whole process really opened my eyes to the possibilities and pitfalls of the concept and I thought that sharing my experience might help others avoid the potholes on the virtual super highway.
Whether or not you choose to shop for groceries and basic necessities online, boils down to what you find more valuable to you.
Time vs Money
This is the question you should ask yourself:
If you are able to save an hour by shopping online, is that one hour more valuable to you, in terms of using the time to earn money by working on a project (if you’re a WAHM), than if you were to down tools, and go directly to the store to save money by finding bargains and specials that are not online. Consider everything right down to the gas/petrol required to get to the store, the distance travelled, the energy expended etc.
Here are some other pointers that can help you to improve your time management and cost saving ratio as well as some other interesting facts about doing grocery shopping online.
- Make a Menu Plan: Do not deviate from that plan. Download our handy meal planner to help you plan out a weeks meals in advance. It can be used in both Excel or Open Office, and is fully customizable and free.
- Shops with a List: From now on that is your Indian name. Make a list for groceries, based solely on your meal planner (did you download it yet?) and on any additional cleaning materials, other household items you may need. Ladies, chocolate is not a necessary household item, nor can it be categorized under ‘cleaning materials’, no matter how much you’d like it to.
- Do not browse: Browsing unnecessarily leads to spending unnecessarily. Yes the boxes are pretty. Yes the pictures are colourful, but IGNORE them. You have a list. You are “Shops with a List” remember?
- Environmentally Friendly: Consider that if 20 people shop online, that would otherwise have driven cars to the store, you are actually saving some bad emissions from being released into the air. Yes, the delivery guy still has to drive to your house, but take one car versus twenty? Basic math says you’re helping the environment.
- Temptation Not: You won’t be tempted by the freshly baked cinnamon rolls and coffee if you can’t smell them right?
The Down Side: There is also a down side of course, and by shopping online, you will not be able to see any specials that are only available in store. Items that might have been marked down are not listed on online grocery store sites, so where you could save quite a bit by buying bananas that are ripe right now, and needing to be sold immediately at rock bottom prices.
- Premium Only: Sometimes when you shop online at a big online retailer for groceries, all orders are received at a centralized depot, and very often they will only carry the premium brand version of the product that you are looking for. So where at your local store you may have as many as three to four different brands of nappies available to choose from, they may only carry the most expensive premium brand. Ditto Olive Oil. Ditto Chocolate. But chocolate wasn’t on your list though right?
- Expiry Dates: My online retailer has a feature which allows me to send a note to the ‘personal shopper’ who will be picking out the products for me. I use this to instruct them to please select the item that has the expiry date as far in the future as possible i.e. milk/bread/meat. Failure to do that, results in the products I’m ordering to be expiring within a day or two of them being delivered. Fact.
- Package Sizes: This again, is probably not the same at each retailer, but watch the package sizes carefully. You may be buzzing to discover this amazing bargan! Then when you receive it, you realise that it’s because you ordered the 100g bag instead of the 250g bag. If you aren’t there in person, at least read the fine print.
- Bulk Bargains: Be aware of the bulk bargain trap. Buying the larger item in order to save money, isn’t always cheaper! Make sure you work out the difference in price per pound/kilo/gram before selecting the bulk option. Fact.
- Local Products: This is a thorny issue as we all have it drummed into us that we should buy local products. I understand why. But I do not endorse this when the premium foreign brand is double the quality of the local one, and half the price. Fact. Yes, I’m talking about Tate & Lyle Demerara Sugar Cubes (ZAR 17.99) vs Hulettes Brown Sugar Cubes (R34.99). There is JUST no excuse for this sort of pricing, carbon foot print or not. If local brands want to compete, they’d better do so on equal footing. Charging double the price and hoping to guilt us into buying it will NOT fly with me or any of the other consumers I know.
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WAHMs: Pop Quiz Hotshot, What do You Do?
Oh holy smokes! Your business has started, it’s going rather well. Going SO WELL in fact, that you need to dedicate more time to it.
What if that little bit of extra, uninterrupted time, could mean a BIG difference to your income? (I can hear WAHMs around the world laughing at my use of the word uninterrupted)
What if just having a few extra hours a week of uninterrupted time was all you needed to really break into the next gear, finish that awesome well paying project?
The fact is, that at some point you may need to consider a hiring someone for a few hours of help so that you can complete your major project or assignment.
Some of us are blessed with extended families that are only to happy to take the children for a morning a week, or an afternoon here or there, but there will be that one situation where you absolutely HAVE to get things done, and murphy’s law, that will be the one day, that all your family are busy, or out of town, or ill.
It *will* happen.
So what do you do?
What about those of you who don’t have extended family nearby, or even in the same country?
What do *you* do?
Sooner or later you may need the help of a friendly nanny, baby-sitter, or if you’re really lucky an au-pair.
Moms are notorious stalwarts, and many are taken aback, or even offended at the idea of having to hire someone.
Hello? We are all HUMAN. (Ok, as women we know we’re really super human, but still, we’re not perfect). Why not hire someone, who’s job it is to care for and entertain your kids for a few hours?
I learned a valuable lesson from my youngest son, when I made the difficult, heart wrenching decision to let him go to a playgroup for a few hours for the first time.
I was torn apart.
Completely, feeling like I was a failure simply because I could not do it all, all the time, twenty-four hours a day. Until I realized just how ridiculous that sounded.
At what point did I feel like I HAD to be this perfect person, who did everything?
It really dawned on me how silly it was, when I was packing his little back-pack to go to the playgroup again and he saw what I was doing, and he started clapping his little hands together and shouting, “Yay, Yay, Yay!!” I realised that the person who ran the playgroup, chose this as a career.
She chose it because she loves children.
She chooses to spend her time with 5 little youngsters and making their day as fun, as entertaining, as educational, and as routine as possible. Her absolute mission was to make sure that the kids were looked after as well as if she were their real mother, ha ha, their well rested, imaginative, that never-runs-out-of-patience mother.
Being a mother is something I chose, but reality insists that I also earn an income. My chosen form of income bringing activity is graphic design and photography. It is not child care. Though some aspects of childcare come naturally to mothers, I must admit, that I am absolutely terrible at thinking up fun and games all the time, and certainly not when I’m trying to finish that huge project that demands so much of my attention.
So in the same way that I take my child to the doctor when they are sick, I also choose to take them to a childcare expert when I need time to do what I am good at, and that which allows my children the lifestyle that they enjoy.
So if you find yourself in the position where you are needing childcare, I implore you, do not feel like a failure, think of your strengths and the many advantages that YOU and your strengths bring your family, then make your decision.
If you choose as I did, then this resource below may be of use to you.
WAHM: Work At Home Moms
If you are a mom who works from home, then we want to hear from you.
We want to hear your stories, chronicle your endeavours and help you with networking, marketing and advice. If like-minded women can come together and share information then everyone stands to benefit.
Please contact us via email, so that we can arrange to promote you through this website. Alternatively use the contact form on the Editorial Page.
Please provide us with the following information:
- Your name, and business name (if you have one)
- A description of your business i.e. Photography/Catering/HR Consulting/Avon/Tupperware etc etc
- What you love about being a WAHM and what you find challenging.
- Contact Details – i.e. email address/website/geographic location (it doesn’t matter where in the world you are!)
- Anything else that you’d like to add (a photo of your product or of you would be great!)
From this information we can put together a profile post on you and your business which we will then email you to proof read, before publishing it.
This is so that we can build a community of like minded individuals, who support their fellow WAHMs either through directly doing business with one another, or promoting on another through marketing etc.
One of the longterm goals of this website is to produce a physical directory of products and services offered by WAHMs and distributed globally in the form of a magazine.
To have your profile done, on NessWorld, please email us now, and remember it’s free.
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