Tackle that to do list despite the juggle of home, family and business

When you have a family there are never enough hours in the day to get everything done that you possibly would like to.  If you then add into the mix being self employed it is not too long before you feel completely overwhelmed and unable to juggle everything.  I really struggled when I first started working from home.  Also at times I can still find it hard when trying to complete orders at home whilst having the children at home.

The recent lockdown that happened due to the pandemic suddenly made a lot of us try to juggle it all.  Here are some of my tips for trying to manage. 

Realism

First thing first, be real!  If you think that you are going to absolutely smash your to do list which is bursting at the seams as well as care for a sick toddler and drop the older children off at school and clubs, let me tell you now it will not all happen.  By being realistic with what you can actually achieve in a day you will have a more attainable to do list which will not dishearten you when you reach the end of the day and you haven’t come anywhere close to completing it.

Automation

Anything that you can set up and forget about gets a big thumbs up from me.  So there are a number of appliances that I use around the house that I can set up and leave to deal with later.  A slow cooker or instant pot is great for setting up in the morning before the day gets crazy and leaves you with a home cooked meal at the end of the day.  I also take advantage of delay timers a lot.  I will set up the dishwasher or washing machine and have it finish later when the children are asleep.

I also use a lot of automation in my business if I can.  Schedulers are a life saver for online communication.  I use buffer www.buffer.com to automatically schedule all my social media posts in advance.  I can spend 10 minutes setting them up and they will post over the course of the week.  There are all sorts of add ons that can be added to your email for example that can do automation tasks. 

Another great help that I love is IFTTT www.ifttt.com which you can use to integrate a number of platforms to automate tasks.  If I post a blog post for example by using IFTTT the post will automatically be promoted across my social media channels when it goes live.

If I could automate childcare and food shopping I think I would be sorted on all fronts and would have unlimited time to work instead.

Sneak in the minutes

If you have just put on the little ones favourite TV show or bribed them with a snack you have about 5 minutes of peace by my reckoning.  See if there is a quick task that you can squeeze in to these quiet few minutes.  Replying to messages is a simple task that is perfect for this situation as you can stop between messages if interruptions arise.

If you are still lucky enough that your little ones have a nap during the day this is the perfect time to undertake some of your bigger tasks.  This is when I used to cut out patterns or get the sewing machine out.  As they were asleep the dangerous tools could be used without trying to keep an eye on them around all the sharp objects.

Involvement

I am not saying that you should turn your children in to free labour however there are a number of tasks that my children quite like to do for me.  This means that I am working towards my tasks but the children are involved as well to juggle you need to multitask.

Favourite jobs of the children (obviously age and ability appropriate)

• Stick stickers on items, either branding stickers or the address labels
• Fold up the flat back boxes ready for posting
• Take photos (admittedly I usually delete the ones they take but they are more accommodating of me doing pictures if I let them have a go as well)
• Pressing the start button on equipment, whether it is the embroidery on the sewing machine or a design on the cutting machine. They feel they are contributing if they press the start button.

See if there is a small task that they can help with, they are far more accommodating of you working if they feel they are also helping.  Even go as far as making up a pretend order that they can work on while you are working.  My youngest used to play with playdough while I was working on clay shapes, he had no idea that what he was doing wasn’t the same as me.

Chip away

You may not be able to completely finish a task from beginning to end while juggling the little ones are hanging off you.  However you may be able to make progress towards it being finished.  If you just try and chip away at a task by doing a little bit here and then when able. 

For example if you have a huge pile of washing to sort.  You may not have the time to sit and sort the whole pile but every 5 minutes that you spend sorting is slowly lessening the pile.  It is easier to find a couple of minutes than to sit and complete a whole task.  By the end of the day you may find that the whole pile has gone but you may have revisited that task 10 times throughout the day.

The most important thing is that you don’t pile on too much pressure.  You will have days when you get borderline nothing done.  However you will only make yourself feel worse if you are being too hard on yourself being able to juggle it all is hard.  I consider surviving another day a great achievement sometime especially when the children are bickering.  Look for the small achievements in a day.

Let me know if you have any other methods that work well for you to try and juggle it all.  If you have found this post helpful you may also like my post on setting up a night time routine to make the next day start off well https://www.claireyatfairycrafters.com/a-good-day-is-planned-the-night-before/