3 Work-Life Tips for Working Moms

This post is sponsored by TracFone Wireless. All opinions are 100% my own.

I believe that work is not a choice for moms. All moms work.

“work
noun

1. activity involving mental or physical effort done in order to achieve a purpose or result.”

Although I’m currently a work from home mom, today I’m writing about moms who hold jobs outside of the home. I have worked outside of the home in the past while working as a camp administrator for two summers. It was fulfilling and great because the camps helped tweens and teens to really grow. It also came with its own set of challenges though so I want to share the “3 Ps” that helped the most as I juggled life while working outside of the home.

1. Planning is key.
   I’m a planner “Ms. Organized” by nature. However, juggling home and family while working outside of the home makes planning more necessary than ever. Everyone will figure out their own rhythm and it will change over time. The way that I plan though is to do a “brain dump” of everything that I need to do for the upcoming week on Sunday nights. I’m a paper person, so I take a piece of blank paper and divide it into four sections. Each section represents the top four priorities in my life [faith & ministry; fitness & appearance; family, friends & home; and finances & career. ] (I also have a circle called “Fun” in the middle of the page to remind myself to enjoy the various areas of my life!) I then write everything that I want to do in each area for the upcoming week.
   
   Next, I take out my calendar and write down which day of the week I will get each of the things on my big list done.
   
   Lastly, the night before each day, I write out my schedule for the next day. I tend to do daily schedules in hourly chunks of time, but you can do this in whatever time increment that you like.

2. Partnership is essential.
   Granted, I was very fortunate because my husband Reggie is a teacher and was home for the summer while I worked outside of the home. He was my childcare/Coleman camp director/etc.  I’m aware that things are more challenging if your spouse/significant other works outside of the home too. That is why it is important to have childcare (babysitters, nannies, daycare, etc.) set in place. In addition, I think that every mom should consider outsourcing some of the housework that they dislike doing. Sometimes, I was working 80+ hour weeks in the summer. I didn’t want to spend my time at home cleaning so we hired a housekeeper during that time to do the deep cleaning. Whether it’s free (family and friends) or paid (child care, housekeepers, laundry cleaners, food services, etc.), it’s important that we moms don’t try to do everything by ourselves!

3. Pare down the non-essentials.
   Going back to the list from point #1…if there isn’t room in the week to do everything on the big list, then I just don’t. Everything isn’t equally important. While there are certain things that I absolutely need to do myself, there are other things that I can delegate to others (point #2). If I’m not going to do it or delegate it, then I dump it (take it completely off my “to do” list) or defer it (schedule it for a later date). Most importantly, I say “No thank you” to a lot of things…even good and great ones. We all have the same amount of minutes in our days. Even with a work outside of the home job, we get to choose what we do with the majority of those hours.

I hope that those tips are helpful. We moms need all of the help that we can get in order to succeed in both life and work. That’s why I appreciate the Dress for Success organization so much. As I mentioned in my previous post about the TracFone and Dress for Success partnership, their Success is Calling program plans to continue helping women acquire and maintain gainful employment and achieve their professional goals this year. It will offer 600 women (twice as many in comparison to the first year of the program) its phone interview training curriculum along with a new smartphone and a year of service for each participant. This will help these women to achieve their employment goals…like many of the women from last year’s program.