CrazyBusy Mama! (Dot Calm)

By Guest Blogger Aurelia Williams, author of Balancing Work and Family


The trend of moms working from home to be near their children has grown in the last couple of years. Now that they have found jobs or businesses to run, they’re starting to realize that working from home is not as easy as they thought it would be. The work they do is hard to separate form their personal lives, which makes it hard to schedule time for work responsibilities and home duties.

The workspace these moms use to do their jobs at ends up being a part of their household, so that makes dividing work and home life even more difficult to do — and one of the motivating reasons for creating my Balancing Work and Family guide. Imagine that your office is a part of the dining room, which also happens to be the room where you eat your meals as a family. How easy is it going to be for you to leave your work life to be with your family when the office is 5 feet away from the dinner table?

The realities of dividing work and personal life can get smudged for work at home moms. When that happens, one’s stress level is sure to rise, which could jeopardize one’s sanity. To prevent your sanity from leaving, you should find ways to ensure that separation takes place between your job/business and your family life.

Assess the current situation. Try to find an area, within your home, to have your office so that it won’t interfere with your family life. The home office needs a room with a door where you can be apart from the rest of the house. A den or a garage can be converted into office space that is exclusive to your business. Some people have resorted to placing their office in the laundry room, just because it has a door! When that is not an option, set up shop in your bedroom to keep it away from the family areas.

Organization is the next step. A messy desk can be a huge distraction when trying to work. Everything needs to have its place. If you worked in an office, your boss would not stand for a messy work space. There’s no difference when you’re office is at home and not at the worksite.

Use inexpensive organizing items, such as baskets with separate compartments to help organize the odds and ends on your desk. You can keep rubber stamps, letters, invoices, pens, pencils, and the like in here. Organization makes finding things much easier, which results in a more relaxed work day.

Keep your business phone separate from the family phone line. When using the same line, you run the risk of your children answering business calls or picking up the phone during a conference call. This causes your professionalism to fly right out the window and takes your customers or employers along with it.

The same goes for the computer. It’s best to keep your business computer separate from what the other family members use, but budgets don’t always allow for this. In that case, make sure that the business/job files and documents can’t be easily accessed by anyone but you. This will help prevent some of the stress that could be brought on by family members stumbling on a client’s important document and accidentally deleting them.

Be sure to use calendars or planners as they are very helpful when trying to keep track of business appointments or deadlines and family appointments. This will lessen the stress of setting up family appointments when you’ve forgotten about business deadlines you have.

Consider hiring a sitter on days you have a lot of work to do. Being a work at home mom gives you the benefit of controlling your own schedule. Having a sitter keeps the kids away from your office and gives you quiet time to focus on your work and gives your kids a chance to have fun without you feeling too guilty.

Mixing business with family in the home setting can be a major source of stress. Keeping the business side of your life organized and separate is crucial to success in keeping your stress levels down and your sanity intact.

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Get More Help:

Working at home can be extremely rewarding, but it’s challenging. Get the help you need with Real Life Guidance to Balancing Work and Family. It’s your practical guide to tracking your time, setting priorities, learning to say no and achieving that balance you strive for.

By Guest Blogger Aurelia Williams

Time is one of the most important resources that we have. Time is one thing that you can’t swap, borrow or purchase. We are all given the same 24 hours to each day. Even with all of our modern day time-saving conveniences such as e-mail, fax machines, microwaves, and dish washers, there is no way to get more hours into your day. It is up to each of us to make the very best use of our time since we can’t get it back.

Here are some time saving tips that you can use to optimize and free up your precious time:

Double Up. One way to maximize your time is to double it up. Try exercising while vacuuming or while watching TV. While you are talking to your children, use that time to go through their back packs and ask them about their day. During your down time chats with your girlfriend on the phone, why not clip coupons or browse through the sales paper.

Make Use of Services Available To You. Take advantage of pick-up and delivery services offered by neighborhood stores, dry cleaners, and restaurants. One wonderful service to look into would be to hiring a teenager or an errand service to run certain errands for you.

Schedule Like Tasks at the Same Time. Instead of sitting in front of your computer all day returning e-mails as they arrive, try to return all e-mails during the same block of time. Set aside an hour or so to return multiple e-mails as opposed to doing it sporadically all day.

Combine Your Outdoor Errands. When you are out grocery shopping also pick up your needed prescriptions, run to the post office, and fill up your gas tank. By doing this you will not have to leave the house 3 or 4 times in the same day.

Organize Your Home. We spend so much time looking for things, trying to re-create things that have been lost, and cleaning up clutter. Create a spot in your home where you keep, record, and pay your bills, and store your stamps, envelopes, and other things that you use frequently. Don’t forget about your children. How many minutes or hours a day do you spend looking for shoes, socks, toys, or that favorite stuffed animal? Arrange things so that your children can take care of some of their everyday needs. Try using shoe racks that hang on the closet door so that your children can hang up their shoes. Use clear storage containers for small toys and a desk for storing all of the arts and crafts supplies.

Make Use Of Small Bits of Time. Take care of small projects during waiting periods. For example, if you find yourself waiting in the doctors office, why not use that time to plan and write out your grocery list or “To Do” list. If you use public transportation use that time to read those magazines that have been piling up.

Plan Ahead. We can’t always foresee what will be needed but we can be prepared for certain things. Pick and set out your children’s clothes the night before. When you are cooking dinner, double the recipe and freeze half of it to be used for a meal in the upcoming weeks. Before you go to bed, create a short list of the things that you have to do the next day.

Be sure to allow for some flexibility in your schedule. If the sun starts shining on what you thought was going to be a rainy day, grab those children and head to the park or take an impromptu trip to the zoo! Just make sure to take care of yourself and be wise about your time.

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Aurelia Williams, certified Personal Life Coach and owner of Real Life Coaching and author of the Journey to Joy ebook. Learn to quit running yourself ragged: Take the Journey to Joy instead.

Want to work at home? Many of us often forget about the skills we already have (but may not realize) when considering a home-based vocation. I hope you’ll get some valuable ideas from this article.

By Guest Blogger Kelly McCausey

Do you realize that most local brick and mortar business owners feel lost and overwhelmed by the idea of marketing themselves on the internet? It’s true.

As a long time internet marketer, I have a good understanding of how the web works. I can create a website that attracts relevant traffic and makes a profit. I realized a few years ago that I could take this knowledge and apply it to serving a local market -– offering my services as a website creator and marketer.

There’s no lack of providers out there offering to help the local business owner take their business online, but the sheer volume of options is confusing and the price point is often far outside of the small business budget. So when I opened my doors to provide affordable services from a local source, I found clients who were hungry for what I had to offer.

I used the knowledge I have about building a simple website to set up a WordPress blog for a local consignment shop. We publish pictures of some of her new products and pipe the RSS Feed into a Facebook fan page. These are just some simple promotion strategies that come as easy as pie to you and me –- but to her, it was like magic!

Imagine her delight when a lady walked into her shop with overflowing bags of great product to consign, saying “I found you on the internet and decided to bring my things in!” The cool part? The lady drove almost an HOUR to get to her shop -– passing many other similar stores along the way.

My client is now totally sold on the power of the internet to accomplish her marketing goals.

Before she met me, she was scared stiff to even think about doing something online. Most local small business are and that’s why they need YOU!

When you focus on a local business community, you have home field advantage. If you’re good at what you do and deliver real world results, word of mouth travels fast among these business owners who regular network together.

A phone call came in to my office a few weeks ago. So and so had mentioned me to so and so and now another so and so wanted to meet to discuss a project. I setup a time and looked forward to learning about their needs. I admit my jaw dropped a tiny bit when I learned the client was a famous food brand that has its home here in northern Michigan. (Of course I quickly hid my surprise and pretended that I consulted on major brands every day of the week.

When local people ask me what I do, I say that I do web design and consulting. If the conversation progresses, I go on to tell them about how I help businesses develop powerful, interactive websites with simple tools that help them attract more clients and customers.

It all sounds very professional, right? And of course it is -– but the reality is that I work from my home, usually in my slippers. I rarely meet clients face to face and I choose my own work hours. I love what I do and thoroughly enjoy seeing how my skills benefit my clients.

If you have even some of the skills that I do: If you understand how search engines work, how to create a website with WordPress, how to set up a simple mailing list, a Twitter account and a Facebook page; you could be running your own consulting business.

Even if you lack some of these skills, if you delegate well and enjoy serving as a project manager, you can outsource the work that falls outside of your expertise and still provide all of the necessary services to your clients.

The needs exists. Local business owners know they should be taking advantage of the internet. They just need you to show them how to make it happen.

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Kelly McCausey shows you step by step how to create, launch and grow a local business consulting business at Become a Blog Consultant.

I’m feeling a little under the weather today (another cold), so I wanted to share a treat with you. If you’ve ever wanted to start your own blog, specifically a WordPress blog, guest blogger Kelly McCausey wants to help you learn how. Settle in and read on!
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WordPress is the website building tool of choice for many business owners these days. It’s a great option. No software needed on your computer, great functionality and flexibility – and you can update your site content from any computer, netbook or smart phone. It’s no wonder that it’s become so popular.

You’ve probably heard that Wordpress is incredibly user friendly – and it is! Still, most first time users find it overwhelming at first. If you ever tried to tackle Wordpress on your own and felt like giving up, you’re not at all alone. There’s a lot to take in at first.

I was lucky though. I had several patient friends available to help me over the learning curve. Still, I wouldn’t say that I felt truly comfortable for months after. The more I got to know it, the more I realized that WordPress is both simple and complex all at the same time.

If you only want to use WordPress to publish content, it’s pretty darned simple. The visual editor operates like any basic word processor. You enter content, press publish and you’re finished.

Think of WordPress as being three things at once.

1. It’s a Content Management Script that runs on your web server, letting you enter content as easily as writing an email.
2. Your content is stored in a Database on your web server.
3. Finally, it wears a Theme, a set of template files, that determines how the content is displayed online.

Entering content is easy. The database takes care of itself. Customization, want to alter your design and manipulate the database for special needs, you have to tap a whole other area of knowledge and that’s where many get stuck.

There’s good news and bad news for those who want to learn more about managing their WordPress site. The good news is that there’s a huge resource of documents and a large community of developers and users who are willing to answer your questions. The bad news is that there’s a huge resource of documents and a large community of developers and users…

The trouble for newcomers is usually that they don’t know how to ask the right questions to produce the answers they really need. The documents and forums seem to be written in a foreign language and newbie questions are often answered with links to more foreign explanations that just add to their feelings of overwhelm.

My advice? Don’t give up. Keep asking questions. To get the best answers, provide as much information about your problem as you can. If you’re persistent, you’ll find that things come easier over time.

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About the Author:

Kelly McCausey of Mom’s Talk Biz invites you to WordPress Orientation, your all access pass to exclusive WordPress learning. We demonstrate answers to your questions during our live web conference sessions. If you’re goal is to do it yourself, Wordpress Orientation is your pathway to learning how.

(Psst! You can also listen to some great podcasts Kelly has put together by going to WAHMTalk Radio. ~ Sally)

Normally, I would call these “hot deals,” but because we’re in the middle of a heat wave here in Seattle (we broke 100 yesterday), I’m calling them “cool.” We need anything cool we can get right now.

I’m always on the lookout for new ways to save money, both as a mom and professionally. I’ve come across a few that I want to pass on to you. We’re pretty much talking freebies here. Check these out and get your fingers clickin’!

WEBSITE MAGAZINE. First of all, because I still can’t believe it, I’ll tell you how much this magazine costs: NOTHING. It’s absolutely free…no strings. Website Magazine is an extremely well-done, professional publication. Many times free magazines are mostly filled with ads, and while this mag does have ads, they’re not overdone and the content is incredible. If you’re working online, you need this magazine. You may be a website designer or developer, a graphic designer, a website owner, a blogger, an internet marketer, or all of the above — I don’t care: Hurry and get this free magazine before they change their minds and start charging for it!

CARBONITE. Picture this: Your digital pictures…gone. Important downloads…gone. Work you’d saved on your computer…gone. Your computer has crashed or been stolen and everything on it is gone forever.

Now picture this: Your computer crashes or is stolen. Pictures, emails, downloads, files…all gone. You’re upset…furious, even…but you know that as soon as you get your computer repaired or replaced you’ll get it all back. How? You’ve got Carbonite.

Carbonite is an offline back-up service that begins saving and protecting your vital information as soon as you add it to your hard drive. I have Carbonite on my laptop (as a web designer/developer, writer, and camera-happy mom, I wouldn’t dare be caught without it), and you should, too. Period.

Get your free trial and see how easily Carbonite will protect what’s important to you. I know I sound like a commercial (perhaps I’m in the wrong line of work?), but I really do love this service!

TWEETLATER. What can I say about TweetLater? I love TweetLater. TweetLater has revolutionized the way I tweet to my Twitter followers. With TweetLater I can tweet to my heart’s content without tworking off my Twitter tweeps. (Okay, I’ll stop.)

What are you trying to promote? A blog? An online business? A care blog about a seriously ill loved one? Try TweetLater. You can schedule your Twitter updates (or “tweets”) to appear exactly when you want them to. You can also save your tweets to use again and again and schedule those, too.

You do know what this means, don’t you? It means you can tweet to your hearts content (without being on Twitter all day) and still have a life! Who wouldn’t love that?

That’s it for today! More cool deals will be passed on to you as soon as I find them.

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Women's Wildfire Rally 2009

Have you ever thought about working from home? Perhaps you’ve wanted to quit your day job and stay home with the kids, or maybe you’re already an at-home mom but want to bring in some extra money. I want to tell you about a (FREE) teleseminar I just signed up for. I’m really hoping you’ll join me.

It’s called the Women’s Wildfire Rally 2009 and runs for five nights: August 7-12. Beginning at 8 PM Central on each of those evenings, Carrie Wilkerson (a.k.a. “The Barefoot Executive”) will be interviewing a minimum of four women work-at-homers. Each interview will be around 15 minutes long and will be packed with incredible info and expertise you won’t want to miss.

What I really like about the Women’s Wildfire Rally is, first of all, that the calls are complimentary. You don’t need to purchase a package of any sort to listen to the calls at the time they’re scheduled for. If you want the MP3’s so you can listen later (and again and again, which can really be helpful), you’ll be asked to pay $27 before the rally (and I’m pretty sure you get some other goody or goodies along with the MP3’s), but like I said, this is not required if you just want to listen to the calls at their scheduled times.

These 15-minute interviews are jam-packed with useful info that will be beneficial to any work-at-home mom. To begin with, there are no long, flowery introductions, and  you’re not being suckered into listening to a free call just to buy something. Also, Carrie didn’t allow any time for audience Q&A, so you don’t have to waste your time listening to other people’s questions.

You’re going to enjoy this rally! No one interviews QUITE like Carrie does. She’s high-energy, very charismatic, and comes across like the next-door neighbor you wish you had. These are speed interviews — you’ll want to have your notepad and pen at the ready before they start!

Why is this rally just what you and I need? Because:

We’re BUSY!
We’re tired of what doesn’t work.
We don’t want to be ’sold to’ from every speaker we listen to.
ENOUGH is ENOUGH and we are tired of things not changing in our lives and businesses.

You will have to SEE the lineup of speakers to believe it. Click here to go see the schedule and All-Star Guest List!

Take a look at this incredible video from Carrie (seriously, straight from her heart). In the video, she tells you — in a nutshell — that if you are ready for your business, your finances, and your life to change, then YOU have to stand up against mediocrity. You have to shout out that ENOUGH is enough!

Please join me, friends, at the Women’s Wildfire Rally 2009. It’s for women willing to learn from leaders who are not afraid of changing their income, their lifestyle, their future and their WORLD!

Are you one of these women?

Are you ready to RALLY?

You can afford this. Like I said, there is ZERO COST — in other words, FREE.

You can get all the details here and I urge you to check it out NOW. Carrie always throws a great ‘party’ and her energy and experience combined with that of the guests she’s featuring is going to make this a fun event!

Go check it out and register at http://crazybusymama.com/WildfireRally.html

What have you got to lose?