The Classic Question: What is your work at home mom schedule?
After running my own business since my now 20 year old son was four months old. I have had many people ask over the years what my work at home mom schedule is.
My schedule has been all over the place. Always adapting. Always changing.
Mom Schedules Are ALWAYS Changing
Just when I thought I had a consistent schedule when my daughter joined Kindergarten, everything changed. The pandemic hit, which threw that whole plan for a loop.
This is why I think my work at home mom schedule is one of the best. It’s one that can always be adapted to life. Situations and life KEEPS changing, especially when they are young, growing and reaching new stages on a very regular basis.
This is my daughter and I working around the work at home mom schedule. We took a fun little visit to a Barbie event on a weekday:
For me the easiest way to work doesn’t have anything to do with a strict, set work at home schedule. It’s all about working on PROJECTS.
When you work in projects it’s not about working with a daily to-do list. It’s all about having a deadline and a series of tasks that complete the project. Then every day you do the work to move the project forward.
In the early years of your child’s life it is most definitely more difficult to find time to work. They are much more demanding on your time. Below I’ll share how I managed this throughout the years as well.
Below you’ll find my current schedule. I have a daughter at home who’s nine years old and a twenty-one year old who’s out of the house. This is what my work from home day looks like…
Work at Home Mom Schedule – The Hourly View:
- 7:00 – 8:00am – Wake up and get on the treadmill to start my day with about 2-3k steps. This is a new thing for me and as I update this post I’ve been doing it for almost two weeks. I hope to come back and update in a few months that it’s just a daily habit as we all know how important daily activity is for us and how us moms don’t always take that time.
- 8:00 – 9:30am – Getting my daughter ready for school & school drop-off.
- 9:30am – 3pm or 5:45pm – Working. School ends at 3:30pm and I get to school drop off by 3pm unless she has her after-school program which allows me to get an extra almost three hours of work that day. During this time I have a block time calendar I usually fill in. I’ll show you this below and an example of what it looks like filled in (plus a form to fill in to get it free if you want).
- After School/Work – Dinner and Family time
- 8pm – 9:30pm – Bath and ready for bed for my daughter.
- 10:00pm – Time with Hubby. We watch a show usually.
- 12:00am – Bedtime!
Some notes about what I do during my days.
I did mention that I love to work in PROJECTS.
This means that rather than feel accomplished by checking off my to-do list I feel more accomplished when I complete a project.
Scheduling Your Days by Projects & Completing What You Can in The Time You Have
A project to me is:
- Launching a new course or coaching program.
- Moving into a new shopping cart (like I recently did).
- Creating a free challenge to grow my email list.
- Writing a blog post (hello work at home mom schedule blog posts readers – I’m looking at you 😉
I do schedule doctors appointments during the day. I prefer not to go to those in the evenings. Errands, however, get done after school or when my hubby is home. My daughter likes to come with me to the grocery store. It helps her take ownership of more foods so she hopefully eats more healthy foods that way.
I also plan to do my exercise (like swimming at the local pool) on evenings or weekends. That way it doesn’t cut into my work time.
Choose Your Priority Projects for Your Schedule – Do First!
Every day I have one most-important job and that is to email my list.
I used to be in the habit of checking my emails BEFORE I did this job. That can really shift the email sending and just distract me from my work so now I send the email to the list FIRST.
Email marketing is how I make all of my money.
I send emails that sell my courses and membership and I make money.
It’s an important task and it’s done daily, like a well and good established habit, and that really works well for me.
If you’re curious about what I do to make money you can read this post: real examples of ways to make money online.
Schedule in Google Sheets for Time Block Scheduling
Many people use time blocking to plan their schedule. I have started to get into this habit because I do find it helps keep me much more focused.
So what I do is create the projects that are most important to me that week.
To keep track of these projects I use the Sticky Notes App in Windows. Here’s what that looks like:
Here is an example of my work at home schedule on a nice and productive week.
This schedule might look really packed but what I like to do is actually keep it light.
For example Monday only had “email list” and “clear inbox” but then as I did more things I went ahead and added those and checked them off.
I find the checkmarks really helpful because I feel like I accomplished a lot and that keeps me motivated.
Using a schedule like this spreadsheet is how I keep most product as a mom who works at home.
I’ve tried all kinds of other methods from using paper planners to Google Calendar and more and nothing has worked nearly as well as this one!
If you’d like to get access to the work at home mom schedule template, FREE, for this along with tips on how to use it you can sign up below:
Working at Home Throughout The Young Years
In my early work at home years my parents lived upstairs. Or, rather, I lived in their basement apartment.
I was a single mom with a dream, a keyboard and lots of babysitting.
I now know how very very fortunate I was!
Not every mom who is working from home and trying to build a business has the privledge of built in, fully willing and FREE babysitters!
So for my son’s early years it was easy… the grandparents had it under control.
For my daughter, totally different story.
My parents live over an hour away and are much older and weren’t interested in babysitting anymore.
Let me break it down year by year for the early years:
YEAR 0-1:
So with my daughter in her first year I put my business into total maintenance mode. There was no real schedule. I had built my business up so that it was running smoothly by the time she was born.
In that first year I had many weeks where I worked only 30 mins per week and that was me whipping up emails to sell my offers as fast as humanly possible. I copied past emails, I wrote short and brief messages and I linked to my offers to keep the sales flowing.
YEARS 1-4:
When my daughter turned one I put her in daycare for one day a week.
I continued to grow my business to afford more daycare and when she turned two I went to two days a week.
After her third birthday I did three days a week and she stayed at that frequency until she went to kindergarten.
This schedule worked well for me. Three days a week allowed me about 24 hours a week of work time and with a focused plan using my Work at Home Planner (see above).
The Bottom Line When Figuring out YOUR Work at Home Mom Schedule
Look – I could give you a schedule to follow and it could be the exact schedule that made me a success but there’s no point in that.
You need to make a schedule that fits YOUR life and works for YOU specifically.
Remember, though, your little ones are only young once.
We might need or want to work and that is awesome but don’t forget to think of the LIFE you want your business to provide you.
And that’s the beauty of an online business.
We truly can design our lives the way we want them.
For most of us work at home moms this is why we started our business in the first place – to have more time with our families.
So as you plan out your work schedule don’t forget to always put life first, then business.
You got this! Rah!
I also wrote about a day in the life of a Work at Home Mom < you might like that, too!
