I’m often asked, “How do you do it?” or “What’s your day look like?” so I thought I would share a look at an average day as work at home mom.
7:15am…ish to 8:00am
My alarm varies from 7:05 to 7:10 to 7:15 to 7:20 – I tend to just set it to whatever, or hit snooze a couple of times until I realize if I don’t get up and get B up and into the bathroom, we’re going to be late. So I get up, wake B up, and hit the kitchen to make his breakfast and lunch. I’ll also use this time to clean up the kitchen, set coats out, get dressed, make bed, the usual stuff.
8:00am to 8:20am
This is the twenty minutes I take to get the babies up, changed, and into the stroller and bundled up (in cold weather). It’s the perfect amount of time because while I’m getting them ready, B is in the bathroom brushing teeth, getting shoes and coat on, and meeting us at the door.
8:20am to 8:40am
Walk to school and walk back home.
8:40am to 9:00am
Unload babies from stroller, set the youngest up with toys so I can get #2 his breakfast and milk, make a bottle for youngest. It’s so predictable that #2 just hangs out in the kitchen and goes through cabinets asking for a “bite”. I always feed them first and then get my breakfast. Depending on what I’m having, I can be at my desk (which is in the living room) by 9:10am.
Here’s where it’s a bit tricky to nail down…
9:00am to 12:00pm
During these 3 hours I am juggling work and watching the babies play, changing diapers, maybe start laundry or something else around the house. Some days the babies will just play and play and be perfectly content being in the same room as me that I can spend good chunk of time just working. There’s plenty of interruptions though – watching them giggle and play together, dropping whatever I’m doing and getting on the floor with them to play – I don’t let work control my day so if my babies need me, I’m there.
12:00pm to 12:30pm
This is lunch time for the babies and once they are fed, it’s time for naps and hitting the treadmill.
12:30pm to 1:00pm
This is treadmill time followed by my lunch. I turn on some music and enjoy some “me” time.
1:00pm to 2:55pm
More work, sometimes a meeting or conference call (with two at home, I try to schedule those for nap time, but I also let the other participants know that I have two young children at home and apologize in advance for interruptions or the occasional scream, cry or giggle.
2:55pm to 3:25pm
Get bundled up and walk up to the school for school pickup and then walk back home. I must have the routine down because I’ve noticed it takes 6 minutes to get everyone ready to leave the house (as long as everyone cooperates).
3:25pm to 6:50pm ish
Snacks, homework, playing, attempting to work – but now I have 3 kids at home, and there’s fighting and yelling and it’s not really conducive to concentrating on anything important so I don’t really do much work during this time. This is more of my free time and is spent with the kids, doing housework, and cooking dinner.
After this it’s dinner, playing, bed times for kids, and then depending on what we feel like doing – an hour or two of work, watching TV, maybe play a video game, clean up toys and bed time. Like the night that I’m writing this? Obviously I had work to do – but that’s okay, because so did hubby!
The weekends are free-for-alls and there’s work in the mornings and evenings, but the days are spent as a family – shopping, playing, cleaning, etc.
I like it. It works for me. I’m happy, the kids are happy. I know that as the two youngest get older we’ll have to work in some different activities, and during warmer weather we will more than likely take breakfast with us when we take B to school and eat and go for a walk. Right now though, they really like playing together so I take advantage of that! It’s a perk of them being so close in age!