Moms that work from home have many hats they wear. Besides being a business woman, you are also mom, counselor, home manager, chauffeur and soccer coach. Working from home is lovely in terms of the flexibility to work around the needs of your family, but frequently you find that balancing all these different tasks can be challenging.

My friend calls these "20% days".

Her formula is that you have 100 jobs to do, you spend 120% of your time and energy on them, but you feel like you only accomplished 20%.

I find these days particularly hard on my morale. When I get work done for my business, I feel like I neglect my kids. When I spend time with my kids, I don't work on my business.

Working from home can mean that you feel like you never do any of it right--that is unless you draw very clear boundaries.


As a single mom who homeschools, my time is always in demand. I love working from home, and I think it is the best option for me, but it means that I've had to get strict with my family, and even more importantly, strict with myself.

When you work from home, you don't have the luxury of pre-set work hours.

This is great when it gives you flexibility, but I find that it often means I don't get to working. I tend to prioritize home and family.

So I give myself hours. In this screen shot, you can see that I have scheduled my business hours. I do massage and I have an internet business. I have them both down clearly as if I was going to work.

When you are scheduling yourself, think about how many realistic hours you can devote to your work from home business. If you work 10 hours, put those in. 20 hours? Block off those hours. Make sure that you have your work hours in first, just like you would do if you had an outside the home job.

I have also scheduled my household hours. Errands and anything outside the house get one color. All activities inside the house get a different color. If I have school or kid related activities, I would give that a still different color.

On a really busy week, I will even schedule family time.  It is important to me that I don't get so carried away with working that I keep my family first.

This system helps me to visually identify how my day will go. I can see if I'm working inside the house or traveling outside it. I can see if my activities are at a desk, or moving around.

In addition, this system keeps me disciplined. If I have 2 hours to do household tasks, I will pick the top things to get done in that time. Cleaning or bill paying? What is screaming the most? But when the time is over, like a regular job, I move on. The same is true for my work day. If I have 6 hours to work on my internet bushiness, what is the best way to spend that 6 hours?

One additional tip, if you are very consistent with how you label your tasks, and if you use Outlook, you can setup rules to color code your calendar.

Let's say you want errands to be yellow.

Make your first entry. Right click it and click on "Automatic Formatting". In the window that opens, click "Add new" rule. You will get another window. Name your rule (something like "Errands"). Pick your color and then click on "Conditions". In the "Appointments and Meetings" tab, and in the "Search for the words" space, add the word "errands". Click "OK" twice and now you have a rule that will make every appointment entry with the word "errand" yellow. I'm sure this feature is available in other calendar programs, and it may vary in different versions of Outlook. This is not meant to be an Outlook tutorial, so if these instructions don't work, search the help section for my details. I just wanted to make you aware of how easy it is to get your calendar color coded.

Now that you have your work from home hours scheduled, what do you do with them?

Again, you have to prioritize.

What tasks will bring in money?  What tasks help you meet your goals?  You must balance your immediate needs with your long term vision so that your company can keep growing.

Don't get lost in the small details.  I know I can waste a lot of time on email.  I read the emails and then some of them have interesting links.  I go to the link and the next thing I know, I'm surfing the web.

STOP YOURSELF!  Set a timer.  Emails work great as a warm-up for me--an activity that gets me in the working mood.  But I have to limit them or I could spend an entire morning with various activities all stemming from email.

Just as you did with your weekly schedule, you need to schedule your work time.  What are your "have-to" task?  Make sure you have time for them.  What are your big projects that require some thought and space?

Take the blocks of time that you have for your work from home business and schedule the time for them as well.