How Busy Moms Can Start a Business (And Still Get Dressed in the Morning!)

I found this here. I just loved this! I don't even have anything to add! Just love it!

How Busy Moms Can Start a Business (And Still Get Dressed in the Morning!)
by Kathy Wilson

One of the biggest hurdles Moms face when starting any home business is how to manage the home, the kids, and a job, all in the same place! It can be done, and many of us actually even find the time to put eye makeup on every day as well!

First things first, if you are going to start any home business, you need to regard yourself as a business woman. If you don't, I promise you no one else will! I know a lot of work at home sites talk about the perks of working at home including the ability to work in your pj's, but I highly suggest you make sure you dress for work every morning. This doesn't mean you need to have your suit and heels on, just casual dress, maybe a little makeup…enough to give you that "I'm ready to tackle my day" mentality! I just can't start the day without a shower, a cup of tea, and some decent street clothes. If you feel like if a client came to the door you would be appropriately dressed, then you will feel like you are at work!

Make sure you explain to your family that you have started a business, and don't sell yourself short. Act like a business woman, think like a business woman, and people will treat you like a business woman. One of the major morale problems women who work at home have is that they are not taken seriously. Show yourself, and everyone else that you are indeed serious!

Secondly, in order to work at home with a houseful of kids, peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, and the dryer beeping at you, you need to get organized. This is a constant battle for me, but it's a battle that can be won! Start small, and you will soon realize how much smoother your household runs with just a little planning.

Make Sunday evening (or Friday for the next week) your day to set aside an hour to get yourself prepared for the week ahead. Print out a weekly calendar from your computer every Sunday, or pick up a daily planner. Make sure you have room to list both work items, and also home and family issues you need to attend to. Also make sure you have a weekly menu, cleaning schedule, and shopping/errand list on your fridge, or in another easily accessed spot. Create master menu lists on your computer and keep your recipes either in a Word document you can print out when you create your weekly menu, or in a box of index cards on your kitchen counter. (Ol' fashioned, I know, but I love my recipe box!) Use your Organizing Hour to create a menu for the week, and schedule in all your household needs along with a rough draft of work items you need to get done that week. Don't forget to leave time for yourself, and to spend with the family! (After all, what good will your business success be if you feel like you've neglected the most important thing in your life!) Remember the schedule must be flexible for a woman running a business and a household, but that's why God made erasers! I strongly suggest joining an organizing group online, such as the ones at OrganizedHome.com or Flylady.net, both of which are excellent. A little organizing will keep your business steadily moving forward, your kids with plenty of hugs and sit down meals, and your sanity intact!

Finally, realize that it is NOT going to run perfectly. Ever. If you can accept that now, than you will realize that placing unrealistic expectations on yourself will just cause you stress and anxiety, and that is not what success is all about. It's about balance. And every once in awhile, no matter how much is on your day planner, pack those kids in the car with some peanut butter sandwiches, head for the nearest park, and spend your day pushing the little ones in the swings and tossing a ball around. After all, that's why God made Moms.
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Don't you just feel empowered?!?!

Enjoy being a work at home mom!
Cara :)

Mom, Are You Cleaning During Naptime?

More from the article in Parents Magazine.

Attention Moms!
#3 Do your chores while your kids are awake. Using up nap-time to wash dishes is truly soul-crushing.

Appreciate the Help
Yesterday I really came to appreciate this. I realized, and may have said before, that the boys really love to help me do anything they can help me with. They are truly wonderful helpful little men. They can't learn to do it right if we don't let them learn.

Magic Cleaning Fairy
If we are doing chores when our children are asleep, they are going to think that there is a magic fairy who comes and cleans the house while they sleep whenever they are asleep...

How does that teach them to pick anything up? How does that teach them how to work?

Satisfaction and Accomplishment
We need to not only let our children see how to keep things tidy and clean, but we also need to allow them to help us do it and give them the satisfaction and accomplishment. :)

Mom: Rest, Relax, Enjoy Nap-time
When your children are sleeping, do something fun for you! Read a book! Join an online nap party! Update your blog, but only if it is fun for you to do! You deserve the few moments to do what you really want.

Our children need our attention... when they are awake
When our children area awake they demand a lot of attention and it is generally exhausting. :) I know you know what I mean. Take a few minutes to relax and regather yourself and make sure they take a nap every day (if they are still in the age)

Melatonin
I am going to admit that I go to the health food store and get a bottle of 1 mg, orange flavored, Melatonin and I break one pill into 6-8 pieces. I give each of them the tiniest amount and they will relax and go to sleep (It really is a tiny, tiny amount that I give them - don't over do it.)

Horror and Terror
I only give this to them when they are obviously not going to lay down and take a nap on their own and I know that they really need a nap to finish the days activities or there will be horror and terror. I really don't like tired meltdowns and I have to have them rested for me to be able to function properly in activities.

Tired Children Don't Have Ears
My children don't listen to me when they are tired. their brains have turned into themselves and they can't hear anything other than the very overstimulated sounds in their head telling them that there is more to be seen and nothing to be heard. ;)

In Conclusion: Cleaning
Conclusion Part 1: Do your chores and cleaning with your children. Don't let them think there is a sleep time fairy that comes and cleans everything magically.

In Conclusion: Super Mom
Conclusion Part2: You deserve to sit down and rest during nap time. Make sure they get a nap and make sure you do what you want for a minute during the day. :) You are super mom and even super mom has to relax to keep being super mom. :)

You Can Do It! Enjoy right now!
Cara :)

My Home Business - Might Be Venting :)

My Home Based Business
I do my home business probably very differently than most people who are in the same business do theirs. But despite this all I am really excited about the products and love to use them and discover the new products. I guess you could say that I am passionate about it.

Marketing
I am very grateful to have a more simple way to market my business than going out and putting an incredible lot of money into marketing materials and time away from my family in distributing them.

I Don't Like to Prompt, Sell or Sway
I enjoy sharing the product and the opportunity, but I have a really hard time trying to get convince people. This meaning I don't like feeling like I am convincing people. When I explain anything about my business to anyone, it is pure excitement. I try to be informative and not pushy.

Online Marketing
I do have a fantastic way to market my business, I feel like I am a really good leader because I think outside the box and I like to share my experiences and findings with people who want to succeed at their business as much as I do. I do my marketing online, where we can reach the world.

Choose Carefully
I chose my business very carefully. I know that there is something for everyone or there would be nothing and life would be boring with only one thing. There were a lot of choices when I was making my decision.

Products are Important
I chose the company I did, because I really loved the product, as I mentioned before, I believe in it and felt like my experiences with it would be beneficial. I really love the compensation plan too. I also had really great respect for the founders and the owners and the way that every product was quality.

Exciting!
I really wanted to share this product that I love with the world. I felt that I could do that. And I can. :) That is the exciting part about my marketing strategy. It can be used with any other home business in the world and reach the world.

Set Your Goals and Achieve Your Goals
If you are feeling any way close to how I felt when I was putting every second of every day stressing out about getting your business moving forward and meeting your goals, just to find you have fallen short again... I highly recommend you take the time to visit the link below and simplify your life.

Simplify
I am working far less and blogging about my life instead of running a million directions trying to accomplish one thing. I am streamlined and I am content with this direction and result. The boys and I get to spend a lot more time together. We get to find exciting things to do and we enjoy our moments together (other than right now, I need to wrap it up and make something for them to eat).

I hope that this is helpful information to you and that my experiences are beneficial to you as much as they have been to me.

My Business Website
My Marketing Tool

Enjoy right now.
Cara :)

Stay Home Mommy with Twins - Yard Work

House work, Yard work, Work, Work, Work

As a stay home mom of twins, with a home business, I seem to have an awful lot to do that doesn't get done very often.

The yard is generally overrun with weeds and I cannot seem to get the lawn mower started. The lawn mower is an issue because my husband goes to work early and is at school until late. We are very fortunate though that he has a job that starts early enough to allow him to get home and get his homework done before heading to class.

Needless to say when you have twins, they come first and everything else comes in second place.

This year we planted a garden... Hahaha It was a fun experiment that I hope to be able to do better with next year. I planted everything in the wrong spot, with the exception of the corn and the mints... You honestly cannot kill mints. We have a small little area out back that allows the garden to share a space with four chickens and two ducks. It is quite fun.

We got the birds as infants at Easter time... It was that or I go ahead and get a much more expensive and less beneficial puppy or kitten that my husband would have been even more upset with me over than he was the tiny darling little peeping chicks that the boys and I were very carefully hiding in the always locked garage.

He Found Them - The Boys Love Them - He Accepted it

I know. I should have talked to him about it first, but I didn't and the boys just loved them and hand picked every one of them and they all survived. There was no way he could even be upset about it, even though he was... just because I didn't talk to him first. I really am not conniving. I just really needed them to have something to love and grow with. The birds are perfect. It is really fun to watch them. And they still call them thier babies.

The Home and Garden - I like to organize.

I have noticed a pattern in my life.

I tend to let things build up until there is a lot to do. I have noticed it with the dishes. I prefer to fill the sink and do a while bunch of dishes.I prefer to go out and get a whole bunch of weeds pulled.

The only things I don't really prefer building up are the laundry (Please! This no washing machine is killing me already!) and the litter box... However both of those tend to follow suite and build up as well.

There is a Point to the Piles

Today the boys and I got ready early and headed outside for a fun day. It was perfect when we got out there before 8am and started cleaning up the birds area. I let the birds out under the apple tree so the boys could chase them around and play with them while I dug in and got to work.

We Did Some Spring Cleaning Last Spring

We had made a great big huge pile of everything we had cleaned out of the garden, when we were prepping it for planting, and had hoped to get it out on the curb for spring pickup... well they never told us when it was and we missed it. so I finally decided that we aren't missing it again and I put it all out today.

Four hours of moving one of the grossest smelling piles of nasty crud I may have experienced in my life. The boys never complained and it was just overall a fun time to be had by all... other than the whole bog of eternal stench being in my yard.

The Boys Where Finding Snails Everywhere

It is so funny how you really look forward to the help of your children, but when they are two you really don't want their help and they want to help so badly.

The pile that we had was old rose bushes and tree branched and all the nasty stuff that the mechanics who lived there before had deserted in the kennel area that we now call bird and garden home. I really didnt' want them touching anything that was in this pile of decomposing everything. But they kept finding and playing with the million snails that had taken refuge in the only place I didnt' think to put snail killer out on our while property...

I finally gave in and showed them how to carefully put the nasty things inthe wheelbarrel so I could dump them out on the curb. I figure that as long as they are not going after the giant spiders I could handle it. They were very careful to not touch anything wrong.

My Little Men Are Wonderful Helpers.

So the whole thing that started my piling up train of though was that I personally find it more exciting to have a pile to get through and feel like I have accomplished something when it is gone. If it is never there how can I find that satisfaction?

I felt awesome after the boys and I finally got that huge monster pile moved. It had been sitting there for so long and I really hated it. It took up a big chunk of our yard and just made me sick to think of all the spiders that were hanging around... that I saw when I was moving them. Oh!!!!!! I really do not like spiders!

One Thing I Learned

As long as I realize that I need to feel like I accomplished something by eliminating a pile and organizing my home, then I am doing ok. I don't let them get out of control. I just let them pile up a little bit. :) And if the house is all clean I reorganize the cupboard, the pantry, the closet and the office. Or I rearrange furniture. When I feel like I need to acheive the happy organized end result I clean...

I guess tomorrow I will tackle the pile of mail. :)

Enjoy right now.

Cara :)