Work At Home Mom Schedule That Works For You

Working from home as a mom is essentially a stay at home working mom. You aren’t quite a working mom because you are still doing all the things that a stay at home mom does. You aren’t just a stay at home mom because you are also doing all your normal working activities.

There is no seperation between work and home life.

We fall in this middle ground of working mom and stay at home mom and let’s just say it’s absolutely hectic.

Regardless of if you work from home for another company or you work from home in your own business, we all know the struggles of balancing work and home life when you don’t actually get to leave your home.

I’ve been a full time work at home mom for a little over a two years now and I know how difficult it can be to create a schedule that works for you.

You need a schedule that allows you to take care of both the stay at home mom tasks and the work tasks you have to get done. Plus you still need time for yourself.

Working At Home With Kids

Working at home with kids makes it harder to create and stick to a schedule. The truth is working at home with kids requires a general outline of a schedule that you may or may not be able to stick to.

Part of this is because the day to day with your kids moods, activities, and needs may change.

Working From Home With A Baby

The easiest time I had working from home was when L was an infant. All he did was eat and sleep, so when he was sleeping I was working or taking care of chores around the house.

Woman in green shirt drinking coffee at desk

However, getting into that swing of things can be a bit difficult if your baby wakes up in the middle of the night. Here are some of my favorite tips to working from home with a baby.

Consider allowing yourself to nap in the morning or every couple of mornings when the baby naps to make sure you are well rested. Even if you don’t nap you should consider resting for an hour or so during this time.

Infants don’t move around a lot so get a pack and play or a bassinet that you can lay your baby in and position it next to your work area. This will allow you to be present with your baby while also giving you the ability to work.

Do baby wearing for as many chores as you can in this first 6-8 months. Having the baby close to you while you vacuum, wash dishes, do laundry, or any other chores exposes them to those chores early.

Working From Home With A 1 Year Old

During the first years of your child’s life things will change rapidly. Before you know it your kid is mobile and walking and crawling around the house. This is when it gets a little harder to get work done.

Do the most important and big stuff during your kids nap time. That one to two hour nap your 1 year old takes is going to be the best time for you to focus and get the tough stuff done.

Get gates and utilize them. If you work in your living room – gate it off. If you work in a home office – gate it off. Gates will help you keep your active 1 year old near you so you can keep an eye on them while you are working.

Start implementing independent play now. Set up blocks, toys, coloring, and anything else you can that will keep your kid busy for 10-20 minutes at a time. Independent play will save your work schedule.

Working From Home With A Toddler

Toddlers are curious creatures. At this point they should be talking more, asking more questions, and getting into everything they possibly can. If your toddler is quiet it’s probably because they are in something they shouldn’t be.

L basically stopped taking naps as a toddler. He was just not interested in them. If your toddler is still napping, take advantage of that time to complete the biggest and most important tasks you have.

At this stage the gates aren’t really going to help you as much as they have in the past. Your toddler will climb over them or figure out how to open them.

Now is the time to take them by the hand and show them where not to go and what not to do. It’s going to take a lot of direction on your part in order to teach them what is safe and not safe.

Toddlers are all about snacks so make sure you prep plenty of them so you can quickly provide them with food during the day.

Independent play is super important for the work at home mom schedule here. Luckily, you can start bringing in additional tools for independent play.

A tablet that gives you an hour break to complete tasks is necessary. Install PBS Kids or get ABC Mouse to make the time educational for your toddler. Screen time is not a bad thing if your kid can learn and you can get some work done.

Working From Home With A Preschooler

Once your kid reaches preschool age they are going to be a lot more independent. Unlike a one year old and a toddler they aren’t needing your assistance with everything.

Have snacks that are already prepared and easy to reach inside your fridge or pantry. They will most likely ask for a snack and you can just tell them to go ahead and grab their own.

Having a chalkboard for them to draw on is a great option for independent play. At this point they are so excited about learning new words and learning to write they will spend quite a bit of time doing so.

Keep utilizing tablet time with ABC Mouse. At this point ABC mouse will help them with learning everything they need to know before entering kindergarten.

Outside of their normal activities let them help you with normal household chores. For instance, my preschooler loves to help me fold laundry, he feeds the cats, and he’s on top of picking up his toys every day.

Working From Home While Homeschooling

On top of being a work at home mom, I am planning on homeschooling my son too. I highly recommend using an online curriculum and school for your kids if you are a work at home mom.

Here in Pennsylvania we have an online charter school that’s free for Pennsylvanian residents. It’s making homeschooling easier because it doesn’t all fall on me, on top of my work and taking care of a house.

But if you are insistent on being a teacher too, you will need to create a schedule for your kid.

Keep in mind, you are teaching one kid not 20 so the school day is going to be a lot shorter. You only have to worry about one student getting what you are teaching and they will catch on a lot faster than expected.

Also understand you have quite a bit of flexibility here. You don’t have to do the school day first thing in the morning if you have work to complete. You can start the school day after lunch and then complete your work after your kid goes to bed if needed.

Try out a few different ways to figure out which is best for you and which schedule is best for your child to learn with.

Work From Home Morning Routine

The next part in building your perfect work at home mom schedule is to set up a morning routine that will start your day off right.

Setting a morning routine was all I needed to keep me on track every single day.

I recommend first looking at what you already do first thing in the morning and going from there.

If the first thing you do is grab a cup of coffee to start your day, make that the first task of your morning routine. Keeping at least one part of your already established morning routine the same will help to make the transition to a more productive routine easier.

There is one thing I highly recommend that you include in your morning routine and that is day planning. Some people like to do this the night before but I prefer to do it the day of while I’m sipping my coffee.

When you work from home you have to assess your energy levels daily. There have been too many times that I scheduled my day the night before to wake up to a cranky kid, low energy levels, or an urgent matter to handle. It would screw up all my plans.

Planning your day in the morning over your coffee allows you to take your energy levels, urgent matters, and other things into consideration so you can plan accordingly.

Related: The Morning Routine Of A Work At Home Mom

Work At Home Mom Daily Schedule

Take some time to consider what your perfect day would be like. I call this an “Ideal Day.”

In your ideal day you would schedule out every single thing you would do in your ideal day. When you wake up, when you get ready for the day, when you eat, what work you would do between what times and when you stop work.

This gives you a basic guideline to how you would like your days to actually go. While they won’t always go this way you can and should try to plan your days based around this ideal day.

Using an app like Cozi can help a lot with this. Cozi keeps your schedule and the schedule of your family members all in one place. You can also do your meal planning, keep lists, and have shared to do’s for your husband or kids. It’s also completely free so click here to sign up now.

Work At Home Mom Schedule Sample

Below I am sharing my own work at home mom schedule. Use this as a sample in building your own schedule based on what works for you.

Wake Up and Morning Routine – 8 am to 9 am

I am up and out of bed by 8 am most mornings. I work through my morning routine by grabbing a cup of coffee and sitting down to my bullet journal. I plan out what I am going to accomplish that day.

I greet my family as they start waking up between these two times. I get ready for my day by showering, getting dressed, and putting on makeup.

Content Creation – 9 am to Noon

Since the bulk of my business deals in content creation, this is the time that I put aside to get my work done. No interruptions, no stops, just me and creating content for my blogs.

This is the time where my husband takes over for caring for our child while I get time to completely focus on my work.

Now it’s not just the actual writing I do at this point. I take the time to outline posts, do research, plan out my content calendar and anything that has to do with content at this point.

Lunch Break – Noon to 1 pm

I’m really bad about forgetting to eat. My husband usually has to remind me to eat but I often just keep working and then when I take a short break I finally realize I am starving.

So I have it scheduled daily that I need to break to eat and fuel myself for the day. Fueling your body is important to keep your mind working right. When you’re hungry, your brain doesn’t function at its peak level.

Related: 21 Of The Best Grilled Cheese Sandwiches

Preschool and Little Tasks – 1 pm to 5 pm

This is the time that I spend focusing on all those other little things that need to get done. Images, product creation, social media, and newsletters.

These tasks can all be interrupted if L needs help with a lesson, wants something, or needs mommy time.

Giving myself the freedom to choose exactly what I want to work on allows me to choose something based on any number of distractions that may or may not occur. If my child is cranky I know working on images is a good choice because I can put it down if my child is especially needy.

Family and Chore Time – After 5 pm

After 5 pm is my family and chore time. I clean my house, start dinner, clean up the dinner mess and spend the evening with my family. Giving L a bath, folding laundry, and other things also get done during this time.

Typically after L goes to bed I will then take my self care time. I read, play games, watch adult TV, or – if I’m super tired – just go to bed myself.

Work At Home Mom Tips

Working from home is not always easy so there are a few tips that I want to talk about so you can better schedule your days. It’s about maximizing your daily productivity so you can continue to grow your business.

Set Working Hours

Set your work hours. They don’t have to be typical work hours. Work with your normal energy levels. So if you are unproductive in the morning and more productive in the evening make those your work hours.

This is the beauty of working at home for yourself. You can choose what hours work for you based around your prime productivity times.

Do The Hard Things First

Get the hard stuff done first so it’s done. Whenever you start your “work day” make the hard stuff your first priority. While writing isn’t hard for me it’s the most important task for my business so it’s my first priority.

Related: How To Use Task batching To Maximize Productivity

Wake Up Early Or Stay Up Late As Needed

Many business owners swear by the wake up before 5 am to get work done theory. I do not. I tried it and while I would have stuck to it and absolutely gone for the 5 am wake up, my child wakes up when I wake up.

No one wants a kid to wake up at 5 am, they are cranky by noon every single day.

Mom working in bed on laptop with baby laying next to her

So sometimes I stay up late to work on projects and ideas. If your kids are like mine is than this may be an option for you. Consider it all and then go for what’s right for your schedule.

Take Breaks

Remember to take breaks. It’s important to set up breaks from your work throughout the day. You need to stop and rest your brain for a little while several times a day. This will keep you sharp.

Breaks also provide you time to take note of what’s going on with your body. Do you need to drink some water? Eat something? Take a nap? Or maybe stretch your legs with a neighborhood walk? Take care of your body because the work at home 20 lbs weight gain is a real thing.