My colleague, Sara Berthiaume, recently wrote a post called, Keeping House While Working from Home. She touches on an issue that many work at home moms are faced with. How in the world can you keep your home clean while building a business from home? Keeping a home is a big job. Don’t be fooled by those who want you to believe if you keep a home and raise a family you are not doing enough. Believe me, you are doing plenty! Caring for a home and a family can be overwhelming so when you add to it a home business you need to find a balance. A disorderly home can cause your work to suffer and lead to feelings of discouragement and defeat.
Let me reassure you that a messy house does not make you a failure or mean you cannot handle business and home life. It simply means you need to find a routine that works for your family. It also means that at times, your home may be a bit upside down. I sit here with a kitchen that needs to be swept, laundry that needs to be folded and put away, and dinner that has yet to be planned. These days happen to all of us. There are always jokes and funny images being passed around Facebook depicting how difficult it is to maintain an orderly home. We laugh because it hits us where it hurts. Did you catch that? Hurts. Not many women are happy living in chaos. We strive for order in our homes. It helps our minds feel ordered and allows us to be more productive. It is hard to make plans for company or set a goal for our business when we have laundry up to our eyeballs and dishes to the ceiling. We laugh because it is better then crying.
Before you use that dish rag to wipe your tears, let me encourage you. You are running your home it is not running you. If your home is running you then your first order of business and home is to revamp your routine. Take a look at Sara’s cleaning schedule and figure out how you can make one of your own. Your schedule may not look like her schedule but if it works then claim the victory. To keep my life in order as much as possible, I have “office hours”. I work from home and I homeschool so my routine has to be firmly in place. However, as my husband always tells me, “plan for living”. I cannot clean a kitchen and then complain that a child asks for a snack. Set up a cleaning schedule and office hours. Do not feel confined by the schedule but freed by it. If you feel confined then you are doing it wrong. You should walk through your home able to breath and happy. Home is a haven and the further away it is from that the more your work and your state of being will suffer.