Balancing your family and your home office

Organising your time is very important when working from home, especially if you have a family. You need to still spend time with your family but you also need to be committed to completing your work.

You must learn how to balance your time between your office and your family. Your office must be your working domain, away from the children, they must learn and know that this is your place of work. They must be taught not disturb your desk and equipment in any way. Maybe setting up there own little office space within your office, maybe with a little table, chair, paper and crayons could help.

A good idea is to have set times where you work in your office and times when you spend with the children, teaching the children these times and try to keep to these boundaries that you set. If possible having someone on hand to help with the children while you are working would be very helpful, maybe a maid or a Grandparent. Or an idea could be to send your children to crèche during your working hours and then have them home early afternoon and spend the rest of the day with them, if you have urgent work that needs completion, then you can start again once the children are in bed, don’t forget though that you also need to spend quality time with your husband. Another useful idea is to let hubby spend time with the children on a Saturday morning while you complete any outstanding work tasks, therefore your husband will get to spend valuable quality time with the children which he cannot do during the week because of work commitments.

Your office needs to be organized and if you practice time management skills, you will feel less stressed and more in control of your working environment. Start your day by checking first your diary to see what you have scheduled for that day, then download and check your e-mails and any mail you have for the day, then schedule all your tasks for that day on a ‘To do List’, carrying on the tasks from the previous day, add new tasks as and when you receive them onto the end of the list, use your prioritization skills to prioritize as you go. If your day is structured, your working life will be organized and less stressful. Try to keep your office stress within your office. If you are stressed this will affect the way your children behave, so remember stress stays in the office.

Try to keep everything on your desk in its own place, that way if the children have came into your office and moved anything around on your desk you will know immediately, as children do this regularly if they have access to your office. A good idea would be to lock your pc functions, screen and keys, this will stop them from upsetting anything on your computer.