Work – life balance is something I struggle with every day. Most people, if they looked at my life, would think that was a strange question for me. You see I work at home. I don’t rush out the door every morning to fight the traffic. I don’t have daily battles to leave the office to get home for dinner with my family. Surely as someone who works from home I now have the best of both worlds?

Most of the discussion about work – life balance is about juggling a career outside the home with finding time for raising children. Very little of the talk is about the real challenges women face as they raise both children and a business from home. How do you get work – life balance when you move the work into your home?

I know this is a real problem. My work is always there. Behind my office door, on my desk are the freelance projects I’m working on and my manuscripts that need editing. It is all too easy to tell my daughter that, “I won’t be long, I just need to check my email.” This always ends up with me cross as I struggle to reply to emails and pacify an irate child who finds watching me on the computer a bit boring! With work just a room away, evenings and weekends can lose their meaning and become just another opportunity to work. In the end, working at home can be just as demanding and stressful as in the office.

In an effort to bring back some balance and calmness into my work at home, here are my top three tips I’ve developed along the way:

• Treat it like a job: Work hours means it is work time and family time is family time. This means that dinner is cooked after work time, not during my work hours. It also means that my emails can wait until I am in my office in my work hours. As Sarah Stein, CEO and Franchisor of Miss Efficiency Bookkeeping said, “…I am very clear about what I do and don’t do. I might put a load of washing on at night, but I will be hanging that out in the morning before we go to childcare. I think of it in terms of if I was an employee I couldn’t come home at ten o’clock and hang out my washing.”

• Focus on what I am doing: Focusing on what I am doing right now is something I practice every day. So when I’m working I am dedicated to producing the best quality outcomes for my work in the time I have. And that does mean turning the Internet off if the job for that day doesn’t need it, and saying “no” to personal calls or household chores. Then when I’m with my daughter, I am focused on her. I’m 100% listening to what she is saying without one eye on the computer screen.

• Respect my work: Before my child, I had a career I loved for so long. When I moved to working from home, I struggled with respecting my work for years. Some how I felt that if I didn’t wear a suit everyday and have back-to-back meetings, that what I did wasn’t “real” work. Now I know that my work is just as valuable as that of my office block, employed friends. It is the outcomes produced that count, not whether I happen to be wearing a suit or not while I worked on them. I then discovered that as soon as I started respecting my work, so did everyone else.

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Jennifer Forest is the author of Work Women Want: Work at Home or Go Part-Time. She is on a quest chasing the promise made to her as a teenager: that women can have it all. Why can’t women have time to take their kids to the playground but still make decent money?

Work Women Want: Work at Home or Go Part-Time will be released May 1^st 2013 in print and e-book.

 www.workwomenwant.com

The post How to Raise a Business and Babies at the Same Time appeared first on AKAMom Magazine.

A note from AKA Mom Associate Publisher, Wendy Manning:

I was recently invited to my first Trades of Hope home party at a friend and neighbor of mine’s house. I was truly inspired by the idea behind this company. I hope you will read the article below and be inspired to make a difference in the life of another. The uplifting feeling of helping someone will definitely make a difference in yours! Please help spread the word about Trades of Hope.

While attending a candle party, Holly Wehde of Palm Coast, Florida had an inspiration:  If candles and kitchenware can get into every home in America through home parties, why not use a home party business to help women all over the world out of poverty? And that is how Trades of Hope began.  It’s a mission AND a business which creates a market for exquisite handcrafts such as scarves, jewelry, baskets, wall hangings, purses, etc.

Trades of Hope is NOT a typical “party” business where mass-produced items are sold to benefit only the manufacturer and the saleswomen.  Here’s the difference:  the women who create Trades of Hope products are real people with real needs.  They are women who love their children, but who, through no fault of their own, have not been able to feed and clothe those children.

Trades of Hope works through fair trade organizations, ensuring that artisans are paid fair wages, which gives them the opportunity to improve their living conditions and provide for their families.  Women are being rescued from the sex trade, sweatshops, slums and extreme poverty.

The “party with a purpose” and the idea of “women helping women” has been warmly embraced by customers.  Each Trades of Hope item comes with an attached card stating where it was made and telling something about the artisan.  These products make wonderful gifts, as the giver is giving twice….once to the gift recipient and once to the artisan.

The following is a message from a Trades of Hope artisan who lives in Bangladesh:

“My name is Shova. I am 35.  My only son died of a fever when he was four.  My husband did not earn enough money to feed us so he left me and I had to move in with my brother.  Before I started making products to sell we did not have proper clothes or food. Our house was a mud hut. Now I make more than most people in my community and I send my brother’s children to school. I receive respect now and other women ask for my advice. I must give a message to those who buy my baskets and journals. Thank you for understanding our sorrow and situation. You have given us food and shelter and respect.”

Since its inception in September, 2010, Trades of Hope has acquired 90 representatives (Compassion Entrepreneurs) in 21 states, and continues to expand. The company also gives back 10% of sales in Gifts of Hope, buying sewing machines for women Haiti, and chickens, goats and pigs for women in Africa, thus enabling them to further improve their lives and become self sustaining.

 To learn more about Trades of Hope, visit www.tradesofhope.com. 

*Information above was provided by Deborah Adair – Compassion Entrepreneur in Tennessee. Deborah Adair is selling Trades of Hope as a ministry. In addition to the product sales helping women in poverty, Deborah is using her commissions to give to world missions and to organizations such as Compassion International, Samaritan’s Purse and Rafiki African Orphanages to meet the needs of children in poverty around the world. To learn more about hosting a party or becoming a Compassion Entrepreneur, contact Deborah Adair at 931-490-0698, by email at debiadair@gmail.com or visit her Facebook page, www.Facebook.com/TradesofHopeDeborahAdair

The post PARTIES WITH A PURPOSE appeared first on AKAMom Magazine.