My Daily Routine To Fit Together Mom Life, Bonus Mom Life and A Work From Home Schedule
As a work from home mama, bonus mom, and entrepreneur, life can take over with no sense of direction. These past few weeks, I’ve been taking the time to plan, reflect on goals and organize my year and consider what it is I want out of my business and blog. In 2024 I’m focused more on sharing those pieces. Starting with how my work from home mom routine as I fit my work time in around balancing family and home life.
You see, this calling on my heart to have a homemaking lifestyle blog continues to nag at me. Isn’t it funny how what God calls us to doesn’t go away? His persistence on our thoughts and dreams is because He has a greater plan for us.
As I’ve reflected, I’ve realized that my unique story is not just homemaking. It’s also not solely having a digital entrepreneur job. My story is a fusion of messy intertwined commingled work, combined with homemaker life, mama life, and bonus mom life.
So here’s what it looks like to run a business from home, with a baby and three stepkids. I hope this will be helpful to other mamas with side hustles or mamas who are aspiring entrepreneurs to see how they may be able to fit together home and work life.
First Let’s Talk The Number of Work Hours For My Work From Home Routine
As a work from home mama, I don’t work 40 hours a week. 40 hours a week is a farce anyway. Don’t get me started on that tangent. Depending on projects, workloads etc…A slow week may be as few as 15 hours with a typical week closer to 20 hours. And a very busy week 25+ hours.
Now when I say work, I’m not talking fluff. I mean nose to the grindstone, completing client tasks, and checking off things that are part of client retainers and contract work that brings in money.
So much of a 40 hour a week job at an office has a lack of efficiency and time wasters in it. I remember from my corporate days.
The Work From Home Mom Routine
With a joint custody schedule, this varies week to week. We have a 50/50 week-on-week-off custody split, which means those weeks look different depending on whether or not we have our big kids or it’s just hubs, me, and the baby.
Baby Only Weeks Daily Routine
A typical week with just the baby looks like this:
8am is wake-up time when I hear B start fussing on the baby monitor.
8am-9am We get up, change clothes, eat breakfast, delight in a necessary cup of coffee, tackle some light house cleaning such as loading or unloading the dishwasher, sweeping the kitchen or dining room flour and a little kitchen ‘puttering.’ I love this time of day by the way.
9am-10am This goes one of two ways. Puttering in the kitchen further, perhaps feeding my sourdough starter, making a loaf of bread, homemade crackers or prepping dinner for the crockpot. If I’m not puttering in the kitchen we may head downstairs for some relaxed downtime. This looks like the tv on, folding laundry if needed, maybe throw a load in as well and hangout while the baby plays.
10-12pm Flex time. Depending on the weather we may go outside for a walk, walk around and play in the yard, maybe run an errand or do grocery pickups. Depending on my workload and if the baby is in a stage that will tolerate it, I may squeeze in an hour of work while she plays. Snacks also happen here.
12pm-1pm Lunch time. Here I address anything that needs done in the kitchen such as meal prep, kneading my starter or making bread. Then get baby down for a nap.
1pm -til baby wakes up. Since B is in a transitional time of sleep, how long she naps varies. Sometimes it’s as short as an hour and a half but we’re finally (Thank goodness!) getting 2 and even 2 ½ hours naps lately. This is work time and this is SACRED. I do not do housework while baby is asleep. I get straight to work and work until she wakes up.
3pm or when baby wakes up. Diaper change, snack, and playtime. If we didn’t go outside in the morning we do now. I also may try to squeeze in another 30 minutes of work while baby plays.
4:30/5pm ish. Dinner prep. Any cooking that needs to happen does. Depending on when dinner happens and hubby is home we eat and clean up.
7pm ish to 10pm. Finish any dinner cleanup and then depending on what I have going on for work I may bathe the baby, give her to daddy and go work until 9pm or 10 depending on workload. Sometimes we switch this up and I do a couple quick things while my husband bathes our baby and then I put her to bed. Around 8:30 or so I then work til 10 or 10:30.
This part of the evening is typically only Monday to Thursday. I don’t work evenings on weekends and it all really depends on the workload. A heavy week I may have to work three to four nights a week for two to three hours. A light week none. An average week I may work 1-2 hours in the evening 2 days a week. If I feel like I need a jumpstart to my week and things are hectic I’ll occasionally spend 2-3 hours on a Sunday so that Monday isn’t overwhelming.
All Kid Weeks Daily Routine
Weeks that we have our older kids look similar in the daytime. Between 8:30-9am I’m taking kids to school, and depending on when the baby wakes up she gets fed between 8-8:30. If she woke up close to 8:30 we might just run to take the kids to school and come back to the house and have breakfast at about 9.
9-10am then becomes the time we eat breakfast, tackle some kitchen chores and then change our clothes and maybe toss on a tiny bit of makeup.
The rest of the day runs pretty similar as the non-big kid weeks except for 3:15 pm-4pm becomes our time to pick up kids from school and then settle back in.
4pm-5pm I either squeeze in an hour of work, or make dinner. This varies based on kids’ extra curricular activities and what time they start and how heavy our load is. Certain nights of the week my husband and I both are running to and from multiple activities for big kids. Our worst night of the week means that we are both in and out of the house between about 5-8:30 multiple times as we do pick ups and drop offs.
5pm -8:15. After that we get baby and big kids settled into their bedtime routine.
9pm Ideally this time is lights out, kids are in bed (unless they’ve successfully stalled us) and I’ll work 9pm -10/10:30 depending on workload. A really busy week I’ve occasionally worked until 11/11:30 but this is rare.
Work From Home Mom Routine Compromise Honey
Being a work from home mom with a flex schedule is a wonderful way to be home with kids and bring in an income, but it can require compromise is our schedule. I don’t love working evenings. Believe me, I’d love to settle in and watch tv or read a book. Since I know that uninterrupted work time may come in the evening, I have some of my downtime in the daytime while B plays and I indulge in a home show I like.
To me this schedule is worth it. Will it always be this way? No, of course not. It’ll look different as kids age and there are potentially preschool times or homeschool co-ops. For now, this works for us and creates that flexibility I need as a mom-preneur doing that work-from-home mom life.
Love,
Kaitlyn