Parenting your small business

How do you do it?

As a mum to two children I am finding it increasingly hard trying to juggle the responsibilities of a business and parenthood.

I'm sure I'm not alone in being in a horrible catch 22 situation of juggling.  On the one hand I have the freedom and flexibility to be able to attend sports day, drop off and pick up my children at school and often nurse a sickly child back to health, but on the other hand I am left feeling totally deflated and often dealing with horrible tantrums and bad behaviour due to lack of structure and routine.

I try my best to keep to a regular working pattern of 3.5 days a week when I actually 'go' to work, but the admin and organising doesn't do itself so I can often be found on the computer late into the night, or grabbing iphone minutes in the playground of a morning or during swimming lessons after school.

I'm well aware this is not great parenting, the kids are often left to fend for themselves whilst 'mummy checks her messages' but what's the alternative?

I'd love to be a stay at home mum and enjoy my children all of the time, go to toddler groups with the littlest one and play in the park after school with the older one, but it's simply not possible.  I have to work to pay the mortgage and I am fortunate that my skills and abilities allow me to work part time and for myself.

The other option would be to 'get a proper job' as many of my friends and family have said, but how would that honestly improve the situation?  I could not do the school run and would rely on 100% childcare provision from someone else and I would be working simply to pay for childcare.

Surely it's better to be with my children, even if I'm not always able to give them 100% of my attention?

I would be really interested to find out how other mums with small businesses manage their days and childcare issues.  If any of you would like to do a guest blog post about a typical day 'parenting your business' I'd love to hear from you.

A New Year. Time for a New You?

I always start to feel refreshed at this time every year.  The madness of Christmas has passed, the kids are off school and we are all a little more chilled out.  Theres plenty of chocolate and nice things in the cupboard to eat and the tellys pretty good too.

Along with generally chilling out, I start to plan my New Year.  The thought of putting away the Christmas decorations and getting back on track with my house and business is something for me to look forward to.

I'm always pretty motivated at this time of year, but having run full steam ahead into 'operation New Year' on numerous occasions, this time I'm starting slowly.  I've started making lists, jotting down ideas for new classes, products, advertising campaigns and work stuff and set my self a simple task when it comes to the house, of getting it clean, tidy and sorted and keeping it that way.  No deadlines or unreasonable targets in place at all.  

So if you too want to join me in 'getting sorted' this year but are prepared to start slow, why not get started by doing some Ten Minute Tasks.  I love these as a way of easing into organisation.

Good luck and Happy New Year

I'm so organised it hurts a little bit!

Ok so this week I have a big event next weekend, the in-laws are staying (although not in my house they will be here most days) and it's Little Miss Macks birthday.  On the plus side that means a bit of free childcare and a house guest who likes to cook and is addicted to ironing!  

Next week I have another big event at the weekend and in between all of that I have to do day to day tasks and fulfill customer orders/teach and promote for future work/jobs.

It's totally do-able and as you know I love to be busy and thrive on a challenge, but to do it I need to be super organised.

I've spent half an hour tonight (Little Mack leant me his colouring pens) and gone through my diary and order book and sorted out my life.

The work sections are estimations based on potential childcare (MIL if your reading this I love you xx) and in those slots I will make the items on my making list.

The rest of it kind of fits in with my regular daily routine.

I'll keep you posted!

My week - How did it go?

Hello, well as promised I'm back to let you know how I got on with my week of being super organised and efficient and here I am.  The fact I am here, (all be it written at 11.18pm on Friday night) must say something in itself!

For those of you who missed it, last week I blogged about time management and how I was failing miserably.  I had a plan of action to stick to and stick to it I did!

So here goes:

Saturday I went to a wedding, glammed up (with a speedily knocked up fascinator made at 10pm the night before) and drank far too much, danced loads and had a thoroughly good time with my friends. [TICK SAT TASK ACCOMPLISHED]

Sunday I woke up at 9.30am (slight headache but not too bad due to copious amount of water drunk whilst drinking and an ibruprofen or two before bed).  I made a coffee and sat in bed with my iphone checking my e-mail and Twitter/Facebook.  Mr Mack was at work and the kids were not due to be brought back by the grandparents till 3pm heaven I hear you say, cue: ACTION STATIONS: A quick nip into town for some food shopping (BBQ planned with the parents that evening), last minute fathers day gifts and a quick visit to French Quarter.  My favourite shop in Crown Street for a Pip Studios notebook.  Far too lavish really but I could not resist!  I came home, had lunch and then spent 4 hours cleaning and tidying till my house shone as planned.  I even invented a new tidying method 'the re-homing basket' which I shall blog about another day. [TICK SUN TASK ACCOMPLISHED]

Monday was an admin day.  Mr Mack was at work 8-6 and so my morning commenced as I hope it shall every day (this is standard routine from now on).  Both kids up, dressed and fed regardless of whether Mr mack is home or not (He works shifts). Walk to school, come home, Little Miss Mack and I share some toast while I have my coffee and check e-mails etc then I wash up and have a general tidy up, hang washing out etc (I try to wash the night before or at least while I'm on the school run) until 10am ish when Little Miss goes for a 2 hour nap.  At this point I'd usually hit the studio or go out with her if I am out and about but today I sat down and did the tasks that needed absolute peace and quiet.  I did my tax credit renewal, paid bills, entered accounts, updated websites etc.  She woke about midday, we had lunch together and then she was happy to play on her mat next to me watching telly whilst I did some more admin until we had to pick up Little Mack (slightly later than usual as he had a play date after school) then I was back to being mummy again.  I had a One-2-One class booked that evening but it cancelled so I eat chocolate and watched TV! [TICK MON TASK ACCOMPLISHED]

Tue was a day off with a spot of shopping for materials which is always fun and I never class it as work!  The day started as per our regular routine and at 10am when Little Miss was ready for a nap we headed off to Chelmsford. We spent all day wandering round town (Little Miss had her nap in the car and buggy), buying stock and birthday presents for friends and then it was time to come home and pick up Little Mack.  There was a few things we hadn't managed to buy in Chelmsford and Little Miss was a bit wingey as she was feeling under the weather with a virus so I decided to walk up the town after school.  We visited the toy shop (a.k.a charity shop) and purchased some new trains much to Little Macks delight, had a haircut and posted packages.  [TICK TUE TASKS ACCOMPLISHED AND SOME]! I even got out on Wednesday night to my WI meeting and won the photo competition with this calender girls style piccy!

Wed & Thur I had childcare.  I made, made and made some more.  Wednesday was cushion seat pads and Thursday was teacher gifts.  I was fortunate enough to have childcare in the form of Mum a.k.a. my Studio Support Technician on Thursday so that meant when Little Miss slept I had some help in cutting and packaging up. Mum stayed on into the evening and sorted out all my scrap fabric for me too! [TICK WED & THUR TASKS ACCOMPLISHED]

Friday I had no plans so I had a sort of day off.  I spent the morning making awards for our Brentwood Tweetup award ceremony with my friend Nici (more on that another day) and then went for lunch with a friend and met her teeny tiny new baby.  Picked up Little Mack, went to his swimming class, took Little Miss Mack to the Dr (we have an ear infection, no wonder we have had sleepless nights and a week long temperature - yes ok I admit it I AM SUPERWOMAN) and then went food shopping.  Tonight, after I cleaned up copious amounts of vomit and finally got the kids to bed ON TIME! I sat down to do admin. [TICK FRI TASKS ACCOMPLISHED]

So this just goes to show that when you have a plan in mind and stick to it you can achieve loads!  My house is still clean and tidy thanks to that hour in the morning each day and tidying up before bed, I am up to date on all my work and only actually worked for the equivalent of 3 days and 2 evenings, one of which was a pleasant crafty night spent with my mum!

I'm planning a friends and family weekend a Mr Mack is home but I might squeeze in a couple of making hours here and there we'll see.

So, lets see how next week goes................I have the in-laws staying which could go one of two ways: Lots of childcare so work opportunities can be grabbed or, I might get sucked into lunches and shopping trips (oh how terrible)!  Either way I don't mind I am up to date on all my admin and as long as I have at least 3 days to work I will complete all my orders for the week. Watch this space..............

Routine

How to be a Work at Home Mummy.

Hmmmmm, I've still not totally cracked it, but reading this blog post by Lucy Ledger it looks like she has 

http://lucyledgerdesigns.tumblr.com/post/23472159282/a-day-in-my-life-with-a-business-and-a-4-month-old

It would appear a routine is definitely the important factor!

I'm going to work this week out and then see how I go and write my day down, watch this space

SALE SALE SALE SALE SALE

So I had a stall at the Lawdy Momma vintage show today.

Not knowing exactly how big my stall would be or where I would be located I packed the car with everything I own and OMG it's sooooo much stuff!

Not only did I take loads with me (I only put 1/3 of it out on display)! but in unpacking all my cupboards at home I came across craft materials, old display items, various box loads of vintage china and homewares and all sorts of paraphernalia that you would no doubt all love, but there is just no easy way of showing you on-line.

So I have a solution........................

A 24 hour OPEN STUDIO & RUMMAGE SALE

Friday 25th May 5pm - 11pm & Saturday 26th May 9.30am - 11pm

24 Rowan Green East, Brentwood, CM13 2ED

On sale will be:

• The current Beautiful Things range of accessories and homewares
• Ex stock of lavender bags, brooches, handbags, scarfs and loads more
• Material, ribbon, trim & haberdashery
• Display items i.e. Baskets & display boards
• Vintage china
• Beads and buttons
• Packaging materials
• Wool
• Cardmaking and scrapbook materials such as papers and stamps

(I'm also planning on doing a bootsale in the Sunday so as I will be sorting out for that there may even be lots of general household items out in the garden for you to rummage through before I load up the car Saturday night)!!

 

Pop along at any time during the Friday evening or Saturday sessions, I'll have the kettle on and you'll be welcome to visit the studio whilst your here to discuss any custom orders you might wish to place or just to have a nosey!

See you next weekend and please spread the word.

Operation de-clutter

I have been tidying up my blog and in doing so discovered my settings for some old ones.  I didn't realise but Operation De-clutter is still alive!

www.operationdeclutter.blogspot.co.uk

A lot of the images are missing as is the background, but the blog content is still there.  Have a read, there's some great little posts to browse through.

What makes me chuckle the most is that all my fabric fitted in one drawer!  Oh how times change

A Baby den

Do you have a little person who needs entertaining while you work?

Little Miss Mack will happily sit and play for ages which is a blessing in disguise.  I tend to save all my hand sewing and admin for these times so we can sit in the lounge together.

She has a baby den.  A lovely quilt made for her by Grandma Mack, a big V pillow in case she falls backwards and a box of toys.

This is a great way of keeping things organised.  When she is done with her toys I just pop it to one side all neat and tidy and when she wants to play I tip it on it's side and let her help herself.

Who needs expensive baby walkers and activity centres when a simple quilt and box of toys will do? Watch how it works:

Am I obsessed?

I have realised I do like taking pictures of my washing line!

I was tidying up some shots on my laptop the other day and went to put some pictures into a folder, only to discover that I had another picture with the same number causing an issue.

How weird that both shots are of my washing line!!

A Tuesday Tip

 I have decided to run some regular features on my blog and I wanted to start with my Tuesday tip.  Today's tip is a new one I have recently started and I admit to pinching the idea from 'A Thrifty Mrs' whose blog I follow.

Being a busy working Mum of 2 I seem to have a never ending stream of washing.  Now the warmer weather is here it is so nice to be able to get it all out on the line.

The sun comes into my garden early in the morning so I have taken Thrifty Mrs's idea of loading the washing machine at night before I go to bed.

When I switch on the kettle 1st thing in the morning I also switch on my machine.  By the time I am back from the school run the washing has finished, it can go out on the line and I can start my day of work knowing that the jobs been done and by lunchtime it will be dry.

Those of you with timers on your machines can be even more environmentally friendly and economical by running your machine overnight to save on power and subsequently money.

Try it for a week, I bet you wont go back to midday washing ever again!

A day in the life of

I’ve been asked so many times “How do you do it all”.  I always answer “I have no idea” so I thought that for one day I would write down everything I did in a fairly typical day, just to see.

So here goes, this is a fairly regular day (although I have to add that Mr Mack is home today so I have been able to go out to meetings and leave Little Miss Mack at home).

6.30 – Little Mack comes in to wake me up, he goes off to watch telly and I go back to bed.

7.00 – Little Miss Mack wakes up and is placed in the lounge with Little Mack to watch telly and I go back to bed.

7.30 – I get up, make breakfast for both kids, get washed & dressed, change Little Miss Macks bum, get Little Mack dressed, pack the book bag, make tea for Mr Mack and coffee & toast for me.

8.40 – Walk Little Mack to school

8.50 – drop off at school and walk up to the town hall to deliver an order

9.10 – arrive at the Toby Carvery for a coffee and sit down for 20 minutes to check e-mails, twitter & Facebook

9.30 – Meet a friend and business acquaintance for a run.  During said run I dropped off a form and some money to another client as we ran past their house and discussed the Brentwood Bag Project and work we needed to do on the project whilst we ran.  ‘Business meeting on the run’

10.00 – Arrive home, shower, dress, apply makeup, make coffee, check e-mails, package up 6 orders, change Little Miss Macks bum, load dishwasher, and put washing on.

11.15 – Collect running partner again (this time in the car) and head off to a meeting at a local school

11.30 – Meeting for one hour

12.45 – Drop running partner home again, post packages at the post office, pop to local sandwich bar to buy bagels for lunch with Mr Mack

1.15 – Eat lunch, half an hour Skype chat with Manager in Australia, tweet, check e-mail, update Facebook, hang washing out, put Little Miss Mack down for a nap and give her a bottle, make some business calls.

2.45 – Collect Little Mack from school (mini business meeting whilst waiting with one of the Dads who is opening a new business in town soon)

3.10 – tidy up lounge, clean Little Mack following disastrous lunchtime pasta sauce incident at school, find business Dad on Twitter and tweet him some links, wash up, clean kitchen.

3.55 – Head out to local radio station

4.15 – Interviewed for Brentwood Bag Project on Phoenix FM

5.00 – Arrive home, make Little Macks bed, cook Little Macks tea, sit down to start typing up this diary (until this point and then I will save it till later)

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I’m back

6.00 – Put washing up away, write a shopping list, and wash up more stuff! Supervise Little Macks tea, fold washing and put away, pack change bag for tomorrow, get school uniform etc out for tomorrow, bath Little Miss Mack, get Little Mack in the tub, make bottle for Little Miss Mack and get husband to put her to bed, upload some photos from my camera, tidy hall.

7.00 – bath Little Mack whilst skyping a colleague, dry off and get Little Mack into PJ’s put to bed

7.38 – Sit down to type a bit more of this diary and check Facebook, Twitter, e-mails etc.

Plans for the rest of the evening:

Eat dinner (Mr Mack has cooked that)

Ironing

Admin

Diary planning

Booking appointments

Arranging childcare

Possibly watching telly (in the background whilst ironing/admin)

Getting up and down to a teething baby, before going to bed and then doing it all again tomorrow.

Ok…………on reflection, maybe I am superwoman!

And that's a business meeting/admin kind of day.  A making day can be completely different.

Hows your day been?  What do you get up to on a typical day?

Pre-spring clean. How are you getting on?

So you should be onto your 4th room of pre-spring cleaning, have completed a few 10 minute tasks and worked out and completed some 30 minute tasks.

I'm not going to give you too much to do today as I think you'll all have plenty to keep you busy (depending how big your house is).  But next week is Organise and de-clutter week so I want you to start thinking of some major tasks in your house, like this for example...............

This mess is my poor childrens bedroom!

Just 2 or 3 to begin with, make a list, take some before photos and enjoy your weekend.

I'll be back Monday!

Challenge number 3 - 30 minute tasks

Welcome back, are you still with me?

So I am hoping you all got a few 'Ten Minute Tasks' completed yesterday.  I am guessing that along the way you found quite a few other projects that you thought Oooooh that needs doing, but it will take longer than 10 minutes.

So did I, so hey, why not?  Lets do some 30 minute tasks.......................................

Heres some of my 'to do's

 

• Tidy up my baking cupboard
• Go through my filing basket and throw out things that no longer need filing!
• Organise and put away my kit for my latest business venture

Challenge number 2 - Re-visiting Ten Minute Tasks

I admit I am far from perfect or good at this housework/re-organising/de-cluttering thing, so much so that I give good advice but dont always stick to it myself! 

Do you remember my post about Ten Minute Tasks? Well I've not been doing them recently at all.  After slapping my wrist I set too and wrote myself a list of a few to get me started.

Under sink cupboard

Pots & pans cupboard

clean the trampoline

However this was all I could come up with!  Perhaps I have been being good after all.

So I will head of now and undertake these 3 little tasks and I'd like you to read my how too post above and crack on with a list of your own. 

Pop back tomorrow for challenge number 3.

Challenge 1 - A room a day

Your back, good to see you and welcome to day 1 of Operation Pre Spring Clean and our first challenge.

This one is going to take some doing, but believe me it is soooooo worth it.  To be sure I would manage to join in with you all I actually started this challenge last Friday as a test and am now almost finished.

It's quite simple really.  Clean & tidy one room in your house a day, but do it 'better than your regular housework'.

As an example, when I cleaned my bathroom, I got up on a stool and got all the cobwebs out of the corners, hoovered my light fitting, dusted my blinds, cleared out and cleaned the under sink cupboard and threw away all the half empty bottles of shampoo which we never use.

The idea of this is that by the time you have finished (if you keep it tidy for a week), you should have a nice clean and tidy house to start week 2 which will be when the de-cluttering and re-organisation commences.

So pick a room for today and get cleaning.

Pre Spring Clean Week

As yesterdays Silent Sunday showed, spring is finally on it's way.  Warmer days and sunshine and a few spring bulbs forcing their way through the ground.

We have every intention of moving house in the next few months and so need to do more than just a regular spring clean.  We are talking Operation House Doctor!  A thorough spring clean, de-clutter and storage marathon to ensure we maximise the potential of our dinky little two bed flat and sell it as a lovely roomy house.

That is a full scale mission with two adults with hobbies, a crafty home based business, a baby with it's relevant paraphernalia and a near 5 year old with an extensive train and track collection.

So I need to get cracking and this week is officially the start.

I am planning a 'pre spring clean' a 'better than regular housework' effort at getting started.

Over the course of the week ahead I will be blogging daily and sharing top tips and ideas to get you in the spring cleaning mood.  I'll be setting a daily challenge and encouraging you to blog along with me.

So check back tomorrow at 11am for our first mission.

Silent Sunday

The 'Housework Chart' returns

You might remember my post 'How to be Superwoman' well surprisingly that is one of my most popular blog posts to date.

I would like to state for the record that I am NOT superwoman in fact I am far from even slightly super!  I do however seem to fit an awful lot into my life and I do often question myself how I do it.

Sometimes good habits slip though and I have to admit since getting back from my travels one of those things has been my housework and so the 'Housework Chart' has had to return.

A great little tool which allows you to make sure your whole house gets a once over if not in one fell swoop then certainly each part gets done at some point during the week.

If you'd like a copy of my little tick list to pop up on your kitchen cupboard then feel free to contact me via twitter @clairemackaness or comment below with your e-mail address and I'll ping you a copy.

Organising with a man in the house

When all else fails and you simply have to get the washing sorted and your husband wont get out of bed, just keep calm and carry on....................

Men. Can't live with them, can't live without them!

Blogging - Getting sorted

Sometimes you need another brain to bounce ideas off. Both Louise from Running Rabbit Crafts and I are both bloggers who craft and are in the process of building our businesses.

Louise has some great applications on her blog that I coveted and I had quote a few that Louise wanted, so we got together.

Somehow with a baby grizzling with teething pains and a toddler running around and causing general mayhem, we managed to pick each others brains and update our blogs.

You'll notice I now have a header at the top with a few pages (some of them are empty right now but watch this space). I also have started tagging my posts. Take a peek to the right and you'll see a nice list. You can now select a subject you want to read about and it will bring all of the posts up that I have tagged as being about it.

I'm sure there will be more to show you soon, but thanks to Louise for her tips. Sometimes two heads are indeed better than one.