A zero stress work-at-home mum routine
Time is one of the most precious commodities a work-at-home mum has.
If you’re trying to squeeze in school runs, chores, work and quality time with the family, it can feel like nothing is getting enough of your attention.
But there are so many privileges and perks of being a work-at-home parent that I am happy to take the rough with the smooth.
Every spare minute is taken up with trying to squeeze in a bit more work, but I love being my own boss!
In this post I’m going to share what a typical day looks like for me and detail my working routine to show you how I fit everything in while putting effort into growing my business.
I’m going to tell you about what I’m actually doing with my time every week to make money from home.
One of the hardest things about blogging, especially when you are starting out, is that not every action you take has a direct impact of making you money.
Blogging is all about working towards growth every month, which in the end results in you making money. That may be through advertising or picking up new sponsorship deals.
However when writing that one blog post, or uploading that one YouTube video, won’t in itself generate cash or feel like it makes a big impact, it can be tough to motivate yourself.
I try to consider my daily routine as part of a bigger picture of working towards growth.
Aiming for viral content that will help you cut corners is, I’m afraid, unrealistic. Sometimes people get lucky, but more often than not it takes a bit more work to hone in on a niche and really do well.
What I’m saying is, if you want your blog and business to grow, then you need to be working towards the bigger picture.
So most of the tasks that I try to incorporate in my working week are about helping my website and business grow. Sometimes it’s about maintenance, like updating plugins on the sites or invoicing for work, but I know that if I’m going to be a success I need to really have a plan for the next 12 months and beyond.
The point is, when you make your own daily working-at-home routine, try to think about what your ultimate goals are. What can you do to move you closer to those goals every day?
This switch in mindset can help to make your daily routine more intentional and ultimately you will achieve more!
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My daily work-at-home mum routine
This is my typical daily schedule in the week, assuming my eldest daughter is going to school!
My youngest daughter is usually at nursery one day a week, however recently she’s been at home with me all the time.
- 7am – Post to Instagram then give kids breakfast.
- 8am – Put out children’s clothes. Reply to comments on Insta post and interact with other people’s posts.
- 8.30am – School run.
- 9am – Playtime with my youngest daughter, we may go to the park or do something fun at home.
- 11am – Work – content creation such as new blog posts or new pins. If I can distract my daughter well enough then I may shoot a YouTube video. My daughter will watch TV. or play with her toys.
- 12midday – Lunch
- 1pm – Work – Content creation.
- 2.30pm – School run. Once we’re home, I get the kids a snack and then we play.
- 5pm – Dinner and then washing up.
- 5.30pm – Work – I get some more work done while the kids watch TV or play. At this time I focus on blog posts writing and pins as it tends to be too dark for filming.
- 7pm – Bedtime for the kids.
- 7.30pm – I watch some TV with my husband.
- 8.30pm – Work – I get into bed in my PJs and do another hour or two of work depending on how much energy I have!
At weekends my husband will often take the kids for a few hours so that I can get extra time for work.
While this routine is pretty typical of a weekday for me, I do have to be flexible. Some days I may decide to go and meet some friends with my youngest daughter and so the entire day will just involved playing with her.
I try to just switch off and relax on days like that, because one of the perks of making money from my blog is that I can choose to take a day off and focus on my family when it suits me.
What I do every week to make money at home
Create new content
I have two blogs, a YouTube channel, Instagram, Pinterest, Facebook and Twitter. That’s a lot of channels that need content.
Of course with some of these channels it’s fairly straightforward to repurpose my content from one channel to fit another.
For example I may share an Instagram post to both Twitter and Facebook at the same time (Instagram gives you this option when you post to the platform).
If I were to rank platforms by order of important, Facebook and Twitter come out at the bottom for me. While I know I need to keep them ticking over, I cannot put 100 per cent of my effort into every channel. If I spread myself too thin, I don’t do well on any platform.
So if I only have time to do a few things, I focus on the things that matter the most.
These are the priorities for me every week.
- Shoot 2 new YouTube videos.
- Edit videos and create thumbnails. Upload to YouTube with a description and tags that work for SEO. I use Morning Fame to find good keywords for titles and tags.
- Write 3-4 new blog posts.
- Take 3-5 images for Instagram. You can find out my top tips for growing on Instagram here.
- Make 21-50 new pins for Pinterest. I mainly use Canva for this but have used PicMonkey a few times too.
- Produce Instagram stories. I share roughly 15-20 Insta stories a day. As a general rule, I would say five to 10 stories per day is a good average to aim for.
- Share 4-5 posts on Facebook. I was sharing a whole lot more to Facebook and I really need to get back to doing one post a day. My focus has been on Instagram recently over Facebook recently as I want to reach 10k followers.
Social media commenting
Creating and then posting content is not where it ends.
Once comments come in you need to respond to them. It’s especially important to engage with comments on your latest Instagram posts in the first hour.
This sends a signal to Instagram that your post is attracting attention, and shows it to more people.
And you can use all the hashtags in the world, but if you’re not engaging with other people in the platform then your own engagement isn’t going to be great.
Give out likes and comments as much as you can. The more the better. Not everyone will comment back, but most people who are on Insta as a blogger or biz will return the love and comment on your posts.
Being an engaged user of Instagram is really the best way of growing your following.
It’s also about having good manners too! Someone takes the time to comment on your post, it’s only polite to reply to them!
I also try to reply to all of my comments on other channels such as YouTube and responses to tweets.
Focusing on growth
All of the above things help to maintain and grow my blog, but if I want to increase my income and make my income more reliable, I need to be exploring other income streams.
In blogging, as with many businesses, it’s not enough to just focus on one income stream.
I make great money from my MediaVine advertising on my parenting blog, but what if I suddenly lose that income? That’s nearly all of my income gone!
So I want to diversify that income. This is why I am planning to start selling ebooks on my parenting blog and why I am focused on trying to grow my Instagram and YouTube following. I want to be able to secure more sponsorship deals with brands in the long-term.
So part of my time every week is spent looking at how I can grow my blog.
This may involve taking time to study and learn new techniques, or find better ways to use YouTube or SEO.
Simply maintaining your blog is not enough, you need to be looking at ways to drive it forward.
Final thoughts on my daily work-at-home mum routine
So that’s what my daily work life looks like!
Every day can vary a little here and there depending on what’s going on with the children that day. But I try to put in similar hours to my business every day.
While my business is blogging, I think that my routine and the philosophy behind what I’m trying to achieve can be applied to any niche.
If you are trying to grow a freelance business, your time needs to be spent taking care of your daily tasks but also looking for ways you can grow.
I hope you found this routine useful! Let me know what your daily working from home routine looks like!
