Business Owner, Boss, Mummy: The Ultimate Balancing Act
Having children (no matter age) is a full time job. I have heard so many people argue that “you chose to have kids, it is not work, it is not a job” well my response to simply: You try raising children to be decent adults and human beings that can function and contribute to society, then tell me it isn’t a full time job.
Being a parent is tough and no doubt it brings forward a lot of issues that you may not have been aware you had. Anxiety, issues with your childhood, issues with your parents, the list is never ending. So how do we do it? Well we cope with the best ways and methods we can, things like routines, daily activities to keep the kids busy, little luxuries that we would never have “needed” or even considered getting hold of, become absolute life savers and time savers eg a dishwasher, other than my skin allergies to soaps and latex, I never had an issue hand washing my dishes, then came the world of bottles, baby plates, toddlers and other child related, messy lifestyle changes. Suddenly I had dishes piled to the ceiling that I just could not find the time to do. Now I am neat and clean freak so this caused huge anxiety and depression that no matter how hard I tried I never had a 100% clean kitchen or house. So I bought a dishwasher. Never again while there are young children around will I live without one. See…. Luxury.
Along side running a house hold and rearing a child, I had to find something to do for myself, we also have had some financial troubles in the last few years and it was looking more and more like we were going to need to put our little one in Daycare and I was going to have to find a way back into the workforce. Now this is fine, and I have no issues with going back to work or even putting my son in Daycare, but in my area I would be walking away with maybe $150-$200 per week after the cost of daycare fees – that’s not including the cost of getting to and from work everyday etc. Was it worth it… not really.
This is when I decided that although we had little money, I needed to do something to help the situation along, well cue my brilliant plan to use the knowledge I have from working and studying in the field and start my own business. Safe to say that Nudie Baby Co had a rocky start up, finding suppliers and such was really hard when I literally only had $100 to my name. So I started small and started asking parent groups and such on Facebook, if they could have any natural, chemical free baby care item – what would it be. Well the answer was obvious, nappy rash cream. So for about a month that’s what I sold. Now the business has progressed to knitted beanies, a pet care range, maternity/post-partum care range, and we are about to throw in custom embroidered wall hangings, towels, blankets and a stuffed toy range. All things I make myself from home from skills I have accumulated through study and hobbies.
But here is the really hard part, I have to make all these things to order, ship them within a reasonable time frame, invest in the ingredients/materials, drive around collecting those materials AND balance raising a toddler and running a household basically on my own (soon to be a toddler and a newborn on my own). How do I do it? Careful planning of my week, then my day to day, and sometimes even down to the last hour. Basically I am a schedule-making queen (probably comes from my many years with many more to come at university, and even more so my administration and schedule handling history for 4 lawyers).
I break down every task I have to do into firstly 2 groups
What can I do while watching my son
What can I do while he is napping or I have someone here visiting
Lets use an example list for a day:
To do List:
Make and Fill 4 orders of baby lotion
Collect materials for baby beanie order
Design and send draft to customer for embroidered towel
Clean kitchen
Wash the walls and floors
Clean the bathrooms
Post all completed orders
Now lets break it down into what I can do with Kyran at my hip and what I can’t.
What Can I do watching Kyran
* Make baby lotion orders*Collect materials for baby beanie orders
* Clean the kitchen
*
Post completed orders
What can't be done with Kyran
* Fill baby lotion orders
* Design embroidery order
* Clean bathrooms
* Wash floors and walls
Now that I can see what I can do whilst running around with Kyran, or even things I can do and get Kyran involved in I can plan my day out. Now I am an early riser by nature, I seldom sleep past 6am most days with or without my son demanding attention. Kyran sleeps until about 7am. So I lay out activities for him to do while I do things that require 2 hands.
Things like kiddy train set, drawing and even his morning meal are set up ready to go so that I can jump into my first task, by order of priority – now I am not going to prioritize these examples right now as each persons priorities are different, I can tell you though that before anything happens once Kyran is having breakfast, is the dishes, stacked and ready to be turned on in the dishwasher. Than I clean and sterilize the kitchen ready for any skin care or baby care products that need to be made.
As Kyran moves through his activities as he chooses (he quite independent like that) I move through the tasks whilst watching him enjoy his independent playtime. I have his activities set up in the dining area or theatre area, as they are both in line of sight from any part of my kitchen.
Right products are made and jarred ready for shipping so I set them aside. A final do over the kitchen to keep it clean for the day and on the dishwasher goes.
Kyran is generally still enjoying is Thomas the Tank engine set by now so I eat breakfast and have a cup of tea at this point while I create postage labels for the products I need to ship for the day. Most postal services have an online label/address maker that you can enter the details into, and it will print a postage label ready for you to go. Australia post also have the option to create these labels with the postage cost prepaid. That is what I use. Anything to save time is always a win in my household.
Time to roll around on the floor with my son and having some fun. A generally spend an hour to 2 hours playing with Kyran or watching a movie together. Kyran is then off for a nap.
Now I am lucky, Kyran naps once a day for about 3 hours so I get a lot done, but even if your kids take shorter naps, you can still at least get a few things done if you are efficient.
The biggest thing for me is floors, Kyran being a toddler slips on wet floors and I have a constant nagging fear of him cracking his head open. So as soon as the nap happens, I scrub the bathrooms quickly and get onto the floors. Now I don’t like walking on wet floors either, so before I wash the floors I make sure that I have everything for my next task organized in the carpeted areas of my house where I will be sitting during my son’s nap. In this example drawing up an embroidery design requires sketch paper, my laptop, my stationary and my phone. All of which are ready on the coffee table in my lounge room.
Once the floors are finished, I draw up my design – in general I do 2-3 options for each order and email them off. Takes me about an hour to do, then I fill the orders for the baby lotion (as in bubble wrap them and put them in the postage bags that are prelabeled) I do this while Kyran is asleep because someone usually runs through the house with the roll of bubble wrap. Once that’s finished I usually I get an hour or so to nap myself or write a blog post ;)
I wake up and get Kyran out of bed, floors are dry and the house is clean all before midday. Time for lunch, now I meal prep and freeze a weeks worth of meals, but sometimes or some people don’t do that, so I spend about 30 mins whipping up lunch. Feed the toddler and we go out for the afternoon. Sometimes we may even buy lunch. During this outing I post off the orders, and collect any materials or groceries we may need. I like to do things in the afternoon because my son is full of beans and the outing generally includes a trip to the park, which tires the little tike out.
Home time and we are getting dinner ready, while its cooking baby is in the bath having a wash (I slow cook things, or use my table top oven to avoid needing to supervise the stove the whole time).
After dinner its bed time by 5pm.
And I don’t go to bed until 10pm so I spend my evenings watching a movie and making the stuffed toys, beanies or embroidery orders, along with small pieces of administration for the business.
I guess the point of this blog was to show that you could do anything, if I can learn to do it, you can learn to do it; women (especially mothers) have an awesome ability to multitask and plan. Some of you may not even know it, but trust me “Success is bred from desperation”.
It is a juggling act but I wanted to illustrate that it is possible and it is doable to run your own business with children, you can even find jobs to work from home. Not everything needs to start and end with you working for someone else. Try it, it will be the most challenging, time consuming and hard thing you will ever do. But when you start seeing the money and how much easier your life can be, you will thank me for it.
That is all for now, as usual
Forever Yours
Anni