First of all, congrats to Kelly for winning the first round of the Organize Your To Do List Contest! She gets a free full copy of the FruitfulTime Task Management software!

But . . . I have TWO copies to give away, so that means I still have one left. So, since we didn´t have many participants this time around (I´m blaming Easter and Lent), I´m extending this contest for another two weeks.

It´s very simple to enter. All you need to do is go to the FruitfulTime website and download the free trial. Try it out for a few days and then post a review on your blog about your experience, linking to both the contest page and the FruitfulTime website. Post a comment below to let me know that you´ve entered and two weeks from now, I´ll draw a name for the second round.

Being a work at home mom is a major balancing act and while some moms are pretty darn good at it, the rest of us struggle with finding that equilibrium that will make our lives easier. Finding time in the day to get all your work done, attend to the millions of requests that your children and spouse have and trying to maintain a non-biohazard level of cleanliness in the house can be exhausting.

And it leaves very little time for you to just be yourself. With all that hat switching going on, it´s easy to reach the end of the day and finish up that one last assignment before falling into bed.  Then you get up and start the whole cycle all over again.

With time, if you continue the rabid cycle of kids, work, kids, work, house, kids, work, husband . . . you´ll burn out. That´s why finding your balance is so very important. Without balance, everything will eventually come crashing down because we aren´t meant to continue without a break.

One way to make sure that you don´t burn out is to schedule vacations. Take a day off now and then to just sit and watch TV or do something that you enjoy. Make a point of doing something you enjoy each, too, without feeling guilty!

Balance for work at home moms doesn´t just mean getting all the work done and kids fed and bathed, it also requires time to breathe for you!

Like this article? Subscribe now in your feed reader so you don´t miss a single article from At Home Mom.

Are you a work at home mom running your own business? Add your biz for FREE to the At Home Mom Business Directory.

When you get a bunch of job offers, it can be really tough to turn work down, but sometimes it´s necessary, if you simply don´t have the time. I´ve been running into this issue lately . . . I´m working on so many different projects that it is getting to be a bit overwhelming!

The way I see it, you have two options when you start getting floods of work.

Option One: Turn some of it down. This hurts, it really does. When you´ve struggled to build your business up to this point and then find that you just can´t do everything, it´s very painful to turn jobs away and watch that extra money float away! But it´s necessary sometimes and you just need to be very selective about the jobs you take.

You can look at turning work down as a luxury, if you like. You now have enough work that you don´t need to deal with the unpleasant clients, it´s fine to turn them away, without feeling guilty about money lost.

Option Two: Hire someone. Expanding your business can be a scary thing to do. You need to find someone who has the same work ethic as you and who will turn in great work that you can actually hand over to your client without being embarrassed about the quality. Depending on your business, you may need to train someone to this level of quality and that takes time and money . . . something that is pretty scarce when running your home business.

Neither of these options is right for everyone every time. You might not want to take on employees. Some work at home moms are content to keep their business fairly small, so they can still spend plenty of time with their children. Others will find it impossible to say no to work and will need to hire extra help.

I personally have been doing a bit of both, hiring on a sister to help me out with extra writing assignments and turning down a few lesser paying jobs that I just don´t have time for.

You are the only person who can decide which is right for you and your business, but even if you haven´t reached this point yet, you should think about it. What will you do when you start getting too many order or too many assignments to handle on your own?

Like this article? Subscribe now in your feed reader so you don´t miss a single article from At Home Mom.

Are you a work at home mom running your own business? Add your biz for FREE to the At Home Mom Business Directory.

I make lots of lists. In fact, I´m an expert list maker. But something always happens and they don´t get finished or I lose the list (or my son rips it to shreds) and in the end, my lists aren´t much use at all.

Recently, I had the chance to try out a relatively new task management software. To tell you the truth, I´ve tried this type of thing before and it is either WAY too complicated or just hard to figure out, so most task management programs get deleted pretty quickly from my hard drive. Not like a busy work at home mom needs yet another thing to take up time!

The FruitfulTime Task Management software is basically a to do list program. It´s very easy to use, which actually surprised me. But though it´s fairly simple to figure out, there are still a lot of features available that make your to do lists more organized.

Features I Liked

• Tags. You can select one of three pre-existing tags (Work, Personal, or Leisure) or add your own. This lets you filter your to do list by type. For example, if you want, you can have only the work-related tasks appear.

•  Subtasks. In the upper half of the screen, you have your tasks, such as “Write Blogs”. In the lower half, you can add subtasks, like “Las Vegas blog, At Home Mom”, etc. Very nice to break things down.

• Priority by color. Though this takes a minute to get the hang of, you can prioritize your tasks and subtasks as high, medium or low and they are assigned the appropriate color, making it easy to see at a glance what you need to finish first.

• Progress bar. Have a task that is going to take you all day long? Split it into subtasks and then mark your progress on the progress bar, where a green line tells you how far along you are. This could be very encouraging if you are stuck on one job all day.

• Due dates and alerts. This is a VERY handy feature for freelancers or anyone who works under a deadline. Let´s say an article assignment comes in, but it´s not due for another couple of weeks. You put it in your FruitfulTime to do list and set an alert . . . then forget about it. You´ll be reminded a day, three days or whenever you set the alert for. You can work on other projects and not have to worry that you´ll accidentally forget your assignment.

There are plenty of other features in this to do list software, but you´ll be surprised at it´s simplicity. The format isn´t especially pretty, but it definitely gets the job done and since this is on your desktop, it can really be a handy way to keep track of your complicated to do lists.

Now for the best part . . .

How YOU Can Win Your Very Own Copy!

All you need to do is go to the FruitfulTime website and download the free trial. Try it out for a week or so and then post a review on your blog about your experience, linking to both this contest page and the FruitfulTime website. Post a comment below to let me know that you´ve entered and two weeks from now on March 20th, TWO names will be drawn randomly to receive a free copy of the FruitfulTime task management software.

If you don´t have a blog, not a problem, just write your review in the comments . . . but don´t forget to leave a way to contact you!

We all need some motivation at times and I have to admit I need it more than ever these days! So, I´ve put together a list of motivational resources for work at home moms . . . though not all of them will be specifically for work at home moms.

1. When you need some peer support, head over to Work It! Mom. This is a social networking site for working moms, both in the home and out. Join a group and start making friends . . . this is a great place to get some advice when you´re stuck on anything to do with work, family and housework. I´m athomemom on the site, so look me up and add me as a friend.

2. Freelance Parent is a great blog run by two work at home moms in very different stages of parenthood. Tamara has a three year old and Lorna (a frequent visitor to this blog) just welcomed her first baby a few weeks ago. For work at home moms who are freelancing in any field, Freelance Parent is a good blog to check out.

3. Another great motivational site, particularly if you want to get organized, is Zen Habits. Leo is father of 6 who works from home, having recently quit his job. This impressive guy has made some huge changes in his life in the past couple of years and offers information on how to do it yourself. There is also a forum so you can be accountable to others with your goals, an excellent idea.

4. When it comes down to motivating yourself to get stuff done, Wendy from eMoms at Home has just as many problems as the rest of us . . . but she runs a huge blog network! Her blog is full of helpful information and on Mondays you can join her in her struggle to get organized.

Enjoy! And, if you would like to be interviewed for Motivation Monday, just shoot me an interview at athomemomblog@gmail.com.

Like this article? Subscribe now in your feed reader so you don´t miss a single article from At Home Mom.

Are you a work at home mom running your own business? Add your listing for FREE to the At Home Mom Business Directory.