Life was meant to be lived, and curiosity must be kept alive. One must never, for whatever reason, turn his back on life. Eleanor Roosevelt

Being a work at home mom can often feel like swimming in the ocean, with waves crashing over you and it´s pretty tempting to just crawl back up on the beach where it´s safe. But staying in one place in your life is boring and won´t get you where you want to go.

When you are feeling overwhelmed with life, family and work, all piling onto you at once, it can be useful to remember that these times are the ones that teach you things. Here are a few ideas to keep your head above water:

• Find other people in the same position. You aren´t the only one going through this, so network with other moms who can support you and give you a shoulder to cry on. If you can´t get out to a mom´s group or something similar, there are online networking sites that can serve the purpose. Try Work It, Mom or Cafe Mom, where you´ll be able to share your challenges and get feedback.

• Journal it. Whether you write in a notebook or blog about your life for the whole world to see, writing down what you are going through, your frustrations and successes, will help relax you. You can look back and see that you´ve been worse before and remind yourself of how you always made it through before.

• Get help. Sometimes it just isn´t possible to do it all on your own. Rather than fret about how you´re being a bad mom or a lousy wife, order takeout for dinner, hire a babysitter for a couple of days,or outsource some work and get everything done. These spells rarely last for long, so it´s worth getting some help for the duration.

The best way to prevent the pile up from happening in the first place is good planning. Make sure you have backup plans ready to go should something happen unexpectedly. Keeping a visible schedule is also a good way to go, a wall calendar so you can see it easily at a glance.

There are times when working at home really feels like you are working in a pressure cooker. Anyone who says that working at home isn´t stressful has obviously never attempted to meet a deadline while trying to soothe a sick baby, keeping a bored toddler occupied or dealing with the latest preteen crisis. Moms have a huge job just being mothers and when you add work to that . . . in the same environment, no less, you have stress and lots of it.

Dealing with these added pressures can really be overwhelming at times and you will find that there are days when you really, really wish you worked outside the home! On days like this, there are a few ways to handle things.

Take a “sick” day. If you can, push your deadlines back, ask for an extension, or outsource the work. Then take a day to just deal with kids. Or, if you can´t change anything to do with work, see if your spouse can take the kids to the park or if a babysitter can keep them occupied.

Forget the non-essentials. When everything is crashing down around you, let some of it go. Let the dishes pile up, don´t sweep the floor, don´t bother fighting with kids over cleaning their rooms. In fact, this is the perfect time for a mess. Put a pot of water in the middle of the kitchen floor and let the kids splash in it, or dump all the pots and pans out for them to smash around with. Then put on some headphones and get to work.

Alternate tasks. Sometimes . . . and only sometimes, it can work to switch back and forth between carrying kids around the house in a sling and working on your latest project that needs to be in shortly.

Multi-task. A good example is what I´m doing at this very second, rocking a very unhappy, teething little boy in his bouncy chair with one foot and writing this blog post while also answering my toddler´s “Why? But WHY?” questions!

How do you handle the work at home pressure cooker? Had any of these days recently? Please feel free to share tips and experiences in the comments!

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Tomorrow is my youngest son´s first birthday. On a Friday. And guess what? We get to celebrate it tomorrow! This is just one of the great perks of being a work at home mom.

The ability to take a day off just to hang out with your kids on their birthday is definitely a great part of working at home. It also gives me the ability to take the time to start making his cake (a blue crayon) early today so it will be fully decorated by morning.

What other job could offer such freedom? I have to say that I´m pretty happy to be a work at home mom today!

What perks of being a work at home do you enjoy?

I think it´s just ingrained in moms to feel guilty. As a work at home mom, you feel guilty when working . . . because you could be doing laundry or washing dishes or painting with your kids. And when you´re doing THOSE things, you feel guilty for not working. It´s really a vicious circle!

Dealing with work at home mom guilt isn´t easy and I can´t claim to have the perfect solution, but there are definitely some techniques that can help you manage a little better.

• Take breaks. I use this one a lot. When working, work in 30-45 min. segments and then take a 15 min. break to do something else like laundry or make bread.

• Time yourself. There´s something about having a deadline, even a self-enforced one, that gets you moving. Knowing that you have just 10 minutes to wash dishes or clean the stove will get it done a lot faster. Your kids will be more than willing to help you remember to stop when the timer dings.

• Set a schedule. Having specific working hours will help eliminate the guilt of doing something else when you aren´t supposed to be working. I have yet to implement this one, but I´m working on it!

• Make a Master list. Rather than have two separate lists, one for the house and one for work, combine your top 7 items into one master list. This will help you prioritize everything.

It seems to be pretty normal for moms in general to feel guilty. If you`re a work at home mom, that doesn´t mean you stop feeling guilty just because you have a career AND time with the kids!

I´ll be covering more on work at home mom guilt in the near future . . . as well as some great resources if you´re feeling guilty, so stay tuned.

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Cooking can take up a huge chunk of time and even making sandwiches can ruin your time management, so lunch is a dangerous time for work at home moms. It´s when you get distracted with other things, start thinking about making supper, etc.

Packing a lunch in the morning, even if you´re going to be home all day, can be a great way to make sure that you don´t take too long a break. And, even if you schedule an hour for lunch, you can use that extra time to play with your toddler or just relax.

Packed lunches can be pretty simple. A sandwich with a salad or some of that leftover mac and cheese from last night, a hot dog that you just need to add the fixings to . . . anything really. While you´re at it, pack for any little ones, too.

I personally love the idea of bento and have been collecting some tools for it off ebay. In the morning, I take some time while breakfast is on the stove, to punch out some carrot shapes and create a cute bento for my toddler and mix up some sandwich filling for my husband and I. It´s super easy and while I´m at it, I often toss some fun veggie shapes into a small baggie so my toddler can eat them as a snack a little later.

The truth is that this takes a lot more time than it really has to, but it´s fun to do and my kids love the shapes. And, at noon, I only have to take a few minutes to go eat. No stressful cooking while kids whine or a client waits for a response on an article query, it´s all right there, ready to go.

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