WAHP chatter

We are trialling this chatter thread for parents who work from home. It's a tough gig with some unique challenges, and I'm sure you will all be a great help and support to each other.

Your moderators for this forum are:

Jennifer13 - Senior Moderator
Traveller - Moderator
Astrid - Moderator



Your Administrator of this forum is Rouge. You can contact her by email or if you prefer, one of the moderators.

If you need to contact them please follow this link Moderating Team Contact Details

I work from home

I work from home too! I have three kids, one in school, one in kinder and one at home full-time. Crazy busy! What do you do from home Livinthedream?

I run DP's business from home - 2 girls - 1 at kinder.
Next year is going to be a balancing act with 2 girls at kinder with the possibility of overlapping days and us not actually living in town & trying to fit in their swimming & gymnastics.

My Role: at the moment i answer all DP's million phone calls about incoming jobs, outgoing jobs, invoices and the like.
We print all our job sheets ready for DP to take to book jobs in and i do all the data entry work, BAS and stuff ready for our tax agent.

We do invoices every tuesday night but i get a head start and do about 15 during the day then we do more after the kids are in bed tues night, wednesday mornings i have to do the banking before the girls swimming.

I don't know how you ladies that have to actually MAKE a product to seel manage to make it PLUS do all the paperwork and the housework etc.

DP does some outside duties but the housework, cooking and the like are all my responsibilities and some days i just wish there were more hours in the day to get it all done AND spend time with the kids.

Hi Trish, I am a saddler, but these days I specialise in custom made bridles

You chose the color/style and I buy a hide of leather and cut and stitch it into something that fits your horse perfectly.

I sell direct to the public, I have not factor-ed wholesale into my margins, besides, why should someone else get rich off my work lol

I just spent the last weekend camped out at the state equestrian centre in QLD flogging my wares, I had a good show, lots of orders taken, I generally travel to sydney a couple of times a year for the national championships of various equestrian disiplines.

It is long hours, but I love it.

The best bits,
Long weekends whenever we want (we often leave to go camping friday lunchtime)
No peak hour travel
I can wear my 'jamies to work some days.
Nobody tells me I cant use FB in my lunch break LOL

The sucky bits.
Hard to leave work at work, when its at home.
Lack of human interaction
People think you have it cruisy, cause you work form home and thats not really having a job right?
Sometimes I just wanna wave my bank statement in peoples (MIL's) face and say "SEE!! HERE!!!! All this money, not bad for someone who must just sit on their arse all day at home"
Can you tell that last one is a sore point?

LMAO

ZFI think a big part of keeping the house running smoothly is to
1. Have a very well trained hubby and
2. To have set working hours, and just treat it like a normal go to work job, so the house and all that stuff gets done AH. Like normal people have to.

I work at home too!

Currently have one child at kinder and the other home full time. Next year will be busier with one in school and one in kinder plus all the extra things like swimming, dancing etc.

I love working at home although it does have it disadvantages. Livinthedream I have the same issue with some people not taking it seriously. All my family/friends know that Friday I work most of the day but I often get people 'dropping by' for a coffee. When I say I am working I get told 'oh that's ok you can do that anytime'. GGGGRRRRRRRRRRRRRR!!! No I can't do it anytime because Fri is the day my kids go to the IL's so it is the only day I get a decent stretch of time to work. This Fri I've decided I'm not answering the door if anyone turns up, don't care who it is lol! I like your idea of waving a bank statement in their faces haha!

But it's great that I can work in my jarmies lol! As I'm casual I can work as much or as little as I like and can choose days/hours that suit me. Plus casual rates are pretty good! Also no traffic/parking issues and no need to worry about buying work clothes which I think are the best bits (I only have to go to the office every now and then for a meeting, think I've only done that twice this year and the other meetings I have stayed at home and skyped in).

Sounds like an awesome business Livinthedream! Well done on getting so many orders

ZF - You sound flat out! It's hard to balance everything some days isn't it?

Sangie - ROFL @ being able to work any time you like! People seriously forget how much of a full time (well, 24/7) job parenting is. Drives me nuts!

I am really struggling to find that balance at the moment. I run my own business so I never get down time. Any spare minute I have is spent planning or doing something for the biz. It's building up more and more and I will soon have a lot more on my plate than I already have - eek! Days like today I wonder how I'm going to do it all. I can only hope and pray that having two in school next year and only one at home will help . I LOVE what I do, but man it's busy and full on! I'm considering hiring a cleaner or something to help with the load. I really wish I could afford a full-time house keeper lol! Don't we all?

My hat goes off to us all!

That's the hard part Trish, especially when it's your own business. Learning to force yourself to walk away and finish up for the day. What do you do?
Sangie, I am lucky that I can do my job on autopilot, so for me, visitors are great, but I dOnt get many.
I have it easy compared to you guys, I only have DS and he is 3.5 and at kindy mon-thurs 8-4 so I have a pretty solid working week. It would be very diff if we had more kids and for that reason we have decided one child is it for us. We can't afford for me not to work ( well, we could, but would compromise our lifestyle). And I couldn't afford care for 2.
Still, all in all, we are happy

oooh, this great!
I work from home, baking and decorating cookies
Love my job, DP hates it (my little "hobby") he thinks I dont spend enough time with him, which is a bit sad....but I'm not his slave. (and thats what he means, I dont DO enough for him anymore!)
DS is good, these days I know he wont touch my decorating stuff, or my cookies (have woken up a few mornings previously to find DS munching away on a order..grrr!!!)
I love that I can spend time with him, when I've had enough I'm just like, right, lets got the park, walk down the beach etc... often I will stop at the BIG park on the way back from the PO, which he loves.
I try to get all my baking and icing done during the day now, working in hourly blocks,(with breaks in between for food and DS) baking all gets done Monday, base coating if I can fit it in, Tuesdays is basecoating and details, finishing etc.., wednesday and thursday packaging and posting, Friday I can usually do nothing LOL, maybe catch up on paperwork, chase up payments etc..
DS will be starting Kindy late this year/next year...looking forward to it in a way as then I wont have the guilts so much. But I will miss having him around, he is a great helper sometimes.
I do feel somewhat isolated, I also dont dress up much these days, I miss the whole getting up and going to work thing, but I also love getting up and working in my dressing gown! LOL

I kind of work from home.
I look after the books for DF's business (as best I can with no prior experience ) Ordering parts, invoicing, paying bills...all that fun stuff.
I'm also trying build my photography portfolio and hopefully get my own little business going. I'm shooting my first wedding next weekend, eeek!

I find it hard keeping up with the paperwork for DP's business. Not so much cause I can't find the time, I think it's just because it's not something I particularly enjoy. It's not the kind of job I would be doing if I were out in the workforce.

Munchkin_mumma - how exciting doing your first wedding shoot, good luck!

Starrysky - your business sounds yummy lol! I think I'd stack on a few kilos doing what you do

Livinthedream - I'm the sole Australian distributor for Amby baby hammocks. I pretty much run the Amby show here in Australia so it's pretty full on! I just did the big Pregnancy, Babies & Children's Expo at the Melbourne Exhibition Centre last week which was so much fun, but SO time consuming to organise/set up/pack up again!!

Thanks Trish, I'm getting so nervous now! Your baby hammocks look awesome, too bad I'm past the little baby stage now. I had never seen anything like that before.

Starrysky, your biscuits look amazing! You're very talented. I have 'liked' both you ladies facebook pages