Managing the mum/biz juggle
As the UK comes out of a third lockdown, I’m feeling in a reflective mood. There have been plenty of lows over the last few months but also some highs so here are some of the lessons I’ve learnt from running a design business and homeschooling in a pandemic (or at least trying to!).
Mumfolk is a fun, creative design studio which I love running. The reason I love my job is because the whole purpose of Mumfolk is to support women to grow their businesses, to feel confident and to be the best that they can be. In a nutshell, I help women and mums to find their superpowers through creative branding and design.
But as a solo mum, I want to get super real with you. It’s not easy to juggle the worlds of family and business, add a pandemic and closed schools and it becomes the furthest thing from easy. I have two amazing little girls, who under normal circumstances would both be at nursery or school whilst I run my design business. So, when a third lockdown hit and schools closed for a second time, it forced me to do some things differently.
As part of the Mumfolk tribe, I want to share some lessons with you fellow mums out there, who maybe caught in the juggle in the hope that the months that follow can be as calm and prosperous as possible. If you have any other tips, please share away! Even with school re-opening, we’re all in this together.
Routines are good
Without an alarm clock, a set schedule, places to go and people to see, it can be really easy to fall out of our normal routines. The kids want to go to bed later or get up later, as do I, but it can easily throw the day off kilter. I quickly found that the lazier I got with getting on with the day the more stressed I would feel about managing my to-do list.
Sounds obvious but sometimes when you’re in the chaos you can think that nothing will make things easier, however focusing on the areas we do have control over can really help steady the ship.
As much as I often resist conforming, having a routine can be very grounding and ease those feelings of anxiety.
For example during lockdown I tried to stick to as regular working hours as possible - thankfully I have family nearby who took up on the childcare for a good 5 hours a day, which gives me time to focus on keeping clients happy and growing my business as best I can.
But it doesn’t always go to plan so squeezing some work in the evenings is sometimes essential, however I won’t overdo it if I’m feeling really tired. I’ll also only do things in the evening that require little brain power, answering emails, business admin etc.
I’ve also been really kind to myself, if things took longer than expected that’s okay. Self-care is more important and will ultimately be detrimental if you burn the candle at both ends anyway. I’ve learnt this the hard way.
Get sneaky with the ‘learning’
If your children are anything like mine, they’re not that keen on sitting down and doing their schoolwork! Now that schools are back this isn’t so much of a problem but this time of homeschooling has opened my eyes to different ways of learning and how my children respond.
I found that my daughter got stressed the moment I announced ‘RIGHT come on, sit down, it’s time for phonics*...’ (rightly so, it doesn’t sound very enticing now I see it written down does it!) so I had to find new ways of getting a 5yr old to sit and concentrate without her knowing it.
Enter stealth learning! The undercover learning that causes way less huffing and puffing and wails of resistance. Dropping in maths questions and challenges into everyday things. The snack draw in particular got a lot of action during lockdown so that became the focus of maths - lining up chocolate brioches and asking her to count, if she eats one, how many is left. Now it doesn’t always work and often led to more snacks being eaten but it felt good to be at least trying to encourage her learning.
Now you could argue that I should be doing this as a parent anyway and you’d be right. But when life gets busy it’s easy for things like this to go by the wayside. So one thing that homeschooling during the lockdown has taught me is to be aware of what my child is learning and playing a bigger role in this at home.
Ditch the guilt and be kind to yourself
When all of you are at home the lines between home-life and work are certainly blurred. My laptop was permanently attached me to and I even with help from family nearby I was always trying to sneak in work and answer emails even when the girls were back from their grandparents.
This led to my eldest starting to comment that ‘mum is always working’ and that she wished I had more free time to play with her. I must admit this really got to me when she first said it, I was juggling a million things but adding on a layer of emotional guilt about the situation wasn’t going to help so in that moment I made a conscious decision not take comments like these to heart but rather accept it as a reflection of what my child sees which gives me the opportunity to approach things differently.
I decided not to feel guilty about comments like this but instead chose to be more conscious of how often I had the laptop open when the girls were around and tried to avoid being distracted by tasks I needed to complete when the girls are with me. Even 30 minutes of undivided attention created a better home environment where they’re not both screaming for my attention because I’m replying to an email!
Juggling work and family is always tricky - over the last few months more than ever with homeschooling and the kids out of a routine and even with schools returning there is always the push and pull of family and business life so I hope these insights are useful if you are going through a similar situation.
