Setting Boundaries When You Work From Home

Guest Author, Chereen Moreau writes:

Recently I was asked to write an article on how to put a boundary between working from home and home life. This is not easy for me to write about as I usually have to hear what is happening at home and then I can assess the situation and give a diagnosis, very much like a doctor. However, I have realised that I can give a few suggestions that can help, remember these are just suggestions.

As a mother there is always something to do, washing, cleaning, cooking, shopping and the list goes on. While working from home I have found that at times I would get so caught up in work that I didn’t have dinner sorted. My family would come in expecting their meal and they would have to wait as I scrambled to cook them a meal. Or there would be days where I would find myself so busy with housework that I didn’t get any office work done. Such a frustrating cycle that, at times, I thought that I should just give up working from home, it was just getting to be too much to handle.

When I got to this point I realised that I could actually take control of the situation or let the situation take control of me. So I came up with a game plan that has served me well and has helped many other mothers or fathers working from home.

1. Make a list of everything that you need to get done in a day and then prioritise it, remember if everything is important then nothing is important.

2. With this list you can set up a daily schedule for yourself. Put your schedule onto a whiteboard so that you can change it as your family’s needs and your needs change. If you get things out of your head and onto something you can see, you won’t feel so split between house and office and you will find it easier to focus on each task.

3. If you don’t already have an office, find a place in your home and turn it into your office. If you can’t have a room with a door, get some room dividers and put your office behind the dividers. At the end of each day, when you leave your office for the day, you have left, this means that your laptop stays in your office. If you treat your area like an office you would have away from home, it will help bring a boundary between home and office.

4. Do a weekly or monthly menu plan of what your dinner meals are going to be every night. This way you have an idea of what you are going to prepare each night for your family and it also helps when you go do your shopping. A menu plan can also help you stick to a budget because you are buying what you need. Personally, I do a menu plan for breakfast, lunch and dinner and my family love it.

5. Set your hours of business.

• If you are a stay home mother or father with young children you may have to break up your hours into sections.
• Set up a play schedule for young children with activities that they will thoroughly enjoy, like paper mache, where they can spend at least an hour or more on it, this will give you an hour or more of work time.
• Set up a priority schedule of work you need to get done in this time block.
• Remember that you may only be able to start work at about 10am each day and you will finish work around 4pm. This allows you time to clear away breakfast dishes and then get ready for dinner, homework and bedtime.

My family comes first in all that I do. My role in this life is to raise a child that is fully equipped to live and thrive in this world, to have the marriage that lives in my dreams and then do the job that feeds my soul.

Finding out what values you and your family want to have will help you prioritise your responsibilities on a daily basis. Remember it takes 21 days to make or break a habit and if you stick to your scheduling you will develop a great habit that you can pass onto your children.

I always encourage clients to find three people they trust and get them to be their accountability partners. An accountability partner is there to make sure that you are sticking to your schedule. I do recommend that at least one accountability partner checks in with you at least once a day. On a side note, remember that schedules can be flexible as there are times in life when things happen that we haven’t planned and if you allow flexibility in your scheduling for these moments, you won’t feel like you have failed with your schedule and you can get back on track when life’s moments have been sorted out.

Another thing I encourage clients to do, is a big clear out of the whole house. Clutter and stuff everywhere can make a person feel distracted and frustrated. A golden rule to use here is, if you haven’t used it or touched in a year, it needs to go. When you have your house sorted you will automatically feel like you have more control over your life.

Chereen Moreau and her husband, Eugene, work together with leaders of all kind, especially parents, equipping them to grow safe relationships and to communicate more effectively with others.Using the powerful ‘Belonging & Validation Model’ Chereen and Eugene speak and write about how to bring acceptance, honesty, grace, responsibility, accountability, independence, freedom, identity and reality into the culture of the family and the business through the powerful principles of ‘Loving-Equiping- Releasing’. If you would like to know more about Chereen’s story and the powerful ‘Belonging & Validation Model, contact her on: Facebook, Twitter, and her Blog.

Family Traditions – A Whole New Year For Starting or Continuing Them

Fairy Godmother Carol Rice, co-founder of CherishBound writes the following article: No matter whom you call family;  tradition will make your bonds stronger.

Family traditions can:

-Create good feelings and help with a person’s identity and sense of belonging.

-Impart values and foster cultural customs.

-Give us a sense of security and continuity.

-Give us a way to celebrate life; the big and the little moments.

-Are part of the glue that holds families together by giving us a way to spend time together, deliberately.

As a young mother I worried about whether or not my husband and I were developing “traditions” for our family.  I knew they were important, I’d seen “Fiddler on the Roof.”  (I can still picture Tevia snapping his fingers over his head as he belts out the familiar song “Tradition!”) But I didn’t know if my little family had any; and if we didn’t, how would we create them?

We all long for a sense of heritage that we imagine traditions will give us, but so often I meet people who think it’s hopeless because they don’t think anyone passed on worthwhile traditions to them and they feel in turn, they don’t have anything they can pass on, or they feel it’s just too late because they didn’t start soon enough.  It’s an amazing thing when hearts and minds are opened to the reality that the first step is as simple as realizing that you can be the first step…tradition can begin with you.  (And ironically, in the process of developing traditions, most of us discover there are traditions that have been passed onto us; we just didn’t realize it.)

Here’s a few ideas to get you started in the upcoming weeks:

New Year’s – Write bad habits/ bad experiences on paper and burn them in a pit and then write out your plans/goals for the New Year.

Chinese New Year –  Give your house a thorough cleaning, hoping to sweep away all the ill-fortune there may have been in the family to make way for the wishful in-coming good luck…then give each child a red envelope with crisp new dollars for the new year!

Civil Rights – Tell the story of Martin Luther King/ Rosa Parks/ Underground Railroad and then ask each family member “What makes a hero/heroine to you?”

Valentine’s – Have a “love box” then during Valentine’s week encourage anonymous notes of love and encouragement to be dropped in for each family member.  Read them at the table each night that week.

St. Patrick’s Day – Serve Green Eggs and Ham for breakfast and Corned beef and Cabbage for dinner (on a table decorated in GREEN)

Every Day:  Use post-it notes to leave messages of encouragement, gratitude, and love on your child’s made bed, bedroom door, pillow, or in on their sandwich!

Birthdays – Decorate the dinner table with balloons and/or crepe paper and have the birthday person’s favorite dinner.

As you start your own traditions this year consider recording them in a journal like this one at Cherish Bound. At the end of the year you’ll have a record of some of your most treasured moments.