Maintaining a work-life balance can be tough for anyone, especially parents.  With today’s hectic lifestyle, finding that balance between career and kids is hard.  Contrary to popular belief, it can be even more dificult for work-at-home parents.  When your job is in your home, it’s sometimes easy to blur the line between your career and your job as a household manager.  Without a plan, you could find that yourself falling behind on both.  The following are some tips to help you keep it all together.

• Designate a work time that’s best for you. - Do you do your best work in the morning?  Consider getting up before the kids in order to work uninterrupted.  Not a morning person?  Stay up after everyone’s asleep.  If you have little ones, use nap time productively.
• Take short breaks. - Even traditional office workers get breaks.  Your neck, shoulders, and back will thank you.  You can even use your breaks to do small household chores, like a load of laundry or a sinkful of dishes.  Just don’t get caught up in a marathon cleaning session!
• Have lunch. - Again, those who work outside the home get a lunch hour, so why shouldn’t you?  I have lunch with my infant son each day; we really enjoy spending this dedicated time together.  You could use your lunch hour to bond with your kids or to unwind by yourself, if the kids are in school.  Setting aside a time for lunch helps add routine to your day, increasing productivity.
• Delegate household tasks. - Enlist family members to help around the house.  I put it this way to my husband, “Try doing your job, taking care of the children, and cleaning the house simultaneously.  How do you think you’d do?”  He got my point.  Designate chores to be completed by each family member and even certain times when cleaning will be done.  Maybe Sunday can be chore day or each night after dinner can be used for household tasks.  Making an agreement and sticking to it will ensure that expectations are known and lessen family spats.
• Understand that you can’t do it all. - Yes, this one’s tough for me, too.  Often times, we think working from home will allow us to do everything we’d like to do, when we want to do it.  Not so, necessarily.  You’re only human.  No boss in the traditional workforce could expect you to do your best work and keep a tidy home while caring for children all at once.  Realize that priorities must exist, and let the rest go.  It’ll help your stress level immensely.

Hopefully, these tips will help you to manage your business and your home life.  The most important thing to remember when striving for work-life balance is to customize your routine.  Doing what works for you and your family will ensure less stress and more productivity.

Squidoo is a free way to promote your business. You can even earn money from your lenses, which are the pages you create on this site. When you create a lens, you become a lensmaster. The more lenses you make, the more information you are able to stream into the internet. Your first try at making a lens may take time, but once you get the hang of it, it gets easier since you learn the tools that are provided for you. There are free ebooks, blogs and a very helpful forum that offers assistance and guidance on the best way to write, order and tag your content.

Earning money comes in many forms. You can make money by referring people to build a lens through your link, by people clicking and purchasing items from your lens, by promoting and selling your own products from your lens and by bringing traffic to your website or blog.

Here’s a free ebook from Seth Godin, the founder of Squidoo. This can get you started. Be very careful though. Squidoo is very addicting. Once you build one lens. You’ll be building more.

Once you’re part of this site, be sure to comment on other lenses, join groups and post your lensmaster link on your blog, website, etc. Get involved so that others will visit your lenses in return. And have fun wile you’re at it too.

You are probably watching the news this past few weeks and may be nervous about your personal or business bank account.  Washington Mutual is the latest bank to fail and you might be nervous about deposits held in your work at home bank accounts.  Put the worry aside as you are covered up to $100,000 from FDIC and may be covered on additional assets.  You can also be covered if you have a joint account or have assets under your child’s name.  A great website to review your financial institution insurance holdings with the FDIC is found here.  Put your mind to rest and review your banks insurance.

More important for your work at home business are your access to credit and cash.  With the current financial situation you might want to call your local bank and discuss credit options for future business activity.

Here are some questions you might want to consider asking:

1.  Do you have sufficient access to credit for the next 6-12 months?  Do you have a backup plan for utilizing personal loans or credit cards if necessary to purchase inventory?  Could you ask family or friends for a short term loan if you needed it?

2.  Do you have access to a HELOC or home equity line of credit account?  Does your bank plan to keep your existing equity available or are they lowering client amounts?  This has happened at major institutions and you will want to know if this could impact your home business.

3.  Try and negotiate any fees paid for your business accounts.  Ask whether your bank can wave check fees or minimum balance requirements for established business clients.

4.  Schedule a meeting with your bank representative and/or accountant and review your home business balance sheet.  What are your needs for the next few months.  Maybe you don’t have credit issues and can survive on your personal accounts.  Again, just make sure you have a plan of action and that your cash needs are met for the next 6-12 months.

5.  If you handle your taxes, payroll, and expenses yourself be sure to utilize a good software program and review your credit needs.

So everyone is doing it and if they’re not they’re talking about someone else they know who does, right?  I mean everyone knows someone who blogs nowadays.  Ok, while I might be exaggerating a bit on how big a deal it really is, I am not underestimating it’s importance.   Many professionals, work-at-home or not, have realized the importance of a blog.  Here are several ways you’ll benefit by having a blog.

• Exposure.  It not only gets the name of your business out there, it expands your customer base immeasurably.  I have made some invaluable contacts through my blog and have landed several new clients that way as well.  It’s also an excellent way to announce new products or services, it’s much more efficient than waiting to have a flyer printed up and mailed.  Flyers are still an excellent means of advertisement but a blog post will reach your customers instantly.

• Customer Service.  It’s also a great way to build customer relations.  Most customers love getting to know you on a personal level and they appreciate having “instant access” to you.  In the age of super-centers and automated lines it’s a wonderful thing to be able to speak with someone personally, even if it’s not as personal as a phone call, it’s the next best thing. 

• Practice.  If you’re in the writing business, as I am, it’s great practice!  I take on such a different voice when I’m writing a piece that I’m not worried about what an editor or client will think of.  My blog is my personal voice; my personal space where I can choose what and how to write whatever it is I want to write about. 

• Encouragement.  When you start a blog, you find your niche.  It may be your writing career or type of business, motherhood, hobby, etc and you get readers with the same interest(s).  Through your blog you connect with them based on common interests and after awhile you become like a support group for each other.  You receive critical advice as well as encouragement from them and you’d be surprised how important this type of support can be. 

If you’re interested in starting your own blog, check out different blog hosts such as wordpress, blogger or typepad.  See what features each has and the type of format you think you’ll be most comfortable using.  It’s a free service and is very easy to set up.  So what are you waiting for?

Your head is in a whirl trying to decide what takes priority in your work at home businesses. Should you reach out for more customers? Should you continue to better your business?  Can you take on more work while improving your business at the same time? How do you schedule all you need to do in one day? How do you brand yourself?

There’s so much to learn as you try to navigate your role as a business owner and earn enough money to keep the business afloat. If you are feeling overwhelmed or if you want to get a professional’s opinion it may be the right time to look into business coaching.

Kelly McCausey offers Mom’s Talk Biz One on One Business Coaching which any woman who is a WAHM can relate to. Kelly is just that and a single Mom too.

Kelly offers free conferences so that you can get to know her first. Follow her on Twitter to get the word on these and other freebies she offers. She also writes at Sparkplugging and writes the Work At Home Moms Talk Radio blog. She knows her stuff.