image c/o Holly Fish
When I shared about my journey in becoming a work-at-home mom last week, I got some great questions that I hope to answer in future posts. But the number one question was what our daily schedule looks like. That’s tricky because it really looks different every single day. I’m not good at sticking to a rigid schedule. And over the past three year’s Daniel’s work schedule has changed many times, pretty drastically so we definitely don’t have a tried and true rhythm. But I can tell you how things are looking lately.
This is an example of a good day when I start out right by getting up before the kids. When I don’t wake up before the kids, it’s more of a scramble in the morning and I have to fit some work in while the kids are awake which never goes very well. But without further ado…
5:45 Get woken up by the cat. Try to make to the living room couch without waking any small children up. (If I have a big deadline, I might sneak out til 8am to the coffee shop to get work done.)
6:00 Do Morning Prayer (Lauds) with the Laudate app.
6:10 Working Time until the kids wake up (could be 6:15, could be 7:15. You never know.)
7:00 Daniel goes on a run or I go for a walk while the other one handles breakfast.
7:15 Breakfast and Morning Offering (maybe a read aloud during breakfast)
7:45 Drop Daniel off at the farm for work, listen to an audiobook like Story of the World history in the car.
8:30 Get back home and clean up breakfast dishes/tidy
8:45 2nd grader starts handwriting and math. I do reading practice with the girls. (Here’s our curriculum for the past year if you’re interested.)
9:30 Check 2nd grader’s handwriting and go over math practice questions with him.
9:45 Read alouds with everybody on the couch or outside if if the weather’s nice while the girls do art. Poetry practice.
10:30 Work out/stretch (the girls usually join me)
11:00 Take a shower and get dressed for the day (if everybody is playing happily then I can just sneak this in, if not, I turn on Netflix so I shower in peace.)
11:30 Maybe sneak in some more work before lunch.
12:00 Pray the Angelus. Eat lunch and maybe a read aloud.
12:45 Try to get the girls down for a nap. 2nd grader reads in his room/plays with LEGO/otherwise entertains himself. I either nap with the girls, read a book, watch a show on Netflix, or get work done.
3:00 Girls wake up from nap. 2nd grader can use the computer for Spanish, math practice, emailing with grandparents, and games. Time for laundry, clean up the house, dinner prep (also a good window to get work done if I have a deadline).
4:00 Take the big kids to an extra curricular class. Run a short errand, maybe, before picking them up.
5:00 Drive to pick up Daniel at the farm.
6:00 Home. Make dinner. Sometimes I’ll make dinner. Sometimes Daniel makes dinner. If it’s been a really crappy day for some reason, Daniel will cook and I’ll hide in my bedroom and watch Miss Fisher’s Murder Mysteries for some alone time to recharge.
7:00 Dinner.
7:45 Bedtime routine (help kids brush their teeth, read alouds, etc)
9:00 Kids are (hopefully) asleep. Daniel and I hang out. Maybe watch a show together or read. I may stay up later to work.
10:30 Bedtime-ish.
Our afternoons/evenings generally stay about the same but we homeschool through the summer so that there’s plenty of days that we can go to the zoo, the park, the museum, or the pool after dropping off Daniel and just skip schoolwork for the morning. We also do “farm school” once a week (we all go to the farm in the morning, Benjamin brings his schoolwork, I bring my laptop to write with, and the girls join in with the childcare for staff kids until lunchtime.)
Daniel’s work schedule is flexible on some days so he will often be home one morning a week to take over on the homefront and I head to a coffee shop for a block of time to work. If I have an important deadline, I’ll hire a mother’s helper for a morning to get some work done. So on average, I get two mornings/week to work uninterrupted and then I usually go somewhere to write either Saturday or Sunday for a chunk of 4 or 5 hours while Daniel’s home.
The total hours I work each week varies drastically depending on what’s going on in life and what I need to finish for work. I might work only 15 hours or I might work 30+.
Hope that helps give you a window into our days!
I love the Laudate app! I especially like that they have different Examination of Conscience suggestions for different vocations—like an examination with a focus on family life for married people.
Also, I love how you disperse prayer at specific times throughout your day. I always have trouble sticking to it when I make vague attempts to “pray more,” but I think I’ll do better if I come to anticipate it as a planned part of my day. I made a note in my planner just now to add the Morning Offering and Angelus. 🙂
Same! I actually set my phone alarm at 9am (to remind me to do morning prayer if I missed it at 6am) and at noon for the Angelus!
You make this sound so calm & ordered, lol. I think your early wake up time is a good idea. I need to be brave enough to start that!
Haha, I am also slowly learning the importance of getting up before my baby does! I can get so much done in that first hour or so of the day and then even if nothing else gets done the rest of the day, I feel pretty good about things 🙂
The reality is soooooo not calm and ordered, LeAnna! Don’t be fooled!
Thanks for the look into your life – I appreciate learning how other work at home moms do it. I transitioned to a work at home mom in February (I’m a college professor) and I find that none of our days look the same either, but this fall I plan to be more scheduled. I’ve discovered that I don’t protect my daughter’s homeschool time enough, she will be in first grade, and I don’t protect my workout time enough. These things are going to have daily scheduled time in the fall most days and I’m going to try to avoid scheduling other appointments and running errands during those times. I think doing that will allow us to be more productive overall and still be able to be flexible when something fun arises. There is nothing worse than having to say no to a meet-up with friends at the park because we didn’t get all our school work done in the morning.
Honestly something that has been HUGELY helpful is using our grocery store’s curbside delivery. We just swing by after an afternoon extracurricular and pick them up instead of wasting an entire morning of school–not to mention tons of stress wrangling three kids while trying to compare prices!
Hey Haley, great post! Thanks for being real! I would love to know your Myers Briggs personality type….I am an INFJ and have similar thoughts/schedules. I do often feel lonely at home, homeschooling and working. It’s easy for me to stay in my head without much adult interaction. Do you struggle with that??
I’m an ENFP! Having just babies/toddlers left me needing a lot of adult interaction. Now that I’m with 3 very verbal kids all day, I need quiet time more than anything else!
How do you not get crazy being up so early? I have a nursing baby and struggle to get up before 8 most days with a 10-ish bedtime. If I don’t sleep I get crazy… Crazy mean…
None of my kids takes regular naps either though. They seem to grow out of naps altogether at about 2 years old.
When you have a nursing baby and are again and again in the night, it’s called survival mode and you should get as much sleep as you can! My kids are KIND of sleeping through the night (the 4yo still wakes frequently) and the 7yo can quietly play while the 4 and 5yo and I nap if need be.
We really want to make a lifestyle change. Your posts really inspire me. Thanks for posting!
Aw, thanks, Johanna. Best of luck to you!
Let’s talk naps. Do your daughters nap most days? What do you do on days they don’t? My daughter will be four at the end of the week and just recently she’s stopped napping (not sure how much of it has to do with her three month old baby brother). I’m trying not to make a big deal out of it (most of the time 😉 )but it’s killing me. This introvert loves her quiet, alone time.
Ashley: I’m not Haley, but I have four young children (6, 4, 4, [twins], and 1) and enforce a nap/rest time every day regardless of whether they actually sleep. It’s important to me to have quiet time to myself, even if I spend it mostly on dinner prep and cleaning! We live in a small house, so I’ve had to get creative, but it’s worth the effort it’s taken to figure it out and enforce it. My six-year-old often listens to an audiobook while doing Lego. My twin girls are in separate rooms (one in our room, one in the kids’ room) and are allowed a few stuffed animals/toys and 4-5 books to look at. The baby sleeps in a pack-n-play in our guest/storage area. We’ve had stretches when I’ve had to frequently discipline kids who weren’t obeying rest time rules, and I’ve also used incentives (i.e., we’ll have a tea party when they wake, or they’ll get a special snack, etc. if they stay in the room and be quiet for the designated period). It’s been so worth it to me to persevere in this! Hope this maybe helps you with ideas for preserving some quiet, alone time that’s so precious when you’ve got lots of littles underfoot. 🙂
We homeschool so naps/rest time is super important…for my sanity. When the kids do stop napping usually around 4 or 5 they take a “rest time” during nap time. I give them art supplies, puzzles, legos and an audiobook to listen to. They will come out all the time!!! yes they will but I just make them go back….it is so worth it when they are 7 and will read for an hour in their room and draw or play legos.
My girls do still nap SOME days. My 8yo never naps but he plays or reads quietly in his room for a couple of hours. On non-napping days I either play audiobooks or the Stories podcast for the girls while they play in their room, or if they haven’t had any other screen time, I will let them watch a movie during naptime while I work. If you are introverted, I highly recommend being very firm about an afternoon rest time. My oldest is a SUPER EXTROVERT and it was tough getting him to not talk to me all during rest time once he gave up naps. It took a long time but we finally got there! I recommend a strictly enforced quiet time in the afternoon for all moms of young kids. It makes such a difference to my day when I know that I’m going to get a break for a little while before dinner prep starts!
I love hearing about your homeschooling! Thanks for sharing.
Glad it was helpful, Valerie!
Haley, this is absolutely a lifesaver. My husband are FINALLY able to start pondering a family – but I’m the kind of person who knows she will want to continue working in some way, and I just couldn’t picture how this was going to work. It is so comforting for me to hear that it’s possible to be a mom and still feel the need for “a room of one’s own,” so to speak – and to make it happen! Thank you for giving me hope!