The cold truth about work at home moms. {Outshine} #SnackBrighter

DISCLOSURE: I am a member of the Outshine summer campaign and am helping spread the word about Outshine® Fruit Bars. As a team member, I receive product and incentives in exchange for participating in brand-related activities and compensation. #SnackBrighter

“You’re so lucky… you get to work from home!” Yes, this is something I hear often. I do get to claim being in the ‘work at home moms’ category for many of my actual work hours. But, let me tell you: Working from home takes a certain amount of planned manipulation and is not as fun or easy as it seems. And it certainly ain’t no picnic.

(But yes, I do love being able to mostly work from home during this stage of my daughters being in part-time school!)

Back to the point. How shall I break this working-from-home dance down in an effort to shed the total truth on this lucky privilege? For starters…

You really do need a babysitter… which means most of the money you actually make goes to paying a sitter while you plunk out projects in the next room, often leaving you to question ‘I wonder if I could save money on the sitter and just run the TV all day since I’m here anyways?’ (No. That doesn’t work well. I’ve tried it.) Sure, I capitalized on nap times when my daughters were babies and toddlers (and still actually napped) but those days are now gone. Gone, I tell you! Yup, I have a few sitters that come regularly so that I can productively work from home.

Otherwise, I’m just pretending to work from home and getting frustrated about not being able to hit deadlines.

Another tidbit of truth about working from home?

It will challenge your willpower and mental capability to separate personal stuff from business tasks to no end on a daily basis. (All of my friends are now realizing why I never answer the phone if and when they call during the day… I may be ‘ at home,’ but I’m NOT AT HOME. You get me?)

The biggest misconception about being a work-at-home mom?

That it’s easy. Just as you’re entrenched in the middle of a real tipping point for actually making that deadline tucked away in your makeshift ‘office’, you hear your younger daughter screech bloody murder from the living room about how her older sister just snatched away the notebook she was drawing in. You then hear the older one screaming at her little sister saying, “I told you it was mine and that you couldn’t draw in it!” Do you ignore the situation? (You have a sitter there, afterall.) Do you come blasting out of your makeshift office in the back of the house with a forceful command “Everybody go to their room now!” Sometimes yes, sometimes no. I frequently do both.

You must continue to work and pull emergency ripcords when your sitter can’t be there.

Since I don’t have full-time childcare, but pretty much have full-time hours, I do end up frequently working without a sitter in the house. (Now you know why there are sometimes typos in these here blogposts…) In mad attempts to hold on to my own concentration while writing and curbing inevitable conflict between children before it escalates to the point of no return, I’ve now started offering frozen fruit bars to shut everyone up quiet the little darlings down.

The four most powerful words in my house lately? “Who wants a treat?”All parties instantly go cool and calm. Sisterly bickering stops.

All parties then go back to getting along and playing gleefully in the other room. Outshine® frozen fruit bars in hand. (Never mind that it’s 10:30am and this segment pitch must be wrapped up and sent to producers before 11! You can have freezer treats at 10:30am, right?)

The last reality about working from home?

You don’t really make eating a priority. (At least I don’t… which is not good, I know.) Working at home requires even the most stealth moms to get their to-do’s done quickly, without wasting large chunks of time on actually eating food to keep you creatively running. I liken my meals these days to multiple series of snacks…. you know, things I can eat quickly (and sometimes hands-free) to keep me fueled and moving fast.

Frozen fruit bars are proving to work well for me too. Hey, don’t judge… this summer in Southern California is a hot one for grownups. And yes, sometimes it’s just easier to eat what the kids eat. Outshine® Fruit Bars are delicious and refreshing from the inside out. Recently, Outshine® brand has made improvements to eight of its most popular flavors by adding an average of 77% more real fruit or fruit juice to the bars, has reduced sugar by an average of 11%, made with no GMO ingredients and feature fruit or fruit juice as the first ingredient. (Get the details for yourself at OutshineSnacks.com…) They’ve pretty much become my personal and official work-from-home snack to keep me awake and energized to stay creative these hot summer days… especially when they’re made with no GMO ingredients and feature fruit or fruit juice as the first ingredient! Win win.

How’s that for the cold truth about working from home… think you can handle it? (You can, I will admit it’s the best!)

What’s your trick for getting work done during the day?