Building a business alongside raising my family. (how hard can it be?!)

Building a business alongside raising a family (how hard can it be?!) No one said it would be easy! In my head I thought that building a business whilst raising a family would be simple. I told myself that I could work around my girls - I could work every evening, say 7-10pm and during nap times. Oh how naive I was.... the reality was setting up playdough at the dining room table, so my children could play whilst I did some sewing.

This would normally result in a combined 10 minutes of productive work as, either they would want to see what I was doing or get bored of the play dough! There is also the irrational guilt of not spending time with my children. The evenings were even worse; after my girls finally fell asleep and I had cleared up and cleaned the kitchen, it proved difficult to have the self-motivation to sit down at my sewing machine and start all over again!So, there were a few problems with my BIG PLAN. I had a new plan now....and made some new rules.

1. Clear up the kitchen before we all go up to bed. At least this way I would be able to get straight to work when I came back downstairs.

2. Set up an area in our spare room so I wasn't constantly looking for things in different parts of my house.

3. (VERY IMPORTANT) Give yourself a break! - Allow yourself half an hour laptop / sewing time during the day either nap time, (if your kids still do that) or while CBeebies is on and tell yourself it is good for your children to understand that mummy has to work too.

4. Get motivated - for me just thinking about going back to teaching used to be enough of an incentive!

5. Get them involved - this might not always be possible depending on the craft but my eldest (when she was 3) enjoyed taking the pins out of my sewing, and if I was taking product shots for Etsy I sometimes gave them a go at taking the photo.

Hope you get some good ideas, or just encouragement, from a fellow woman, trying to make it all work and fit into life!

If you have any tips or ideas to success then please leave a comment.

Joanna Martin

Midsomer Bunting