How 5 Moms Make Flex Jobs Manageable With Kids

Five women allowed us a peek into their daily lives, sharing how they make time for their careers while also caring for little ones at home.

Years ago, when I was new to both motherhood and freelance writing, I often told people I had the best of both worlds. I could be at home with my infant daughter and keep my career inching forward. But what I neglected to share was that tending to both motherhood and writing—often at the same time—was rarely a pretty picture. Until my daughter started preschool, I crammed work into nap time and the wee hours of the morning, feeling perpetually time-strapped and frustrated. 

The reality of having a flexible job and working from home with kids is that your career gets pushed into the margins of family life. You find pockets of time when, miraculously, no one needs you, and those become your working hours. For me, that amounted to a lot of tears–both mine and the baby’s–and a general feeling of inadequacy on all fronts. 

Convinced there must be a better way to work from home with kids, I took this conundrum to wiser women who’ve been at this for years. Here’s how five stay-at-home moms, reporting in from various fields, actually make flexible jobs work for them, from their go-to routines to the organizational methods that save them, and beyond. Learn how they make time for work while staying at home and caring for their kids.

Take Turns Working With Your Partner

When Emily, a developmental therapist in Ann Arbor, Michigan, was offered her dream job, she found it checked all the boxes: it was part-time and remote, allowing her to stay home with her toddlers. The only problem? She couldn’t work alongside two chatty and needy littles.

To make it work, Emily’s husband was able to adjust his work day, logging in from his home office at 6 a.m. until 2:30 p.m. By 1:00, just in time for her children’s naps, Emily signs into work in a space she carved out in the couple’s bedroom. Then, her husband takes over from 2:30 to 5, when the family eats dinner together.

Swap Rest Time for Nap Time

On the days the kids refuse naps, Emily has instituted a rest time with a special box of toys and audio stories (and yes, she includes an iPad equipped with a timer!) that’s reserved just for this time. She rotates which toys are in the bin as soon as someone loses interest.

“My kids really enjoy being in their rooms and we’ve made sure to make their spaces cozy and fun,” she says. “Whether it’s nap or rest time, having some downtime in their own rooms has always been really special to them.”

On the days the kids refuse naps, Emily has instituted a rest time with a special box of toys and audio stories (and yes, even an iPad equipped with a timer!)

Aim to Be Hyper-Organized

For Thao, a mom to a 6-year-old, and a novelist and freelance writer in Ohio, the key to managing her work week lies in a fine-tuned method of organization: She plots all tasks—both kid and career-related—into a color-coded Google calendar, complete with alerts scheduled one week out. Each morning, Thao can review the most pressing items of the day and transfer them to a to-do list arranged in order of priority.

“For items that come up spur-of-the-moment, I use the free AnyDo app to track each task, so I can also eventually move them to my calendar,” she says. 

Make Work Portable

Heidi, a mom to a 5-year-old with special needs, splits her hours between client work, in which she works with publishers and coaches writers, and her own writing (like the book about creativity and motherhood she has in the works). Clocking about 15 hours each week, Heidi has worked out a system: client work happens while her son is at preschool and her own writing takes shape on the go. She writes in the car waiting for her son during speech and occupational therapy appointments.

“Knowing that time is coming helps me pace myself… I know I’ll be alone and without Wi-Fi during those hours,” says Heidi.

Our babies would be right there with us, crawling on the floor and playing while we worked.

Mix Babies and Business

Breegan, an interior designer and mom of two in California, doubts there’s any such thing as balance when it comes to work and motherhood. Instead, she’s learned to own it all, embracing what she calls a “composite approach.”

In the early days of her business, Breegan says, “I would gather around in a conference room with my team—which was composed of other moms—and our babies would be right there with us, crawling on the floor and playing while we worked.”

These days, Breegan is homeschooling her kids two days each week, and they’re well-accustomed to construction sites and trips to source furniture at her side. She notes that her job doesn’t come with traditional office hours, so she can be flexible while also prioritizing her children’s education.

Brynn, a single mom and part-time fundraising strategist, sometimes feels like her 9-year-old son is her business partner. “I know it’s not traditional, but I have brought my son with me to business meetings for a few years,” she says. “He has always been in the corner working on homework or coloring while I meet with a partner.” To anyone who accuses her of being “unprofessional” for bringing along her child, Brynn has only one assurance to make: “I’m really good at what I do.”

Source: Courtesy of Breegan Jane

Use This Trick to be Fully Present

To smooth out a pain point in her work-mom juggling act—the times she’s been too preoccupied with work to be fully present with her daughter—Thao thinks of her work self as a coworker she can email tasks and ideas to.

“While I’m playing with my daughter, if a great idea pops in my head, instead of letting that idea go or trying to sit down to chase it right at that moment, I’ll email myself via voice dictation,” she says. “Then, when I have time to get back to my writing, I’ll go through my inbox methodically, filtering out the ideas that still have promise… It’s a nice way of keeping my selves separate, but easily integrated.”

‘Not having to figure out meals and minimizing dishes helps me a lot when life feels overwhelming.’

Create Helpful Shortcuts

“The biggest challenge is that even when we’re humming along, everything still feels so fragile,” says Heidi. “Someone could get sick. We could have extra doctor appointments… It doesn’t take much to throw us off right now.” Her solution? She makes a plan for ease and gives herself permission to use it.

“It’s not a grand plan, but it’s reassuring to have a plan, which is really just eat Daily Harvest and pick up pho,” Heidi says. “Not having to figure out meals and minimizing dishes helps me a lot when life feels overwhelming.”

Brynn has a similar philosophy, taking shortcuts when she can. “Laundry has been the absolute bane of my existence. It’s annoying. It’s joyless. And it takes a lot of time,” she adds. A couple of times a month, Brynn springs for a laundry service to take one thing off her plate. It’s an expense she’s delighted to budget for saying, “I feel like I’m on top of it when all those clothes arrive back clean and neatly folded!”

Read More:

11 Game-changing Tips, Tools, and Resources for Finding a Work/Life Balance—From a Freelance Editor

Editor’s note: A version of this story was first published in 2022.