I’ve been a stay-at-home mom for five years and work-at-home mom for three years now!
I started a blog, offered a service, made money and decided to keep on blogging!
During this time, my twins went from having two naps a day to one nap a day (pure bliss), to no naps (a unicorn died that day!).
I had to learn to adapt to time management tips with a house, time saving tips with twins that no longer had naps and growing a business.
How can I be more productive, save time as a mom, and still grow my blog?
Learn how I became a work at home mom, quick time management tasks and a simple guide with schedule to be more productive during the weeks.
If you’re a mom wanting to start a mommy blog, make sure to check out my super simple step-by-step tutorial!
How I Became a Work at Home Mom
My twins were 16 months when I decided I wanted to start a blog and work at home. After my maternity ended, I wanted needed a way to contribute to our finances but also needed time management tips!
My husband at this time was already working at home as a web developer. So, he suggested I find something online and pointed me to some mom bloggers.
These mom bloggers were either virtual assistants or freelance writers on top of being a blogger. For me, writing is a great way to be creative, and I was drawn to learning more about being a freelance writer.
During this time my blog plan for my business was:
- Start a blog for my freelance writing business
- Create blog posts for guest blogging
- Pitch to companies via job boards
- Start social profiles like Twitter and LinkedIn
- Write client posts
I was forming a workday plan around my twins’ nap times. In the beginning, I was putting in 4-5 hours a day no problem. But then, my twins dropped their day nap, and I had to manage my time around my twins during the day.
This meant toddler activities that lasted hours and gave me time to grow my business.
And that left me time for another project down the road.
Two years ago I started another blog project – Twins Mommy!
I wanted to speak to work at home moms or moms blogging as a business since my freelance writing business attracted mostly men at that time.
Starting a new blog adventure with twins still at home meant even more time focused on my blog and business.
But, I didn’t want to neglect my children and I always go back to my why behind starting a blog. I want to be able to stay home with my twins and take care of them and not have to work outside the home and leave them.
So, even though I feel I’m not the best at managing my time, I have found ways to start new projects, maintain my blog and grow my income.
Before I dive into the time management guide for blogging moms, here are some quick tips that helped me manage my time during a day!
Easy Quick Time Management Tips to Get You Started as a Work at Home Mom Blogger
- Use automation tools like Tailwind
- Wake up early (or hustle at night like I do!)
- Listen to music
- Do 5 or 10-minute blogging tasks during the day – create a new pin, draft an email, comment on a blog post, fill your Tailwind queue
- Pomodoro technique
- Have a process for creating content
- Learn to type faster – take a typing test and practice every day
- Do the highest ROI tasks first – sales funnels, emails, eBook chapters, course lessons, Facebook Lives
- Turn off your notifications
- If you can’t blog, brainstorm blog topics
- If you can’t blog, think about opening up your blog for guest bloggers
- Use your Instant Pot for quick, healthy meals
- Outsource parts of your business to a Virtual assistant or freelance writer!
- Hire a babysitter to watch your little one a few hours a day
- Get family to help out!
- Pick up around the house during every Pomodoro break
- Run a load of laundry or dishes every day
- Use these to quickly wipe down the bathroom
- Double up your chores – prep dinner and empty the dishwasher, or sweep the kitchen and wipe down the counters
These quick tasks can help you manage your blog and house easily during the day and week. But, you need more than this to work at home as a new mom blogger with little ones at home.
To dive into time management for mommy bloggers, there are two big things to make sure to incorporate in your overall blogging plan: tactics to balance your family life and blog life and building a workable routine so that you can have longevity with your blog and make it successful in the long run.
Time Management Guide for Balancing Family and Blogging
There are four pillars under tactics for managing your time when you work at home as a mom blogger. These tactics should be incorporated and created before you officially start your mom blog or business.
Once you can identify your needs and the needs of your blog, then you can launch your blog plan successfully.
For me, before I started my freelance writing service, I had to make sure I had the time to devote to building a business. There was no way I could have started my business when my twins were under a year old.
From newborn to one year I had:
- Absolutely no sleep when I was waking every hour for each twin each night
- Pump milk around the clock
- Make bottles too
- Do multiple loads of laundry
- Calm my twins when they were crying uncontrollably
- Walk at least two hours a day for one of their naps
- Sleep when I could!!!
Yeah, #momoftwins
But I’m glad I had that year with them to learn how to be a new mom to twins. I didn’t have to worry about starting a blog while pumping. Now, that’s not to say YOU can’t do that.
Many mom bloggers become pregnant again while having a successful blog and rock their blog during that time. And many more start their blog with a baby and that’s amazing to me!
In any case, the whole thing here is to plan your blog before you launch. I finally had time when my twins were 16 months. They were napping consistently and were sleeping through the night with very minimal wake-ups.
I was finally getting a full night of sleep and was no longer a zombie mom to twins. 🙂
These tactics will help you formalize a blog plan:
1. Write Down Home Tasks and Business Tasks
Think about what needs to be done during the day for home and what you feel you need to do for your blog. In the beginning, your blogging tasks may be:
- Creating social media profiles
- Writing blog topics
- Writing blog posts
- Starting an email list
- Understanding SEO
- Creating a content plan
- Forming a Pinterest marketing plan
- Connecting with other bloggers in your niche
- Setting up Google Analytics to track your blog numbers
Making a list of your home tasks can also help you figure out pockets of time for your blog. My chore schedule has changed multiple times as my blog grew, my twins grew, and we moved homes.
2. Create Goals Around Your Blog
Goals are a huge motivator for many of us.
Since you’re working at home and starting a blog and business, you have a lot of tasks that fall on you. There is no boss to listen to; it’s YOU now. So you have to develop a work ethic and motivation to continue to blog.
Blogging is a journey, and it is hard! Not every blog makes money and not every blog becomes a way to make a living working at home. It takes persistence, patience, connections, and passion for seeing this through to the end.
And having goals can help you achieve this outcome.
Your goals can also change over time.
When I started Twins Mommy, my goal was to connect with other work from home moms. Have a passion blog that I can do what I want. But, something changed, and I had the entrepreneurial bug, and I wanted to see if I could grow Twins Mommy.
So my goal changed to building traffic and creating an email list.
From there it grew to creating a product so that I can generate supplemental income.
Currently, my monetization strategy is to create more niche blogs instead of create courses. Your goals can have a time limit and a measurement too. But, always make sure you can easily measure these goals, and they are attainable for you!
3. Create a Workable Blogging Week Schedule
With your home tasks and blogging tasks, you can now create a weekly schedule using block scheduling. This schedule will change over time depending on whether you move, your children start school, or you become pregnant.
For me, my working schedule has evolved to what it is now:
Morning – Chores
When my twins started Kindergarten, I found that doing chores right after I came home was much more successful than at another time.
I work on chores every day and do about 20-30 minutes worth of tasks to maintain my house like:
- Vacuum or sweep every day
- Laundry every day
- Dishes every day
- Tidying up every day
- Wipe down bathrooms every day
- Dusting once a week
- Mopping once a week
- Meal planning once a week
- Clean bathroom once a week
I don’t do all of these chores every day, but I space them out throughout the week (unless they are daily tasks). This has been working, and since we moved to a new house, I’m able to stay on top of everything.
And when my twins are home for summer, they love to chip in and help mama out with the chores!
Mid Morning – Email/Blog Post
After my chores, I have my morning coffee, and the twins have breakfast and then play. This is when I can sneak away to check my email and start writing the outline of a blog post or finish a blog post in draft.
This blog post can also be:
- An email newsletter
- Editing a guest post for Imperfectly Perfect Mama
- Outlining a masterclass idea or freebie idea
Mid Morning – Kid Activity
For my summer schedule, I want to incorporate an activity like going to the beach or museum or library. This will also double as family time too so it’s a win-win in my books! Plus, it’s always good to take a break during the day so that you aren’t always focused and thinking about your blog.
You can slowly transition to “mom mode” when there’s a long drive or an activity you’re looking forward to doing with your family.
Lunch – Errands & Play
Lunchtime is when I wind down from working and focus on being a mom. I play with my twins or do an activity and run errands like grocery shopping or getting a necessity like these!
During the summer, the weather is also hot so the family may head down to the basement for play or downtime like watching a family movie.
Dinner – Quiet Time
Dinner really isn’t down time in our house. There’s a lot of things going on since by this time my twins are running around and being loud. And I’m fixing dinner or my hubby is BBQing and I’m trying to pick up around the house too.
After dinner, I want to incorporate outside time like going down to the river or lake or take a walk around the neighborhood.
Night – Blog/Email & Hubby Time
After the twins go to bed is when my hubby and I hustle hard! This is the no-distraction time and is where I can maximize my time as much as I can. And when I’m creating a product for my audience, this hustle time can be until we go to bed at night.
But, usually, we try to have some down time together, whether it’s spending quality time or watching a show – Mindhunter anyone? – if we are exhausted.
Okay, so with these tactics, you can use these to help you work at home and figure out your blog plan for your business.
But, once you start your blog, you have to develop a routine as a way to be successful when you work at home.
Time Management Routines to Adopt
As a work at home mom blogger, I had to adopt some time management routines since my business kept growing each year. From more income to more subscribers to more blogs and more, I have to learn to manage my business while not taking away from my family.
That’s why these five pillar routines will help you manage your time more than just having tactics.
These will be built from the ground up and incorporated as part of your overall blog plan.
I have learned in the years of blogging how important it is to have a plan and routine in place.
1. Repurposing Your Content
A great way to save time as a busy mom blogger is to repurpose what you create. Content online can mean:
- A blog post
- Video
- Podcast
- Lead magnet
- Social media post
- Quiz
- eBook
- Guide
- Workbook
- Printable
- Webinar
- Facebook Live
The list can go on and on.
When you repurpose content, you switch it around for a different medium. For example, you can write a blog post and then turn that into a YouTube video. You can then embed your video into that blog post you repurposed!
Or, you can consolidate many blog posts and turn that into an eBook filled with more deep level content as an addition.
My favorite way is to consolidate blog posts and turn that into an epic freebie. I’ve done this a couple of times, and it’s a great way to save time when you’re too busy to think of new content ideas.
You can also turn an email into a blog post. I recently am sharing some juicy insider tips to my subscribers and have been toying with the idea of doing a series on my blog!
If I’m dried out with content ideas, I can always try this out!
2. Theme Writing
One of the best ways to save time with blogging is to come up with a general theme and stick with that for the month. This can be in the form of a blog series or just an insider theme for a content schedule.
For example, you may tell yourself that next month you want to focus on productivity hacks for moms. So all your posts for that month center around that central theme.
Early this year I focussed on blogging tips – straight up blogging tips.
For my freelance writing blog, early on when I was super busy with content for my clients, I decided to do interviews with other freelance writers.
For me, this is an easy way to come up with blog content ideas quickly and churn out content easily when I’m busy with other projects.
3. Batching
Batching is when you focus on one task until it’s done before moving to a new task.
I like to batch my business and home life. For example, if I’m running an errand, I think about where I’m going and anything else I can do on the run like pick up groceries, or return a toy while on the errand.
For my business, I like to streamline all my email tasks during a block of time as well as my pin images for the week and email drafts.
This saves time when you do one task instead of multi-tasking. I recently started doing Q/A Facebook Lives for freelance writers on Tuesdays and my Tuesday suddenly became my freelance writing day.
I would answer course questions, think of blog posts for writers and create pins for my freelance writing blog.
Then I would do my Facebook Live (and then repurpose them into YouTube Videos!) to round it out.
But I don’t always batch. Sometimes, I just go all over the place, and that’s okay!
4. Outline Your Content
One of the best time savers for me as a blogger and professional writer is to outline my content. For example, this blog post is outlined, and it’s super easy to go from subheading to subheading.
I also save my outlines for blog posts in WordPress and when I’m ready just go to the post and write it out.
When creating your outline think about what you want to teach or share with your audience and how you want to deliver that.
It could be a How-to post or List post or as a collaboration post.
So a typical blog post can be seen like this:
- Intro + hook
- Break down of post
- Subheading #1
- Subheading #2
- Subheading #3
- Subheading #4
- Conclusion
- Call-to-action
For more help on creating an optimized blog post check out my masterclass to create content!
5. Prioritize Your Tasks
Do you know that even if you have as little as 1 or 2 hours a day to work on your new blog and business, you will probably be more productive than someone doing this full-time?
It’s true. For most people, if we were only given four hours to do all our work for the day, we would be much more productive than if we were given a full day (8 hours) to do the same work tasks.
This happens because when we perceive we have many hours or days or weeks to complete a task, we will undoubtedly procrastinate and delay.
I do this. Since my twins started Kindergarten, I relished in the idea of blogging full-time!
And when I suddenly became a full-time blogger, I found it very hard to maximize the time I had each day.
Instead of chunking my work day into two or three hours at a time I had effectively from 9:30 am until 3pm to work on my blog and business.
This lead to distractions and procrastination.
I had to learn to fill the many hours of time I have when my twins are at school by prioritizing my work.
Tasks are either:
- Important and urgent
- Important but not urgent
- Not important but urgent
- Not important and not urgent
And you know what? Most of us focus on important tasks that aren’t urgent instead of prioritizing the important and urgent tasks.
This is dubbed the Eisenhower Matrix from author Stephen Covey, and it can help work at home mom bloggers with doing the important tasks first.
So even though watching those free webinars are packaged as a way to jump start your business, this is really just an important task that isn’t urgent.
A more productive task would be to stop planning and taking action by writing that income generating post or sitting down to start that email list.
So, when you have been working at home for a few months and find that you feel you have no time to do anything, look at the actual tasks you are doing and determine if they are important and urgent or not so urgent.
This can help you prioritize your tasks for that day!
Time Saving Tips for Blogging Moms
Time management for stay-at-home moms that want to blog is possible! I’ve been a stay-at-home working mom for over three years, and I wouldn’t change it for the world.
I’m able to work at home, create my own schedule, and take care of my twins.
But, I had to learn how to boost my productivity and prioritize what time I had to build my blog.
You can do this mama! Let me know in the comments how you save time as a mom blogger!
Let’s help each other out!
Please pin me!
19 Comments