There are so many challenges when you work at home. Scheduling, feeling professional, networking are all more challenging when you work at home.

Whether you’re telecommuting from a job you could also do from the office, have a work at home job you only do at home or run a home business, it’s easy to find yourself separated socially from your coworkers, people in your industry, anyone you don’t actually live with.

There are plenty of things you can do to not feel so isolated, both personally and professionally. You have to find the time to fit social time into your life, but it can also be good for professional development.

The Internet, of course, is a great resource. You can use forums such as the one here on Home with the Kids to meet other people who work at home. You can use instant messages to communicate with coworkers and email for longer messages. Read the rest of this entry »

Keeping your home life and your professional life separate when you work at home can be a real challenge. If you fail to set enough boundaries, your work life can run right over your home life, leaving you feeling pressured to keep working and unable to enjoy the time with your family you would like to have.

Depending on the age of your children, there are many things you can do to make working at home a little easier to keep apart from the rest of your life. If you can spare the space and equipment to set things up separately you can make things much easier to keep apart.

A dedicated work space is perhaps the most important item. You need somewhere that you can get work done with minimal interference. Ideally, this means a room you can close off to use as your home office, but not everyone has a room available for a home office.

You’ll need rules about your office. Can the kids interrupt you freely? Can you have younger ones bring in toys to play quietly so you can work while still supervising them?

A separate work computer once again is ideal but not achievable for everyone. A work computer allows you to have a machine that you don’t have to compete with anyone else to use. If you need to keep files confidential it is much easier to do so on a private machine than one shared with your family. Read the rest of this entry »

I’m just delighted. I’ve added the ability to add comments to most of the articles on this site using a great new tool called Instant Site Comments.

Instant Site Comments allows you to add comments to plain HTML pages. I had spent the past few months thinking about whether or not to switch this site on over to a content management system to give visitors the ability to comment here. I just thought it was a great idea. Apparently I wasn’t the only one.

Not only am I delighted by the ability to add comments to the site, but Robert Blackstone, who created the software, is very helpful. I had some problems getting thing set up and he was truly a delight to work with. The issue was with some server settings that allowed the program to work well on some servers but not others, and unfortunately mine was one of the ones it wouldn’t work on. With an update to the program, that is not a problem any more.

One of the things I love about Instant Site Comments is that now I can keep building websites in plain HTML if I want, WordPress if I want or use a content management system. I love that kind of flexibility. There are good reasons to use each method, depending on what you want to accomplish and how much flexibility you need in the appearance of each page. Now the ability to allow user participation doesn’t require that I use WordPress or a CMS. I just love that.

I don’t recommend many products, as you know if you’ve read much of what I write. I’m recommending Instant Site Comments to anyone who wants comments on their HTML site without the hassle of changing how their site is set up.

[tags]Instant Site Comments,comments on site[/tags]

Some days it’s just about impossible to get it all done. Between taking care of the kids and working at home, running errands and so forth, getting time to do some plain old housecleaning is pretty difficult. However, it doesn’t have to be impossible.

Take a look at your expectations of yourself. Remembering that being a stay at home mom is the equivalent of two full time jobs, plus any work at home job or home business you may have, chances are your life is quite busy. A perfect house each and every day may be a bit much to ask of yourself.

That doesn’t mean you aren’t keeping a clean house. It can mean knowing how much mess to cope with when more important things are stacking up.

What matters most to you in keeping your house clean. Obviously, keeping a sanitary kitchen is a very high priority, but other priorities can be more by personal preference. Some feel the need to vacuum daily, while others can let it go longer.

One of my favorite tricks is to simply not try to get it all done in one shot. Five minutes here, ten there and you get a lot done throughout the day. Read the rest of this entry »

I’ve removed this review, as more current information makes me withdraw my approval of this program. Too many reports of the trial being hard to cancel for me to be comfortable.