But yesterday I took the day off for family time. We went to Big Bear Lake, which is only about an hour away.

It’s important to get family time when you run a home business. It’s really easy to get caught up in all the things you could be doing that maybe, just maybe, will help to increase your income. I’ve been having some relatively low income months lately, so the urge to work harder is strong right now.

That doesn’t mean I shouldn’t take appropriate breaks.

A good break with the family is refreshing. It gets your mind away from all the stresses of working. You might even quit thinking about it for a time as you have fun.

Taking time for family is something you need to do a bit of every day, and then have some serious family time at least once a week. You work at home for a reason, after all, and if you neglect that reason, why are you at home anyhow?

You don’t have to do anything exciting for your family time. You don’t even have to leave the house. Just be together. Eat together. Do chores together. Turn off the television and back away from the computers. Cell phones too, especially if you have kids who really love to text.

Make some family time a regular priority. Not just because you need a break from working but because your family needs time as a unit.

Related posts:

1. Taking the Time for Family and Holidays
2. Do You Forget Family Time?
3. Taking Care of the Family Pets

Some things are pretty obvious. I mean, unless you have a work at home job that won’t give you the holiday off for some reason, you can just choose not to work during family celebrations. But if things are picking up, what then?

Prioritizing with a Home Business

If your home business picks up right when you want more family time, you can have some tough decisions to make. If you want to succeed, you do often have to sacrifice some time.

But there are options.

I mentioned virtual assistants the other day. This can be a great time of year to hire one to handle all the basics that really don’t need your personal touch. If you haven’t been sure about hiring a bit of help, this is probably a good time to try it out.

This may also be the time to just plain lose some sleep. If you can work a bit later into the night you can keep business things going while losing less family time.

When a Work at Home Job isn’t Cooperating

Most work at home jobs are pretty flexible. In a lot of cases you say when you are willing to work. But sometimes your employer will have a schedule they need you to keep… even on holidays.

Sure, you could call in sick, but you know how realistic that will sound.

Asking for the time you will need early on is key, but it doesn’t always work. If you get stuck working at a time you’d rather be enjoying your family, try rescheduling events a little. Hard as it may be to alter your usual holiday routine, it’s worse if you lose income your family needs.

I grew up flexible around holidays so that may be easy for me to say. Christmas took several days just because of the time it took to see both of my parents and my grandparents. It wasn’t uncommon to not see some people until New Year’s.

Know what? It didn’t make the celebrations any less special. It was about seeing family, not just the food and/or gifts.

Of course, your religious observances may be another story. But in many cases you have a few options for when to attend services. If not, that’s something you will have to deal with and discuss with your employer.

Remember the Reason for the Season

Much as we celebrate holidays on a particular day, they really aren’t about that day so much as they are about the events they celebrate. Keep that in mind as you decide what is most important to you.

Related posts:

1. Do You Forget Family Time?
2. When Business Takes Over Family Time
3. Juggling the Move, Family, Working at Home and My Sanity

A part of it comes from planning. If you don’t have a schedule it can be very easy to overdo, to feel that you have to keep working, even when your family needs you.

Your day to day routine can help you keep in touch with your family. You should always be taking time to be there with your family.

It can start with dinner. Eat together regularly. Daily is ideal, with the television off. Prepare dinner together. I got my kids started in the kitchen very young. They don’t have to be very old to tear lettuce, after all, and how they help changes as they grow.

That’s one of the important things to remember about family time, in my opinion. It is not just about having fun. It’s about living together and helping each other.

But I do try to get out with my family. We try to have family outings regularly. Our ideal is once a week, but other parts of life often get in the way of that.

A simple thing to do is pick a place and go hiking. It’s free and good for all of you.

Of course, at times you do have to cope with your work getting out of hand. Business picks up and you really need to work extra hours. Getting enough family time is tough.

In part you will need to decide how much work you should be taking on. Sometimes you have to just deal with it, but other times it’s a matter of knowing how to say no.

If it’s getting really tough, it may be time to consider a little childcare help. That may not be the reason you work at home, but it can be of great assistance at those times when you just really need to get things done without interruption.

If you’re one of the lucky ones, you’ll have family or friends who can help much of the time. In my case, that would be my inlaws. Retired, local grandparents are really amazing.

Other times you’ll have to pay for help. If that’s what it takes, you may have to be resigned to it.

Once you’re done with the busy times, make sure you commit to some good family time again. You do not want overwork to become a habit.

Related posts:

1. When Business Takes Over Family Time
2. Taking the Time for Family and Holidays
3. Holiday Family Time Vs. Working at Home

One of the hardest things about working at home is the tendency for it to take over a great deal of your day. This can be true of work at home jobs, but it is far more likely to be true when you run a home business. After all, you don’t want to just drop things when business picks up.

But this is hard when you’re trying to be there for your family. Working more hours means less time with your children. What can you do?

One of the things that can really help is knowing when you need to hire someone to help you with your business. Think about getting a virtual assistant for those routine matters that don’t need your personal attention, for example.

If you do a lot of article marketing, you should consider investing in an article submission program or membership. I use  Content Crooner (with a lifetime membership), and I love it. Write up my articles, then schedule their distribution through their system. They get the big article sites as well as tons of little ones and article mailing lists. That saves me hours and hours of work.

Consider the other things that it may be more profitable for you to pay someone else to handle. Website design, article writing, product creation – all kinds of things can be outsourced, often to your fellow work at home parents.

As your children get big enough, they can be of assistance too. If you mail things out to customers, children can help with that. If you put up flyers, the kids can help there too. If your kids are old enough, you can start teaching them about marketing online, and get them to help you out there as well.

But if hiring the help you need just isn’t doing enough or isn’t in the budget yet, make sure you’re being practical. It may be time to consider using a bit of day care for the kids if that will help you to work more efficiently. That one can sting, since most work at home parents are doing it to have more time with their children, but it can be necessary. Fortunately, it can also help with productivity so that you don’t have to work so many hours because you are interrupted less.

If you run a service, consider raising your prices. This may not actually decrease the amount of business you get, but if you’re in more demand than you can handle, you can probably safely raise your prices at least a little.

Rethink your work schedule. If you work best in the morning, try getting up earlier. Similarly, stay up later if you work best at night. But try hard to avoid adding to the hours you work when your family is awake and needing you. Those are generally your least productive hours just because of the interruptions.

You should also talk with your family about the issues keeping you busy, especially when things are busier than usual. It’s hard for children to understand why you are so busy sometimes and why you can’t go do the things they would like you to do. Spouses can also get frustrated. Keep those lines of communication open so that you can decrease resentment.

Working at home is a wonderful advantage to your family in many ways, but it can have it’s disadvantages. Don’t let those make you miss out on what really matters to you.

Related posts:

1. Do You Forget Family Time?
2. Link building takes so much time
3. Taking the Time for Family and Holidays