What does your day-to-day look like? How do you schedule work around being a mom? When the heck do you work with a toddler running around at home?! All questions I got in a recent mid-year survey I did for my email subscribers, and it got me thinking that I should do a second edition of my popular post that was published a little over a year ago – a day in the life of a single mompreneur with no babysitter.
Now granted, my daughter was almost two at the time, not she's almost three. Any mamas out there know that these two stages are quite different in what they can and can't do by themselves. Plus, a year ago I had zero childcare, and now she goes to preschool two days a week.
Also, my business was a lot different a year ago. It required a lot more of my time than it does now – back then I was in the middle of creating my second course Etsy on Autopilot, and today I'm more in maintenance mode, creating systems + marketing existing products.
But still, it's at least fun for me to see how much my days have changed in a year (and also how they have not!). So here we go...
The Diary
8:25am Me and Poppy wake up late, so I scramble to get both of us dressed, fed, and out the door for preschool. Totally forgot to make her lunch the night before, and I've put off grocery shopping the last day or two, so I piece together a sad lunch for the toddler who probably will only pick at it anyway.
8:55am We head out to school, with a cup of blueberries in hand for breakfast.
9:05am I drop off P at school, and hope I don’t see anyone I know. Cause I woke up 30 minutes ago and it shows. Run into mom friend in the hallway. Of course.
9:20am Back home, I make coffee + breakfast, and watch a quick Facebook live to get the wheels turning and get into work mode. I answer emails at the counter in between toast bites.
10:00am Jump in Slack, and chat quickly with my mastermind ladies about a question I left in the group late last night asking their opinion on a new project + how best to organize it.
10:10am Remember I am supposed to be documenting today for this very blog post, so Evernote to the rescue where I recap everything you've read so far – ha!
10:20am Pause work mode to order prescriptions online for my grandparents when I go see them later this week for our bi-weekly pill refill date.
10:40am Back in Evernote, I work on organizing + sorting through results + comments from my mid-year survey, and more chatting with mastermind ladies about my next mini-class.
11:15am Scribble out a quick grocery list for later, and leave to pick up P from school for swimming lessons.
12:00pm Sitting poolside, sweating all my makeup off, watching P do her swimming lessons + enjoying 30 mommy minutes to check social media AND get a tan. #bonus
1:00pm Get P dropped back at school, and head off to the grocery store.
2:00pm Whyyyyy did it take me an hour to grocery shop?! This is why I usually do Hyvee’s free online ordering + next-day delivery, but I needed stuff for a family dinner tonight so had to go in person. I put everything away, and eat a cheese stick and a banana for #sadlunchday before I have to head back out to pick up P from school.
3:30pm Home! I get P settled in with a movie, and since I’ve barrrrrely done any work today, I’m gonna give myself the length of Trolls to nail down this new mini-class outline.
4:30pm She’s done with Trolls and wants all my full attention, and this mini-class is definitely not flowing with all these distractions, so I’m out! #micdrop I’ve got company coming over tonight, so I pick up the house and start on dinner.
6:30pm The house starts to fill up for a family dinner, and we’re going full on Taco Tuesday with mojitos. Mama needs this.
7:30pm Poppy comes over to me to show me some brownie on her finger, cause we’re eating brownies ya know? Wait. No. That’s not brownie. That’s poop. And it's oozing out her diaper up her back. Pause dinner to clean up + change clothes.
8:00pm With fresh pants, we head out for a walk around the neighborhood with family + dog + curious toddler.
9:30pm Usually she's in bed by 8:30, but it's summer! So we make it back home around 9:30, put P to bed, finish dishes, and clean dried poop out of her shorts.
10:30pm Walk P back to her bed for the literal tenth time, and curse those parenting books that say "Trade off with your partner!" 🙄 I sure do miss the crib sometimes!
10:45pm I had planned to finish up the mini-class outline tonight, but my brain is now mush to do anything productive, so I call it a day and catch up on last night’s Bachelorette, falling asleep sometime during the rose ceremony. Briefly consider a text from my mom earlier tonight: “Bachelorette is casting in Nashville. Want me to sign you up? 😉” Briefly. 😏
To recap, this was a day WITH 6 hours of childcare, yet I somehow only managed to squeeze out MAYBE 2 hours of actual work for my business. That’s not what I like to see for my business, BUT — Poppy got to play at school, learn how to swim, play with her cousins, and take a walk with her dog BFF, so to her it was the perfect day. And that makes the less than productive business part of my day not all that important.
But another thing I noticed throughout the day: my phone kept cha-chinging with Etsy shop sales! Maybe it was only $7 here or $20 there, but it totaled up to $107 by the end of the day (a little above average for me!), so that definitely balanced out my unproductive feelings. It took a lot of work to get my shop to be able to run on autopilot like that, and make consistent sales even while cleaning fresh poop out of your kid's shorts, but I'm so thankful I put in that hard work a few years ago to make days like today possible. (If you're curious about building an Etsy shop with digital products like this, check this out.)
Free download — Weekly Planner
Another popular question in that mid-year survey was how I schedule my week with limited working time and how I prioritize my to do list, and a big way I do that is with Asana (you can read about my system for that here), and a printed weekly planner. So it's a mix of digital and physical that helps me stay on track and organize my schedule.
Drop in your email address below, and I'll send you my free weekly planner which includes blocks for every day of the week, plus a space for you to write out your focus for the week, track some numbers if you're into that (I like to track my social following + email list growth from week to week), and space for other miscellaneous notes or to-do's. Filling this weekly planner out every Sunday night helps my week go smoother + keeps me on track both in business + personal life. Print out your own copy this week, and give it a go!
I wrote a book about being a single mom.
I’ve always wanted to write a book, but I never had a clue what I would write about. And then I found myself having the “divorce talk” and staring at a positive pregnancy test on the same day, and I thought, hey, there’s a story. I wrote about learning to be a single mom and learning to be a mom at all. I wrote about resiliency, change, and what happens when you wake up one morning and your life is the complete opposite of what it was the day before. And the complete opposite of anything you ever thought it would be.
But what makes this book different, is that I’m still in the middle of this mess. I’m not waiting until I’m decades out, and everything’s tied up with a bow. I wrote this baby right in the thick of it, figuring out this single parenting thing as I go.
