When you work from home having work life boundaries is important, but it’s even more important when you have a family that is home during your work day.

IE 290: How to Set Work Life Boundaries Working from Home

Many of our lives and work life balance changed with the pandemic.

Some of us who had worked from home for years now had are partners and children home with us.

Some of them may still even be home because their business found that it made more sense financially to have them working from home.

This is why it’s so important to have work life balance more than it ever has been in the past.

Set Work Hours

You need to know what your days and hours will look like for you.

Whether you’re going to get up prior to the kids getting up and you’re going to work from five to seven, and then you’re going to take a break and get them breakfast.

You have to know those set work hours.

Decide on what those work hours are going to look like for you. 

And of course, for some of us, we’re only going to have little pockets of time because maybe we have toddlers or we have newborns, but if you know ahead of time what tasks need to get done, it’s easier to get accomplished what you need to.

Knowing what to focus on during those set work hours is going to be vital to have work life balance at home.

Set Up a Work Space

You have to have a spot that everyone in the home knows is your work space. 

And if you’re at that spot, you are working.

Your workspace needs to be a set space.

If you live in a two bedroom apartment it might be a desk in your bedroom.

Or it might be a home office.

But it cannot be wherever you take your laptop to.

Find a spot where you can say, “This is my workspace. When you see me in this space then I am working.” 

Communicate with Your Adult Support

Now that for some of us is going to be our husband, our partner, our wife, whatever that may look like for you. 

It also may be maybe you’re a single mom and your own mother comes and takes care of the kids during certain hours, or has a habit of stopping by and wanting you to take her every which way and wants to go shopping randomly on this day. 

Whether you have kids or not, that could still be the case for you. 

You could be a younger, married couple that live at your home and have your mom stopping by at all hours to take her shopping or to sit and chat because she wants to see her daughter. 

You need to be able to talk to your adult support system. 

The people that are in your lives that could potentially be interrupting your day and communicate what it is that you need. 

Let them know your work hours.

Create a Protocol with Children on Expectations

Once you communicate with your adult support system, if you have children in the home you want to create a protocol with the children, as far as expectations, what do you expect them to do? 

If you’re home during the day, and your partner works out of the home, and you’re home with the kids over the summer and they need something.

What is it going to look like? How little are they? Can they go to their big sister or brother and ask them how to do certain things?

Can you set up times where this is what we’re going to do? 

We’re going to color for 20 minutes while mommy sits at her desk and goes through and does some writing.

I’m going to have earbuds in so I can focus and you’re going to put on some headphones and you’re going to listen to your favorite music while you color.

I have a nine-year-old and a 12 and a half year old. They are more sufficient.

They understand responsibility. 

They also understand consequences so that if they do continuously interrupt, I am going to continuously interrupt them later when they are trying to use their cell phone, or they’re trying to use their iPad because it’s their downtime. 

I’m going to interrupt that and take that away as that part of the consequence for having interrupted.

If they do continue to interrupt, if they have a tendency, like my nine-year-old, to come into my office and stand right, where I can still see her, where my clients can’t see her, but I can and try to pass me a note that says, can I curl my hair?

That’s not a relevant thing that needs to be asked when mommy is speaking to a coaching client and getting distracted by you, because you’re trying to pass me a note about wanting to curl your hair. 

That is a conversation that has had to happen more than once.

And it’s something where you have to know that you’re continuously having a conversation with them about what your day is going to look like, communicating what you expect, why you’re doing, what you’re doing so that they understand.

Set Boundaries with Social Media & Your Phone

Many of you are influencers or bloggers and social media is a huge part of your business. 

You have to set a boundary with it.

You have to be able to set those boundaries and show them what a healthy relationship with a phone looks like. 

Because for many of us we don’t demonstrate that to our kids and as they get older and they have cell phones and they have iPads they’re not going to understand what that looks like.

Have certain rules in place like no cell phones at the dinner table or while eating at a restaurant.

Or that if someone is speaking to them, they put down their device and turn it over and make eye contact with the person speaking to them. 

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