Quick Win: Making My Mom-Life Easier
Quick Win: Four Tips for Making My Mom-Life Easier
In today’s Quick Win, Janine Kelbach is going to share four things that have made her freelance mom life easier. This episode is not just for parents trying to run a business, but for anybody who has a personal life outside of work.
Podcast Transcript
Janet: 00:02 Start your engines and get ready to power up for a quick win from the Savvy scribe team. Carol Bush and Janine Kelbach are here to take your freelance healthcare writing business to the next level with this powerful Quick Win on the podcast.
Carol: 00:19 Hi, Savvy Scribes! This is Carol. You know what? The idea of working from home can definitely be ideal, but for those of us who have taken the plunge, the reality of going solo can quickly turn really scary. Whether you’re a mom, a dad, or a crazy MeeMaw like me, there are plenty of challenges we face as a home worker. Thankfully, my pal Janine, co-host of The Savvy Scribe podcast has some great hacks that will give you a little dose of homeworking heaven in today’s Quick Win. So, let’s start the episode! I can’t wait for you to hear her for things that make my mom-life easier. Personally. I like number three.
Janine: 01:03 Hello everybody. This is Jeanine Kelbach, the co-host of The Savvy Scribe podcast. In today’s Quick Win, I’m going to share four things that have made my freelance mom life easier and this episode is not just for parents trying to run a business, but for anybody who has a personal life outside of work.
Janine: 01:24 That’s hopefully everyone listening. Let’s jump into this episode and get started. The first thing I have done is I have a planning app for my meals at home. Who has time to stand at the grocery store, trying to figure out what to eat that day or for the rest of the week? Well, not me. I use an app called e-meals for my family’s meals as well as good ol’ Pinterest. Whatever meals look good to me or recipes I pin. We get bored easily and my family does too. So, we try different meals and I actually love to cook. I make a giant list of meals and recipes. I categorize them and I pick three to four a week every single week. Do you know how easy this makes for my grocery planning and we save so much more money than just wandering around the grocery store?
Janine: 02:16 The next thing that not only saves us money but so much time is I grocery delivery. Those of you who know me know that I am far from a lazy person. I work out a lot. I complete races or fitness challenges every year. I promote fitness for my kids and honestly, I cannot tolerate laziness. That being said, there can’t be much of a lazier thing that I do than ordering my groceries online. But, let me tell you what a time saver it is. Last year I started with using Walmart grocery pickup in the winter. I ordered groceries in the morning and while my kids were eating their breakfast and then I would pick them up later on either when I got home from school or if they were just home on break, we’d hop in the car and go get groceries. My 14-year-old…it was so funny goes, “Mom, this is probably the easiest day we ever had. We went to McDonald’s drive-thru, did a mobile order, picked it up, and then did our grocery pickup.” And I’m like, “oh my gosh, we got to go to the gym or something.” So, that’s what I do. I’ve never had to step foot in the store. Now, Aldi does grocery delivery by me. For a whole $7, you better believe I jumped on board with that. It was the best decision ever, especially those with little ones that you have to pack into the cart, push the cart through the blustery parking lot. It’s wintertime right now in Ohio and we push the cart and it’s in slush and it’s just disgusting. The kids are crying. It’s never fun. It’s not something I love. And now I don’t have to do it.
Janine: 04:01 Another success tip for you, high performing savvy scribes. I want you to think of things in your home that you absolutely hate doing. That would be for me, the cleaning and the grocery shopping. Start to outsource those things and I promise you it will pay off. Let’s jump back in. The third tip is something called the Sunday folder. Again, with the craziness of the mom life, freelance life, still being a nurse at the hospital setting, pay my bills, the extra mail, all that keeps piling up. Recently my husband and I started this concept of a Sunday folder. Sometimes it turns into the Monday folder, but we try to do it once a week and we just try to look at our Sunday folder. Inside the Sunday folder contains mail from the week that’s important. Usually, if you’re getting something via snail mail, it’s never a very urgent thing because it’s in the mail.
Janine: 04:59 Since we’ve adapted this, the way it works, is we get the mail every day. I sort through it quickly, throw out all the junk, which is most of it, let’s be honest, and the rest of it goes into the Sunday folder because it’s again, just not that urgent. We haven’t run into an overpaid bill or a late document since we started this over a year ago. Now the final thing, the fourth thing is an envelope system. So one of the best things we also do to manage our money is the envelope system. Dave Ramsey coined the term and we use it but in a different way in our home. To give a little background, we have three different bank accounts. One is a savings account at my husband’s work where he works, he works at a bank. My checking account is at his old bank that he used to work for, but I have my business account over there as well.
Janine: 05:50 I have a business checking and a regular checking and then we have savings. A thousand dollars of my paycheck goes into a mortgage account. I guess that’s four accounts, so I don’t even, I don’t even see it, like in my paycheck at all. It goes straight to that account so that our mortgage has always paid. At the end of the month, I go to the bank account and I withdraw money for envelopes. Those envelopes we have in the house are for car insurance, vacation, childcare repairs, and for the car and gifts, those envelopes they do, they add up quickly. You have to, you have to decipher how much you want in each envelope every month. And again, you just take the withdrawal, section it up into those envelopes and then just don’t look at it again until you need stuff out of that envelope. We buy gas cards and our local gas station at Speedway and you get points. We go through those so that I don’t pay for gas. I just used the gas card every time I get gas in the car and then at the end of the month I go buy more gas cards and we get points on our speedy card so that at the end you get extra gift cards. So that’s usually what I do in Christmas time. I give those to my nieces and nephews or my son and I didn’t have to pay for the card recently when someone asked me what are some of the things I do to manage my freelance mom life, these are the four things that came to mind. So managing the house, the business a part-time job, a husband and kids sound overwhelming. It sure can be at times, but you have to start putting systems in place and everyone in the house to work as a team to get things done.
Janine: 07:30, In the end, we learned to get things done and enjoy life at the same time. So I want to hear from you guys. Tell me how do you delegate or use time in your business wisely? I want to hear go to healthcaremarketingnetwork.com and leave us a message. We want to hear your voice on a future episode of the Savvy Scribe.
Janine: 07:53 Now take this Quick Win and go get your Write On! Take care guys.
Janine Kelbach, BSN, RNC-OB is a nurse entrepreneur with experience as a freelance writer, virtual assistant, and business coach. She helps solopreneurs/entrepreneurs with her proactive, diverse virtual assistant skills and keeps executives and business owners organized, prioritized, and less stressed.