Mom’s Desk

Working from home

Similarly to most of you, we have been spending a lot of time at home thanks to the pandemic. This has forced us to take a look at our home and make it a more comfortable place to spend all of our time. Having a full time job, one of the things that took me the longest to figure out (5 months, to be exact) was finding a proper place for me to work. As a mom, my working place was… well, wherever my daughter Julia Elena decided she wanted to be. That included her room, the living room, sitting by her online school set up and more often than not, the kitchen while cooking lunch for the fam.

So, I decided to make a priority of setting up a proper working space for myself. I went to the studio where I work, got a desk, a chair and my monitor. A few weeks later, as I was browsing social media, I came across a beautiful green desk that I fell in love with! I was so excited that I decided to share pictures of it with family and close friends.

Make time (and space) for yourself

One of my friends complimented me on my recently discovered “decorating skills” and proceeded to say that she wished she had this kind of time and urged me to enjoy it. Enjoy it? Needless to say I was in shock! I kept coming back to the “I wish I had that kind of time.” I couldn’t even comprehend how someone would think I had time to spare, let alone enjoy it. Then it all clicked! It was a real life example of how moms and working moms are AMAZING at time management. We all make it seem like we have our shit together AND time to spare. And how can we not? It is a skill that you develop (not by choice) the minute you have that child in your arms.

This led me to think of all the things I get done in one day. And yes, I will bore you now with some of them: I currently get up at around 6:40 am to workout, then make sure my kid eats by yelling “EAT!” at her every other minute while I drink my coffee. And while I drink my coffee, I check my emails and meetings for the day with my husband, so we can tag-team being on call for Julia Elena. Then get ready for work and start my day as I am tending to a very enthusiastic little girl, prepare lunch for my family, do the dishes (freaking dishwasher broke down), get her ready for school (a pod school I helped create with two other boss moms), host the school, attend meetings all day, do her online class, get ready for dinner, spend quality time with her.

It is not till 7:30 pm that I get a “breather.” And this is because my amazing partner Guigo graciously takes care of bath time and nighttime routine. This, of course (and I am not even joking) is on a slow day. Most days, after 7:30 pm I have to finish work tasks that didn’t get done during the day (you know, that “last email”), finish a load of laundry, pick up, and clean the floors from all the paint and glitter used for art that day. And (you guessed it!) get ready for it to start all over again the next day.

So, in conclusion you get REALLY FUCKING good at time management when you are a mom and that is a skill that translates to any paying job you have or may have. I vote, we should get to add that to our CV’s. It is something we earn and develop when we decide to be a stay-at-home mom, a full-time working-mom, when we take a step down from that high profile job or even just change jobs. I assure you it is a skill you become a boss at after having a kid!