Hello!
Today I’m sharing some insight into how my day to day life goes and how I juggle having kids and working on a blog.
I get asked a lot about this, and when people find out I have two children they ask me how?
Mainly one, or a number of the following questions;
- how can I get posts done
- how can I take photos that are’nt being invaded by children
- how can I be all over my social media channels so often
- how can I plan anything
- how do I know which hashtags to use for Instagram
- how do I do all this and not have smallest in nursery
So here goes, some tools and tricks and resources that help me every day and, can help you too.
Most week days go like this;
6:20am- my alarm goes off. Either me or the Mr will go and make the coffees and we’ll drink them in bed whilst we wake up. Between now and 7:30am I am checking my social media channels. I’m replying to comments if necessary and it’s at this time on most days that I’ll post on Instagram. I am also scheduling tweets and FB updates via an app called Buffer. Honestly it is brilliant.
Currently I tend to post once a day on Insta, usually at around 7am. I’ve found that my engagement is good at this time, as people are waking and scrolling through their phones with a coffee too.
The kids are up at 7:30am and we are usually having breakfast by 8am.
If its a school day we are out of the house, walking to school by 8:40am, and me and smallest are back home just after 9am. Currently on some Monday’s smallest has started going to my parents house during school hours. This has been great for me to be able to get meater blog posts written and for taking photos/doing vlogs.
During the rest of the day until school pick up we are either out and about visiting family and friends, doing household chores at home and playing or popping to the shops. I get a few minutes here and there to check and respond to email and social media stuff via my iphone only.
I tend to take photos as and when I can, an episode of Scooby Doo often helps A LOT.
Smallest is two and a half now and has virtually grown out of her afternoon nap. But if you have a small child this afternoon nap is a godsend. I previously got a lot of my blog work done during this time.
3pm we walk up to school and collect eldest and by 3.30 we are home again. The girls play for a bit and then they have 30 minutes of TV before teatime.
I’m making the tea in the kitchen at this point and I’m also on social and email, checking and responding- multitasking is my forte.
I use Evernote for saving ideas for blog posts and padding them out a bit, I might do some research for a post during this time too- all on my phone. This usually means when I finally sit down at my laptop to write, I’m not wasting time trying to think of ideas. I must also say that I do still use a notebook, I make a lot of lists and I love crossing things off as I do them.
I’m also a big fan of sticky notes- great for lists and reminders.
By 6pm we’ve finished tea and are winding down for the evening. The girls are in bed by 7/7:30pm. And that is when I pop my laptop open and get to work. Often Mr OFS doesnt get in from work until about 8pm so I try and make the most of this hour to write content or edit photos.
If he’s working away I can work through, but obviously we do want to spend time together so by about 9pm we settle down and watch a box set or film.
Yes things don’t always go as smoothly as described, toast gets burnt or one (or both) of the girls are poorly, but you just have to improvise and get through.
The key resources for me day to day are;
- Buffer for social media scheduling
- My iphone for everything!
- Evernote for planning and research
- For Instagram I look at what hashtags people I admire are using and if they are relevant to my images I will try those tags. I also receive Sara Tasker’s hashtag newsletter which she sends out monthly. You can sign up here
I hope you have found this interesting and helpful? Do let me know, and feel free to share your tips for juggling blogging and everyday life in the comments.
susan earlam ~ horror author 
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