Article: A Day in the Life

A Day in the life: RandomScraps

One of the best things about being in business for yourself is that your days are filled with the things that are most important to you. I am a stay at home mom of three- Scott is 7, Sierra is almost 6, and Venice is 7 months- so for me, that includes time for my kids, my husband and myself. Each day is different, but this is one example of my day that happened recently.

7:00 My husband wakes me up so he can leave for work. Usually, the kids are already up and getting ready, and by this time the baby has been fed and wants to play. I usually can’t resist running to the computer first thing in the morning to check my shop sales and my emails. After that, I get ready for my day and finish getting the kids ready for the bus.

7:45 The baby and I walk the kids down to the bus stop and wait with them. Once they’re gone we either walk around the block if the weather is nice, or we just head back home. Today we have errands to run so it’s back to the house for now.

8:30 We’ve finished getting the diaper bag restocked and eaten our breakfasts, so now it’s time to make sure all my orders are packaged up with everything they need. Once I run through my task list and make sure I’ve got everything, I load up the baby and head out.

9:00 First stop: Postnet. I have a mailbox at the local Postnet, which is my business mailing address and also one of my wholesale accounts. I check my mail, drop off my orders for shipping, and check on their inventory levels to see what kinds of things are selling there as well.

9:45 Next up, a trip to Office Max to restock some business and shipping supplies, followed by a stop next door at Kinko’s where I have my packaging printed.

10:45 Time to head home and put Venice down for a nap. She refuses to sleep anywhere, including the car, so I have to go put her in her crib. Her nap time is usually my computer time. I catch up on email, the Etsy forums, Twitter, and pretty much anything else I’ve left up on my screen to read. I follow a lot of blogs, and I get tons of inspiration from looking at what other people have done, so this takes me a while.

Noon Right around now Sierra gets home from school. Today she has gymnastics, so I have lunch waiting for her. (She’s gluten intolerant, so drive-thrus don’t work for us.) She changes into her gymnastics clothes and we head out.

1:15 Gymnastics. I get to sit for an hour and chat with the other moms. Okay, well not quite. This is when Venice is normally ready for her lunch, so I feed her while we are out.

2:30 Home from gymnastics. This is when I usually try to get things done around the house, like laundry and dishes. Not my favorite time of day.

4:00 Scott gets home from school, and the kids start taking care of their chores while I start to prep dinner. Mark gets home from work sometime between now and 6, and I try to time dinner accordingly.

6 or 7ish… Venice goes to bed and it’s dinner time. We always eat at the table together. After we’re done the kids head to the playroom for about an hour before bed and Mark and I sit on the couch. Tonight we have TV time, but that only happens a few times a week. There are 3 nights we watch TV, and 2 of those are only an hour each.

9:30 or 10ish Mark heads to bed and I head into my scraproom to work. I usually do my best work at night, so I try to take advantage of the quiet time. I am usually in bed by midnight, so I can start all over in the morning!