Are you transitioning from working in the corporate world to working from home? Do you have babies or toddlers or even teenagers? If you are anything like me going from corporate to home was a bit challenging to say the least.

If you have a job that requires minimum time on the phones, you may have it a bit easier than us parents who have to spend our whole shifts on the phone. Yaaaaay for us, right?! When completing the job application, it says “be sure to have a distraction free workspace with no noises in the background”, mommy of two here ages 1 and 4, yeah that just doesn’t exist anywhere in my home until bedtime of course. I can go from one room to the next but somehow these little people manage to find me. It’s like they pinpoint the exact time a call is coming through and boom, mommy, mommy, mommy! Sounds familiar? Sooo because I have learned them oh so well, I’ll tell you what I have done to try to minimize the noise during work hours.

My go to things when working and dealing with toddlers are snacks and tablets/movie. I live by these things! During the beginning of my shift, they’re sleeping so that buys me a bit of quiet time but when they wake up, it’s go time. Now I’m not going to sit here and pretend that everyday flows smoothly because it doesn’t but overall these things have helped me a lot. Toddlers have their days so you just have to go with the flow of them.

Snacks, snacks, snacks! Lunchables, fruit, cheese crackers, granola bars, whatever your child enjoys to snack on definitely have them near by. This will for sure buy you some quiet time, even if its just five minutes, you have to take what you can get to get you through your shift. I have a snack shelf right behind me where I mainly do my work from and the convenience of having these snacks within my reach works great for me. It’s normally around lunch time once I’m back for the other part of my shift so they are already fed and playing and as long as I’m not on a call, that’s fine. However, once a call comes in and I let them know that mommy is on a call, if the noise doesn’t quiet down, I continue to talk to the customer as normal but at the same time, I’m reaching for a snack. It is at this very moment, excitement and then quietness.

I know that some remote jobs have no time in between calls so another good way to keep the noise level down is to put on a good movie your child enjoys watching or if they have a tablet, let them play on it or watch videos for a few minutes. My kids love watching the movie Home and the show Power Rangers (little too much action so it does not work to keep the noise level down, lol). Kids can have short attention spans especially when they see that you are minding your own business but putting on a good movie that’s engaging can keep their attention for a little while.

If you can manage your phone calls or workload while getting the kids situated, you’ve overcame the challenges of working from home. It’s all about balance and multi-tasking. We know its not possible to be in one room and put them in another room for hours at a time, especially with toddlers because that’s just asking for a disaster to happen. I’ve learned that you have to learn to manage it and take it day by day. 🙂