Working outside the home

I'm pregnant with baby #3 and I am not sure if I want to reopen when my leave is up. I can't imagine sending my child off to daycare either though! I'm looking into what I can do to stay at home but not do daycare. I really like the idea of turning my basement into a rec room/play room and selling all the daycare toys. We've actually never had the basement as part of our home since we had tenant before opening the daycare. My girls don't even realize it is part of our house, heh heh. I've only been doing this for 3 yrs but I really think I am ready for something new. I love my 2 hr break every afternoon though, that may be hard to give up but then I remember my work day would be shorter.

What sort if ideas do you have for maybe working PT or FT from home? My understanding is that Mary Kay type jobs do not provide enough income to make it worth my time. Plus I am not really interested in that sort of thing. Although I am good at sales.

What's your "back to work" dream??

I have an idea for a children's book series I'd like to write, however I haven't had the energy to look into where to start! That may not be a realistic dream but something to do an addition to another job.

I think it would really depend how much income you NEED to bring in and how regular that income NEEDS to be.

I see ads posted for work from home all the time but they all strike me as either fake or something that you need to have a lot of skills for and not have kids around while doing the work because you are technically working a full job, you just don't leave the house to go to your office.

Aside from that you end up with the selling stuff which strikes me as being random amounts of money and a whole lot of work...or stuffing envelopes and well...I suspect after a few months of that you'd be begging for poopy diapers again!!!

What about closing the daycare but taking one child the same age as your new baby (when you are done mat leave) and just having the one paying child. That is what I do now and it really made a world of difference. I don't make nearly as much of course but I am still home with my daughter and don't pay daycare, don't need a second car and technically we save money by my being home to cook meals and clean the house because I am certain we'd be paying for cleaners if I was working outside the home! It is still work but it is very different than running the daycare kind of work.

Or, what if you got a tenant for the basement again and then took in one child...would that be enough money? Then you could work outside the home once your youngest is in school full time.

Thanks Lee Bee. I think with only having one DC child this would be beneficial as I could still do activities with my child and the DC child (that would be too difficult to do with multiple kids) e.g. a gymnastics class etc. I could also do the pick up and drop off of my girls easily with just 2 babies to bundle up so we would save on before and after care. I just worry I would get bored to be honest. One child would almost be equivalent to what I would earn on mat leave (although a bit less) so it may be doable but 2 would be better but then the perks mentioned above would be harder.

It's hard to get out of this lifestyle I find. There are so many perks that make it appealing.

If you're good at writing and want to work from home you could try to see if an online news site or a website in general will hire you on. If you don't mind still working in daycare and away from home you could try to find a daycare that'll hire you and see if you can bring in your child as well. Some daycares will give a discount to daycare workers for their own children, plus you'd be able to kind of look after your child at the same time, even if the child is in a different room.

It's kind of hard to work from home especially if you weren't recently at a previous job that gives you that opportunity unles you have a college diploma or degree of some sort that'll make it easier or past experience working online. If you like writing, look at websites and try to pursue that. If you are fluent in an other language or more than one then be a translator, they're always looking for translators online.

You could try and make a little money online. Some blogs get paid to have sponsers and depending on number of views. Look at YouTube Vloggers now a days. You could do surveys or website reviews. Try to start your own website. Although a lot of these ideas are far fetched and will take a lot of dedication, creativity and time before you make money and only if you do make money.

When it comes down to it it's also a question on how much money you need to earn or if you just want a bit of extra money and how much you want.