Have you ever wondered how some moms just seem to balance it all with ease? I’ve had a few people ask me recently how I do it all, and so I wanted to share with you my secret weapon: having my own handbook!
You know all those things you have floating around in your head? “Oh I need to pull down the Halloween decorations” or “I have to pay that one bill for my business.” You might even feel like you can’t ask for help from a sitter or family member because you don’t have a clear process for them to follow so everyone stays on routine.
This is where a survival handbook can come in handy.
That’s why I created my survival handbook for moms running a business AND a household — so you can have a handheld (or digital) resource that literally shows every part of your life and business… and get all those details out of your head!
So today, I want to talk all about WHY you should create your own handbook and, more importantly, how we can do it together!
Why create a handbook?
You might be wondering why I created a handbook of all things. It happened one day when I realized my mental load was getting to the tipping point — yes, things were working. But were they working WELL?
Not exactly. I had a thousand different checklists running rampant around my house, AND I didn’t really use them, so they were hardly any help. Add to that the fact that I had created most of them on the fly, with very little intention behind them, so it was no wonder things weren’t working well.
Instead of having a great place to go to remember all the things that needed to get done, I had notes scattered all over, and nothing was really moving forward. I had created many checklists, routines, and organizers, but none worked cohesively together.
Sound familiar?
That’s when I sat myself down and decided I needed to create an all-in-one handbook. A place where all of the most important information could live — ONE PLACE I could easily access it. I also needed something I could make changes to because let’s be realistic: Things are always changing with little ones.
Enter: Mom’s Survival Handbook for Balancing a Business & a Household.
Over the last few years, I’ve been consciously gathering all my checklists, adjusting my routines, and ensuring every inch of my life was recorded in this handbook. Now, I’m sharing it all with you!
The 4 important sections
Of course, I want to help you make your own, so I’m going to go over the four sections and a few things that are included in my handbook.
Ready?
The first section should be all about family.
This section is all about what someone needs to know if they come to help us with the kids or household. Whether it’s a babysitter, house sitter, or a family member helping out for the week, this has all the deets they need to know. And even though I created this with the intention of someone else using it, it’s also turned out to be really helpful for me, too!
There’s contact information, of course. I also have weekly schedules — and I have to update this pretty often because kids have new activities or appointments. I also include our (the parents) daily routines and each kid’s daily routine so that everyone stays on track.
Next, we have the household section.
I use this as a reminder of what we need to do around the house daily, weekly, monthly, and yearly. I also use it to track our goals as a family. For example, we currently have a goal to walk 2 times per week before dinner as a family.
Create a running list of daily, weekly, and monthly recurring tasks — like putting clothes in the hamper, vacuuming the floor, and dusting the shelves. You can also have recurring maintenance projects in this section, like “change the furnace filter every 6 months.”
Third, you’ll want to create a section for family finances.
Again, I like to add goals here. Maybe you have a goal to save $10,000 for an upcoming vacation, or you’d like to pay off your cars by the end of next year.
In this section, you should also add a running list of accounts and important financial information. In mine, I’ve included:
- Bank Accounts
- Retirement Accounts
- Investment Accounts
- Kids’ Accounts
- Insurance Policies
- And more
This is incredibly handy if you ever need to reference information about accounts — and can be useful in the event that something happens to you and your spouse and family members need to know important info about your insurance and finances.
Last but not least, we have the business section.
Now, if you’re listening to this and you don’t own a business, you don’t have to include this section. And if you download my Survival Handbook, you can even delete this section entirely.
But for those of us out there who run a household AND a business, this section is super-critical. As business owners, it’s easy to hide from the finance element because we’re so busy, right?
Well, let’s not do that. Our business finances affect so much – including our business growth, our personal finances, and our ability to spend time with family. This section of your handbook should include things like:
- Daily, Weekly, and Monthly Financial Tasks
- Quarterly and Annual Financial Tasks
- Important Dates & Financial Tasks by Month
- Bank Accounts
- And more
Create your own survival handbook
I have a copy of my survival handbook waiting for you to download for just $27. Of course, I just went through the four sections and some of what you can add to yours. But in my fill-it-in version, I have an even longer list of things to include plus I have tons of examples and details that can help you get a faster headstart.
This handbook has literally helped me survive some of the busiest and most stressful times in my life. Pretty quickly, lots of my girlfriends with young kids started asking me how the heck I was doing it all, and I realized I needed to share this survival handbook with every mom I could.
But I didn’t want it to be a templatized, fill-in-the-blank thing that forced you to adapt to my way of surviving. That’s not really helpful. So I took the framework of my survival handbook and put it into a Google Doc and made this survival handbook into a living, breathing thing that YOU can adapt to fit YOUR lifestyle.
Want to grab your customizable Survival Guide? Click here!
