A WFH Mom’s Daily Routine – Aka My Daily Routine

I am a typical South Indian woman, a mother of a foodie 12-year old living in the city, working from home! Here I share my usual day’s routine!

It’s a typical school day. My alarm starts blaring at 6 am. I am way too tired and lazy to get up so I snooze it. I know that I have set another alarm for 6.15 and those 15 minutes are the most precious!!! 5 minutes later, I can hear my husband’s alarm go crrrrrrrring!!! To be frank, that’s what I hate the most and that’s exactly what happens every day. I force myself not to get up and catch another glorious 5 minutes of sleep.

OMG!!! I’m late. Luckily, my son gets up by 6.30 without having to yell at him, on school days that is. If I am lucky, my mum’s home too and she gets up around the same time 😀 We start the day’s work deciding on what to cook. I hate to think of what to cook the next day. So the day’s menu is decided within 10 minutes of waking up and then we start the fastest finger first game! She’s good at cutting the veggies. As I am too lazy and take up too long to cut them, I happily hand over the veggies and ask her to cut it a particular way for the Sabji and put the rice into the cooker. I let it hoot happily at least 10 times, as my foodie son loves the local rice which takes forever to cook!!! In another hour, my son’s breakfast and lunch are ready and packed.

Then starts my actual day!!! I work from home. So I get half an hour to sit down peacefully and read the paper, which I mostly skip and turn to my favourite version of candy crush installed on my mum’s mobile! Mine is too precious to waste that much space! 😀 I sometimes work on the go. So I need all the space possible on my mobile to download the utility apps and documents to download and work on.

By 8.30 I switch on my system if I don’t have any urgent submissions. Or else, the poor thing gets switched on by 7.30 am. I start with some time on facebook and check my emails and then within 15 minutes, I am all geared up with my documents. I am a freelance writer (that you would have guessed by now) and I have managed to get some clients from all across the world. It’s a lot of fun reading and writing, both of which I enjoy a lot.

Before I know, it’s 9.30 and my husband’s hunger cannot wait anymore! So I get up to make or serve and eat breakfast. I spend 10-minutes to watch TV, to convince myself that I am entertained!!! If my mum’s home, I typically forget that I am home and work till it’s 2.30! Otherwise, it’s a race against the clock. I wait until it turns 12.45 to start cooking lunch. I prefer to make dishes that takes less time to cook and are not at all complicated, though I love eating everything else!!!

So I literally manage to cook up the lunch and then spend some more time working on the submissions which would forever take another 10 minutes to send! That’s what my husband sees. If he lets me spend those 10 minutes, I send one in 2 minutes and start with the next without wasting any time :-D. Finally, before 3 pm, I eat my lunch or else, my husband and/or my mum would come and switch off my system (literally, they may do it anytime soon!!!). Because I work from home, I eat my lunch in front of the TV and take another 10-minutes’ TV break and end up playing candy crush instead of watching the idiot box.

By now, my son would reach and I totally hate this question – “Mum, what’s to eat today?” I can manage any query and correction my clients ask for in a jiffy, but making something that my son loves which is not complicated beats me!!! Moreover, this is the peak time for my work and I will do anything to dodge this task. Again, my saviour mum steps in to scold me first and then save me. She will either make something he likes or diverts his attention to something else so that he agrees to my typical snack offers – cornflakes, oats, milkshake, bread or dosa!!!

I am saved one more day! I am back in front of my system tapping my keyboard incessantly. God knows when it will start striking or complaining about all the overload of work it takes – 18+ hours of beating every day! 😀 The next thing I know, it’s 6.15 when my son’s back from playing and demands his tea. My poor husband waits till then since he knows that I won’t budge unless he comes up!!!

My son would request, demand and threaten and that’s when I make tea! Poor thing, he knows I am busy so won’t make a big drama! I take a 20 minutes break to drink it and sit away from the system. Then again, I am either racing against time to submit the next article before time and to start with another one which might be pending for the next day! But I want it done ASAP.

The next time I recognise is 9.30 pm (if my mum’ s home). If she’s not there, my mind will be two-timing on the easiest dinner plan and my article completion from 7.30 onwards!!! Dinner gets over by 10 pm and then I spend 30 long minutes in front of the TV. By then, it would be 11 – 11.30 (there’s kitchen cleaning and clearing all the utensils to be done after dinner)! There I sit again, in front of my system to work on the most difficult articles. That’s the time I am able to concentrate more on my research and writings. I typically write till 1.30 – 2 pm or till my eyes stay open. The moment I feel too sleepy, I shut down and sleep off. It’s not worth staying up when I can’t concentrate.

Oh, I forgot to mention that I am an active member of a few Facebook groups and an admin of a dozen WhatsApp groups. 😀 That would make it clear that I am not a nerd! You will find me commenting on anything that interests me in these unless I have switched off my data on my mobile ;-). But I do that only when there’s some deadline that I am too scared to miss.

There are times when I have stayed awake the entire night, drinking coffee in between not to fall asleep. But then, that’s how things work with me. I work from home. I am on double duty all the time. Clients may think that I am merry-making at home, relaxing on my couch and watching TV, doing shopping etc. Many people think I do the same and work during my spare time. Did you find that – the Spare Time – in my routine?

For me, work is worship and I am totally committed to it. I prefer working from home as I want to be available for my son when he’s back home. Plus I feel that I would be wasting my time on travelling to and from office and the office hours would restrict my productivity. I am fine doing the double duty as long as it interests me and I am paid fairly. At home, I work anytime I am able to. I start early and sit late to meet the deadlines. In fact, I will claim that I am more productive than the regular office staff.