Balancing Motherhood and Blogging

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This is a topic I’ve wanted to touch base on for a while, and I’m thankful this post gives me the opportunity to. People seem to view my being a stay at home mom and blogger one of two ways – (1) ‘What in the world do you do all day? You must be so bored!’ (2) ‘How do you have time to focus on Maddie Grace if you’re always blogging?’ The people in the first camp are way off. I actually have a to-do list miles long and usually feel overwhelmed and behind on everything. But sometimes the second group have a point – I do often feel like blogging takes away from the time and attention I give Maddie Grace. Because I love blogging and want to keep it up, but want my main role to be as a mom, I’ve had to find a way to manage both roles.

When I started blogging Maddie Grace was a newborn. I would write a few posts a week while she slept on top of me. It was perfect. Slowly but surely my blog and social media outlets grew, and eventually I began to monetize them. I learned that I could turn a hobby that I loved into a way to earn extra income for my family, which we really needed. I also started forming awesome relationships with other bloggers, and felt a sense of both community and purpose. Any stay at home mom knows the feeling of being ‘just a mom’ – and while I absolutely love being just a mom, blogging filled a void while also allowing me to be home with my daughter. I was there for all Maddie Grac’es first milestones, I get to take her on play dates and her different classes, and I get to snuggle with her when she starts getting sleepy around nap time every day – I wouldn’t trade these things for the entire world, and blogging gives me the opportunity to be there for all of those things!

But so much of my day is spent on my phone and computer: writing posts, editing pictures, going through emails, and lots of times I start to feel like I’m not giving Maddie Grace enough of me. I’m missing out on precious time with her because of the time I need to spend working on blogging, and that really pains me because she’s only going to be young once. But then I remember how lucky I am just to be home with her and have her be my primary focus even if I do have a side gig going on. That’s why I’ve looked for ways to balance the two better as she gets older and actually more demanding of me.

First, I take the majority of pictures on weekends when my husband is around. This is crucial for me, and if it rains over the weekend and makes picture taking hard I get thrown off for the whole week. I also try to get a lot of blog post writing done on the weekends and let Tom and Maddie Grace have some daddy-daughter time. In the same way I take advantage of her daily nap time and any time between her bedtime and mine throughout the week to really bust out some blog writing. I also have Maddie Grace going to mom’s morning out 2 mornings a week for 3 hours which is a really great time for me to get work done. I’ve also realized and acknowledged that I really struggle with overcommitting – I take on too many posts, and agree to do too many collaborations, when I just don’t have the time. This is something I’m really working on, even though I’m not sure I’m getting much better since looking at my calendar for the next month makes me cringe.

My biggest time consumer throughout the day by far is going through emails. Mostly going through junk email – I get so much of it every day! I didn’t even realize how many subscriptions I was on until I tried out Unroll.Me – those are a large part of what was cluttering up my inbox and making it hard for me to even weed out the important emails!

Look no joke – 437 subscriptions. So crazy! Unroll.me unsubscribes you easily from unwanted email subscriptions, helps you organize the ones you want to keep, and can even help you find new ones that you re actually interested in. All it takes is one click to unsubscribe. It took me less than 5 minutes to go through all 437 subscriptions and unsubscribe from the ones I didn’t want to be on anymore, which was most of them, and organize the ones I do want to stay on. There is also a new Unroll.Me app perfect for those of us constantly on the go!

So know what I’m doing with all this free time I have from not having to fish through unwanted subscriptions all day long? Yep – I’m putting it all into my Maddie Grace – because she’s growing up way too quickly and I don’t want to miss these special moments because of emails.

So make sure you check out Unroll.Me! What would you spend more time on if you had it? I’d love to hear your thoughts below!