H ello and welcome back to The Mummy Juggle, a series designed with Mums in mind to share stories and inspiration about how to cope with the day-to-day struggle of juggling work and family life. A struggle I’ve affectionately named ‘The Mummy Juggle.’
The Mummy Juggle: ‘The non-stop juggling act of being a mother, holding down a job, running a home and generally being an all round superwoman!’
It’s been a couple of months since I last shared a post in this series as I took a little time out to concentrate on Ollie, however now its back I think you’ll agree I’ve found the perfect guest poster to kick the series off again.
This month we hear from Claire owner of Daily Deals UK who makes me dizzy with all that she has managed to achieve since becoming a mum for the first time at 14. Determined not to become a statistic, Claire has worked painstakingly hard to achieve her dreams and is now the proud owner of two successful businesses with five beautiful children to boot. Her determination to teach herself new skills in order to realise her dream of owning her own website is breathtaking and I’ve found this story so inspiring!!
Claire | Daily Deals UK
I had my first child at age 14 and dropped out of school and started working in a supermarket on a Saturday to make ends meet at the ripe old age of 15. There was no way I was going to ever become a statistic and went from job to job until I was in my 20s and got a work at home role as a customer services assistant.
It was then I knew I would always work from home! There was no more jugging the kids (2 by then) and it was great, I worked in the evenings and the money was fantastic.
I did that for 7 years and got bored of being shouted at by customers all day and started for another company checking out websites for Google, I also started self teaching myself web design. Fast forward 10 years and 1000000000000000s of hours of research I have my own web design and SEO company and another child to throw in to the mix.
It was only when my third child come along and I had my own company which meant working my a**e off for most of the day (and night) did I realise that working from home was certainly NOT the easy option. A bored 2 year old and working full time running a company is nothing short of a guilt ridden, stressful cycle of hell.
I struggled through though (as you do) and ended up putting her in private nursery for 2 days a week just to give us both a break (which she hated) and added further to my guilt/stress, but eventually the years went by and she was in school full time and I could get back on track.
Until…..
I decided to have one more child, which actually happened to be two more! Yep twins!!! Now I thought working from home with a baby was hard but I was about to be taught a lesson I’d never forget…
Working from home with twins is pure, unadulterated hell, at first it was the lack of sleep that was the killer and then when they hit two they finally started sleeping through the night but terrible twos x 2 hit and well, you can imagine!
When the twins were 8 weeks old for some crazy reason I decided l was going to follow my one dream I had always had and create myself a money saving blog which had deals, vouchers, tips, the works!
So after a year and a half of blood, sweat and tears (literally) and 100s more hours work, I self taught myself affiliate marketing, designed a neat blog website and become the proud owner of 5 kids and 2 businesses.
I barely have time to breathe at the moment but the six things that make my life bearable are 1) Cleaners 2) Private Nursery 3) Takeaways 4) Alcohol 5) Nanny Al & Nanny Mandy 6) 5pm when daddy comes home!!!
The school holidays have been particularly hard and I find that when you work from home, friends and family don’t really respect the fact. Friends continually turn up unannounced and family members assume I can just drop everything at their beckon call as I am “home” – Sometimes this is more stressful than the kids continually interrupting me every few minutes.
Sometimes I have days where I just wish I could go out to work like my hubby and not have to deal with absolutely everything that comes with working from home. In my experience as a WAH mum I am expected to deal with all the bills, paperwork, do the shopping, sort the kids, clean the house AND work whilst in essence running a creche.
The twins are now 2 years old and I pray to god I can look back on this one day and think it was ll worth it…..because quite frankly I am bored of hearing myself moan.
Thank-you Claire your story is so inspiring and your hard work and determination literally puts me to shame! I have no doubt that you will look back on your achievements in a couple of years time and think ‘bloody hell I’m marvellous!’
Daily Deals UK is a UK based Voucher Code and Deal finding website that is completely manual, meaning all deals are handpicked, checked and verified before being published. Claire works hard to secure the biggest and most exclusive offers with UK brands and if you’d like to find out more you can find her site here at Daily Deals UK. You can also find her on Twitter @dailydeals_blog and Facebook @dailydealsblog.
I set up the Mummy Juggle series as I was interested in hearing from other Mums on how they deal with the daily struggle of working life in the hope that it will provide a place for Mums to share tips on how to make life a little easier. If you enjoyed this post and have a story to tell that you would like to see featured, please drop me a line at emma@thehalcyonyears.com. It would be great to hear from you x
