It’s summer vacation, and the kids are home! And as excited as we are to create some happy barefooted memories with the wee ones, it’s also a little – well – terrifying! When the heck are you going to get any work done?

If you’re singing my same song, I thought you might just like some tips and tricks to help you get through the summertime craze! 

One of the reasons we absolutely love getting to do what we do is because we can be home with our kiddos, right? So don’t feel bad if you’re a little backed up with your inbox, you scale back the number of sessions a little or miss a couple blog posts!

Set up an Auto-Responder that says, “There may be slightly longer delays in my response time, as I’m currently making summer memories with my own babies!” Let your inbox, your blog and your Facebook page wait if they must… This will ensure that your kids know who’s most important to mommy. Remember, it’s our actions they hear – not our words!
 

Set up Activities and Play-Dates with friends and neighbors.  I’m planning a few really big activities that will be hosted at our house (an outdoor movie night, a backyard splash party, etc.) to help give the kids something to look forward to and to use as a motivator. (That’s right…  I’m not above bribery.)

Bring your Laptop Outside.  Heading to the park, the play cafe or the splash pad? Bring work with you.  Just make sure you keep a quick eye on your cuties.

Look into Summer Camps in your area. There are so many really cool week-long summer camps that are tailored to a variety of interests. Science, Legos, cooking, cheerleading… just to name a few.

Hire a Play-Sitter to come play with your kids! If you have young kids like me, you can’t exactly leave them to fend for themselves while you get a little work done, or you just might come back downstairs and find that they’ve been eating out of the brown sugar canister. I’m hiring a 12-year-old from church to come over to just play with the kids when I really need to get a couple hours of work done. I’m still home – just upstairs in my office. And while they play outside, I know they’re safe and out of mischief!

Create Summer Schedules that help everyone in the family know what they can expect! Make sure to leave room for plenty of summer adventures! 

Schedule Blog Posts so that you don’t have to worry about last-minute work. Have several blog posts written and saved as drafts, or scheduled and ready so that you can pop them in when you need them.  If you get a brilliant spark of inspiration that you want to immediately use, just reschedule the previously scheduled post, and you’re one more post ahead!

Preplan Social Media Posts so that you’re not wasting time and getting sucked in. I have a draft email where I save fun quotes and thoughts and such that I can grab and use when I want to post something but am running low on creative fuel.

And if you’re ready to really whip your business into shape and find out what it feels like to make more money than you’ve ever made before while having more time to spend with your family…. Check out The Thriving Photographer!