Episode 157 – Juggling Motherhood and Working from Home with Jessa Raye

Full Episode Transcription:

Arianna Vernier (00:01):
Hey, hey y’all. Welcome back to the Ditch the Classroom Podcast. On today’s episode, I have a really exciting interview for y’all. I had the pleasure of chatting with Jessa Ray. She is a life coach for busy work at home moms. And in today’s episode, we’re chatting about how to balance working from home with your family and juggling all the home tasks and everything in between. Super excited for you guys to listen. Before we jump in, I do wanna remind you that this is the month that my book launches so, so, so excited for the Teacher Turned … book to release at the end of this month. If you wanna learn more about everything that’s gonna be in the book and get it pre-ordered, you can go check it out at teacherturnedfreelancer.com/book and that link will be there in the show notes for you as well. All right y’all, let’s jump into today’s convo with Jessa.

Arianna Vernier (00:58):
Hey Jessa, thank you so much for coming on the show.

Jessa Raye (02:06):
Yeah, thank you for having me. I’m so excited to be here.

Arianna Vernier (02:09):
Yeah, so let’s just kinda start out this episode with having you tell us a little bit about you and then we’ll jump into our topic for today.

Jessa Raye (02:17):
That sounds great. So I, like I said, my name is Jessa and I started working from home when I had my first son and I actually worked in corporate America in human resources for a big company and at the time, you know, it was great. And then I had my son and he had some health issues in that first year and it was really hard going back to work and leaving him day after day. And I decided that it was time to do my own thing and I found virtual assistant work and then I grew that into an OBM job and now I’m doing coaching and I’m helping mamas just like me who were completely overwhelmed with trying to balance working and being home with their kids. It can be be so hard to do both. And I feel like it’s such a nice thing to have the opportunity to work from home and be with your kids and make your own schedule that sometimes we take on too much. And I was definitely that mama trying to do all the things by myself and I learned so much in those first couple of years on how to balance working from home and being the mom that I wanted to be, the mom that I want to be currently. And currently I have two little boys and a little girl who is probably gonna be about a month old at the time that you get to hear this. So it’s super exciting and a whole new chapter for me and my family as we grow.

Arianna Vernier (03:59):
That’s amazing. I see a lot of parallels in my story and your story. I started my business when my daughter was born and I think all of my listeners will see the parallels as well and that balance can be so challenging of trying to juggle work and our family life and taking care of the home and all of that. So I’m really, really excited to kind of pick your brain today.

Jessa Raye (04:28):
Yeah, I feel that a lot of mamas are that way. It’s that new life beginning that you decide that you wanna make this big change and I hope that it’s always the better, right? That that changes for the good

Arianna Vernier (04:41): Yeah, definitely. So we all know that we’re overwhelmed with all that’s going on in our business, in our home and our babies and all of that. So how would our listeners overcome or stop that overwhelm?

Jessa Raye (04:56):
So there’s a couple different things that we can do as mamas to prevent the overwhelm and whether or not you have littles at home with you or they’re in school or you’re doing this before babies, whatever it might look like for you. The biggest thing that I have found to help with the overwhelm is giving yourself grace in giving yourself the freedom to change your schedule. Now I know a lot of us we follow like this rigorous schedule and say at nine o’clock I’m doing X, Y, Z, and at 10 o’clock we’re doing this and 11 o’clock I’m doing that. And that can get overwhelming fast, especially if you do have kids at home because they don’t always wanna follow your schedule.

Arianna Vernier (05:39):
Nope.

Jessa Raye (05:40):
Right. They’re gonna follow their own schedule. And I always tell my mommies that they have to be willing to give themselves grace and freedom to have fluidity in their schedule. That they have this freedom to take things off the list, to change their schedule and just really mix it up a bit to help prevent that overwhelm. I’m always talking about having a to-do list or having three things that you wanna accomplish for the day that is not necessarily a meeting or time sensitive. By having this list of three things you can get what you need done in the day, but there’s no timestamp for it. You know, you wanna work on your business today and you wanna, let’s say work on the social media parts of it or maybe you wanna update your website, work on a project for your client, you can do that, but maybe you’re not doing it from nine to ten, maybe you’re able to do it from nine to nine-thirty and then again from one to one-thirty. And it’s giving yourself the ability to do it throughout the day versus doing it in those time block sections. I just find that it gives us a little bit more freedom and you can just relax a little bit more in your day knowing that you can get it done without feeling that overwhelmed that you didn’t get to do your schedule, how you planned it out. So I feel like that’s one of the big ways that I talk a lot about preventing and stopping the overwhelm from ruining and running your day as a mom at home.

Arianna Vernier (07:21):
Yeah, a hundred percent. And I think too, one thing that I’ve tried to do more is plug in intentional white space in every day. That way if something does go awry, you have room to rearrange you. You don’t wanna jam pack your day and your kids don’t wanna be jam packed with activities all day long either. They want some freedom and wiggle room. And so building that in will help you get the that stuff done too so you’re not feeling overwhelmed there. So I love that. That’s a great tip.

Jessa Raye (07:54):
Yeah, I love that term white space that you use. That’s great.

Arianna Vernier (07:57):
Yeah. So, so she’s got her list of three things she’s gonna get done for the day. Do you have any other tips for how she can get everything she wants to do get done on that list?

Jessa Raye (08:13):
Yeah, so to really think about that, to-do list in your schedule for the day, I always tell my mamas to pick two things that are related to your business and one thing that’s related to your home because I have at least found that the balance between home and working can really tip one way or the other depending on your day. And when you’re having a heavy workday, you’re picking two things for your business and one thing for your home. And when it’s a heavy family day, you’re gonna flip it. You’re gonna do two things for your family. It may be one thing for your business by having this room to change things up because you’re working from home. Like you get to make your schedule take advantage, try new things, try that new schedule, try a new system and figure out what’s going to work for you and your family. One of the things I like to tell people, especially if you have littles, if they’re in school or they’re napping, that’s your power time. And I always say like that’s when you’re gonna get the most work done. So ignore the beeping, the laundry can wait, the dishwasher can wait and take that hour, that two hours and really work on those pieces that you maybe can’t do when your kids are present. You know, maybe you can’t record a podcast episode unless they’re napping. Do that during that time period. Or maybe you’re working on a client project or you’re on a zoom meeting, you need to take that time when it’s given to you to be the most productive and know that the laundry, the dishes, the vacuum, it can wait. And allow yourself permission to ignore it even if it’s just for an hour or two. Because your kids can play by themselves for a little bit. You don’t need to entertain them the whole time. You can flip the wash. one of my, I was three-year-old, one of his favorite things to do is help me with the laundry and he likes to be able to help me take it from the washer to the dryer. It may take me twice as long to do it, but it’s an interaction that we both enjoy and he gets to help out and I know what he is doing and where he is at. You know, cuz my laundry’s in the basement, I have one of those basement houses so we have to go downstairs and he’s gotta help me with it and he’s not, you know, in another room doing who knows what because he is of that age reason he gonna get into some sort of mischief. Right?

Jessa Raye (10:45):
So it’s figuring out those things that you can do when the kids are around so that’s productive and what you can do when they’re not around. And then you always need to take some time for yourself and you wanna make sure that you are scheduling in that self-care time and I always tell people to try to do one thing for yourself every day. Even if it’s something as simple as stopping to get that fancy coffee after school drop off or taking an extra 10 minutes in the shower just to be by yourself. Just those little things, whatever it is that makes you happy. Going and grocery shopping by yourself, there’s no judgment. Whatever makes you happy to do those things and find ways to really value yourself and value your time by putting yourself at the top of the list too.

Arianna Vernier (11:39):
Yeah, definitely. I 100% agree and I think when you have that time where your kiddos napping or at school or whatever and you sit down to work, you have to have that game plan, you have to have that to-do list of this is yes, these are the the tasks I’m gonna complete. Because if you’re just like, oh I have two hours to work, but you’re not running off of any sort of to-do list of what you plan to get done, you’re gonna be jumping here and there and here and there and by the end of that two hours you might feel like you’ve got nothing done. Whereas if you have, like you said those three things or two things in your business that you plan to get done, bust those out and then you feel amazing if you’re able to get anything else done

Jessa Raye (12:17):
Right. Because everything else you had done that day is just bonus and you feel accomplished. Cause otherwise, like you said, you’re running around, you feel like you got nothing done. At the end of the day, that’s how you’re gonna talk to yourself. You’re gonna act as if I got nothing done today because you spent five minutes on 10 tasks versus an hour on one.

Arianna Vernier (12:36):
Yep. Yeah, I definitely agree. So we’ve got our business tasks kind of managed, but with all that’s going on all the time that we’re just like constantly pulled in 10 different directions, how do we prevent the burnout feeling of just, I have no desire to do anything anymore because I’m just done. How do we prevent that?

Jessa Raye (13:01):
Burnout is something that I find can take some of us by surprise, like we’re just going, going, going and then all of a sudden it hits like lightning and you’re done. Like you’re just down for the count for however long because you just pushed way too much. One of the things that we can do to prevent that burnout is taking that self-care time and taking it a step further and really showing ourself self-worth. Now self-care is a big thing that we all talk about and we all know so much about it and I’m sure everyone’s doing something for self-care, right? They’re drinking their tea, they’re taking their showers, they’re going for their walks by themselves. It’s a big piece of being a mom right now is your self-care. But you need to take it a step further and you need to give yourself self worth by valuing what you’re doing. You’re not just going through the motions of drinking the tea after the kids go to bed or taking the extra long shower. You’re giving yourself and feeling in the moment the ability to relax and you’re believing it and you’re telling yourself that you deserve it. Because so much of this self-care is great, but it’s physical. We need to worry about the mental side of it too. If you’re taking a bubble bath or taking that long shower but your head is negative and you’re telling yourself I should be doing the dishes right now. You can’t enjoy that self-care time because you’re constantly at yourself with it, with the negative thoughts. So one of the things that you can do to prevent burnout is to really re-center how you talk to yourself. One of the things that I coach you about is if you wouldn’t say it to your kid or to your best friend or to your spouse, why are you saying it to yourself?

Jessa Raye (15:00):
We need to stop bullying ourselves internally and mentally and really support ourselves and say, I deserve this. I deserve to take a break and I got my three things done for the day. If you need to validate it, I got my stuff done, I can take my hour and I can do this tonight. It’s not a negative thing. And by changing our mindset around how we talk to ourselves, we can really change how we respond to events that happen and help prevent a lot of the burnout. Now that’s more that mental side of it, but when you’re talking about you know, your self care, there’s a lot of things that you can go through and that you can do. And that’s all gonna depend on you as a person for what you want to do and how you wanna do it. So I’m not gonna really go into a bunch of examples of that cuz we can all go on Pinterest and find 20 million things that we can do for our self-care. But that self-worth and that self-talk is a really good way to kind of start and build that self-care routine from the ground up. It gives you that foundation and helps validate those experiences for you a little bit more so that you can prevent these feelings of burnout. And another big piece with burnout that I’ll talk on really quick is time management and giving yourself that schedule. You can’t work every time the kids are asleep. I did that my first year. You napped, I worked, you slept at night, I worked. And really quickly you get burned out because you’re not doing anything else in that free time. You don’t have the kids necessarily around you but working. So you need to find that balance and you can’t work at every sleep time. And that was me. Like I said, that first year you’d go to bed at seven and I’d work until 10 and you can’t do that seven days a week. No. You need to take a couple days off to give yourself that time. So I think just remembering that as well is a big piece that you don’t need to and you can’t work 24/7 or you can’t work every time the kid’s asleep. You need to take time for yourself too.

Arianna Vernier (17:27):
Yeah, I totally agree. And I think one thing that’s worked really well for me and my husband, we try to give each other one day a week where it’s like it’s mommy night so he’s in charge of the kids and I get to go do whatever the heck I want. So I’ll go to the gym and just like sit in the hot tub, I’ll read a book, I’ll lay in bed and watch, watch my crappy TV shows, whatever I wanna do. And then he gets his night where he gets to do the same thing. So that’s worked really well too and like having that time for the self-care. But I love how you took that a step further too. Like you have to be present when you’re doing those things and understand that you deserve to take a pause and take a rest and pour back into yourself. Because if your cup is not full, you can’t pour into others and you can’t pour into your business. So yeah, definitely, definitely agree with you.

Jessa Raye (18:23):
Yeah, that’s great that you guys take those nights off like that. I love that.

Arianna Vernier (18:27):
Yeah. It has been like a game changer since we started doing

Jessa Raye (18:31):
Oh I bet.

Arianna Vernier (18:33):
So can you share with my listeners one of your favorite home management tips that will help them kind of get a little bit more time back for their business and or their family?

Jessa Raye (18:46):
Yeah, so things that you can do to create more time in your day is a little bit that we’ve talked about already with giving yourself freedom in your schedule. And then having that to-do list so you always feel accomplished, right? Those are some, some of those bigger pieces, but there are gonna be those days and those things that you have to schedule out like a client call, you have to have that scheduled out to know when it is. You need to find that balance between what’s scheduled and what isn’t. And then with that, with those pieces that are not scheduled, you need to be able to prioritize your time and ignore all the distractions. And what I have found is having those repetitive tasks that you need to do, kind of organize a little bit more in batching and we talk a lot about batching on the business side, but we don’t talk a lot about batching on the home side. And that’s something that I’ve started implementing myself and with my coaching clients is batching in the home front. So for example, right now, as we speak, I am doing like five loads of laundry today and that’s just what I decided to do. I did not do any laundry over the weekend and I’m doing all of this laundry right now. I’m not folding it. I’m literally washing five loads of laundry and making myself this huge mountain. And what’s gonna happen is when my husband comes home tonight and the kids are in bed, we are going to have like that couple time, we’re gonna watch whatever TV show that we both like right now and we’re gonna sit down, maybe we’re gonna talk, kind of connect a little bit and we’re gonna fold the laundry together. What that allows is so much I’m able to feel like I’m getting the laundry done throughout the day without it actually interfering with my time to work.

Jessa Raye (20:38):
And then it’s also forcing in some ways my husband and I to have that connection cuz sometimes we just get lost and we don’t connect with our spouse as much or we’re not talking on a deeper level. It’s who took care of the kids today? Is it your turn to do baths? Are you making dinner? What about the the dishes? So it gives us that opportunity to slow down and connect again a little bit more. And then we’re also getting a task done. And that to me is a huge piece. So thinking about ways that you can batch in your home and still make it something that’s maybe a social event or something a little bit more fun. The other things that you can do for a little bit of home management is getting your kids involved. What can they do to help out, explain to them what you’re doing and have them participate. I have younger kids. I have a three-year-old and a one year old and a a newborn. So things are a little bit different where my three-year-old’s learning how to communicate and he’s learning how to participate but he wants to and he wants to help. That’s his big thing. I help, I help. So trying to find things that he can do that are helpful for me and also for him. So going through the toys and cleaning up at the end of the night, turn it into a game and we will, I will pull up my phone and we will do a stopwatch and we’ll see who can pick up all the Hot Wheel cars the fastest and we turn it into games. So it’s just taking those different tasks that you have to do around the house and turning them around and thinking about different ways to do them and making them easier to do for you. And then setting up your day according, like I said, with the laundry, you can do the same thing with the dishes. Run the dishwasher when you go to bed at night, unload it in the morning when you first get up and you’re making breakfast. Figure out that schedule for what works for you. Maybe it’s running it in the morning and changing it at lunchtime. It’s figuring out your day and how you can take these home tasks that you have to do every day, every couple days. And turn them around into these batched projects to make it easier for you to manage.

Jessa Raye (22:54):
Now my last one that I always like to tell people about is meal prepping. I love meal prepping so much. I really got into it with my first pregnancy because I wanted meals prepped for those first couple of months and I just became obsessed with it. So especially for winter, I like to prep as many meals as I can because there’s so much going on that we’re doing or it’s cold and it gets dark so fast that the energy isn’t there always to cook. So I’m always telling people if you can meal prep, meal prep, you’re making dinner tonight, you have the extra ingredients, double the recipe, make the extra chicken, throw in the extra bit of meatballs, whatever it is that you’re doing, just make a little bit more and freeze it or have it again later that week. One of my favorite things to do is make a couple pounds of chicken in the slow cooker and then I can use that chicken for like 20 different recipes, which is huge. So meal prepping is a game changer as well. So you can always find a lot of really great recipes and things online. Otherwise I always have some great tips for different meal prep that people can do at home as well. And it’s just a huge, huge time saver.

Arianna Vernier (24:10):
Yeah, definitely. I wanna point out what you said about like having your kids help you with the home tasks. I think a lot of times we think as moms like we have to do it all of on our own and then we get frustrated that nobody’s helping us but we don’t even ask them to help us. And getting your kids involved, like you said, they wanna help. I have a three-year-old too, she loves helping me with the laundry. She’s getting more interested in cooking and yes, it takes longer, but you’re, you’re pouring into your kiddos with the goal of one, spending time with them. But two, you’re training them to learn that task so maybe in the future you can hand it off completely to them and then you’re saving time there as well. So not only are you getting to connect more with your kids, you’re saving yourself time in the long run. So yeah. I love that.

Jessa Raye (25:01):
Yeah. No that’s great. I like that she likes to cook. My three-year-old likes to cook as well and we’re learning how to listen when it comes to the stove. It’s a little scary for me at times, but he’s trying so hard. Yeah we’re learning how to make pancakes right now, so it’s great.

Arianna Vernier (25:18):
Aw. Yeah. Mine, I haven’t tried the stove with her yet, but she likes to help me bake a lot so she’ll help me mix the ingredients and everything. And I just got her this really cute, like kid friendly it’s wood knife thing that she can use and she likes to use that. Okay. And help me cut like produce and whatever.

Jessa Raye (25:35):
Oh, I’ll have to look that up. Yeah, that would be great. Cause that’s definitely a scary part. I don’t let him use the knifes yet. But I’ll let ’em stand like at the griddle and help me flip the pancakes, which she’s learning.

Arianna Vernier (25:48):
So I wanna ask you a question that I ask every guest that comes on this podcast and it’s, if someone wanted to start their Ditch the Classroom journey, but they just felt too overwhelmed, what would you tell them?

Jessa Raye (26:00):
Baby steps, take it slow if you’re overwhelmed by it, make that to-do list with it. Turn it into manageable steps on a piece of paper that you can see and then check off those little pieces, those bite size pieces that you need to do so you can feel accomplished. So step one, you’re gonna listen to the podcast and you’re gonna learn everything that you need to learn. Step two, you’re gonna do the workshop and then you’re gonna implement whatever it is that you’re learning, taking it in baby steps so that you feel like you’re getting something done. And then eventually you’re gonna have this huge business and you’re gonna be so glad that you at least started when you did.

Arianna Vernier (26:46):
Yeah, amen to that. I think, I talk about this a lot in my book that’s coming out this month called Teacher Turned… There’s that quote where you can’t eat a whole elephant in one bite, you have to eat it in in baby steps, baby bites. And that’s how we have to approach like a big goal. You have to break it down into those manageable, smaller tasks and then take a moment to celebrate when you get those little tasks done. Not just the big thing too.

Jessa Raye (27:17):
Yes, absolutely. I love that. That’s a good analogy with the elephant.

Arianna Vernier (27:22):
Yeah. Awesome. Well this has been such a great conversation, Jessa. It’s been a blessing to have you on the show. Where can my listeners come and connect with you, learn more from you and all things?

Jessa Raye (27:35):
You can connect with me on Instagram @ _jessaray. There’s also my podcast which is Caught up in Motherhood and I’m also on Facebook, so all the social platforms. But otherwise Instagram and the podcast are probably the best places to find me and to connect.

Arianna Vernier (27:55):
Awesome. Awesome. And for those of you listening, I will have all those resources linked for you in the show notes so you can get connected with Jessa. All right, y’all, thank you so much for joining us today and just learning from Jessa. Like I said, it’s been so great having you here and we will see you next time.