Recently I was talking with two newly married women about work and life. Although they didn’t come out and say it, they’re attitude was that they didn’t want to be stay at home moms. One made a comment about how she’d have to do something. I tried not to take offense at the idea that stay-at-home moms have all sorts of leisure time. And let me clarify that I don’t think they should (or shouldn’t) stay home. I think it’s a personal decision. But moms know, there is no down time, you’re never wondering what to do.

While I didn’t want to dash their idealism, I did mention that working and being a mom was about all a woman had time to do. Many moms don’t have hobbies, personal time and many lose their sense of self.  I’m not one of those moms because I’ve been very pro-active in what I do in my life.  Here are tips you can use to best manage your work and family life, as well as maintain your sense of self.

1. Define what you want your life to be like. If you want to work and have a family, what does that look like? What kind of work do you do? What is your work schedule. How does the time with kids fit in that? When will you have time for personal pursuits and what will they be?
2. Use your “ideal” life guide decisions you make about work and life. If its important that you’re home when the kids get home from school, you’ll need to find work that allows for that.  If you want to be a full-time mom but can’t afford it, what work-at-home options will provide you with the income you need while still raising your children?
3. Be willing to fight for what you want. Women, and mother’s in particular tend to put their needs and wants behind others. They want to take a bath and read, but  dad needs to do something in the garage or the kids want to play a game. While compromise is a part of being in a family, you want to make sure you’re not always the one who’s giving in. Compromise is a two way street, so make sure you’re getting what you need as well.
4. Take control. One way that life becomes unmanageable is by taking on too much. Doing an extra project at work, signing the kids up for multiple activities, volunteering, and the inability to say “no” to friends and family means there isn’t enough time to do everything you want to do. So guard your calendar and your time like its money; don’t let anyone steal it from you. Its fine to want to do a lot of things, but you may not be able to do everything at once. Kids don’t need to be in multiple activities (in fact some experts feel that kids these days are over-scheduled).

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As you know, I’m a productivity nut because I’m organizationally challenged. I’m always look for great resources to keep all my tasks, notes and other materials accessible. SpringPadIt.com is a new web-based notebook site that offers all this and more. Much like Google Notes or OneNote, you can create a variety of notes to organize tasks and projects. It offers a variety of premade templates such as budget tracker and fitness tracker. A clipping feature lets you clip notes or recipes to save in your note book.  Springpadit also lets you flag (for priority), tag (for easy search), and write note on your notes. It offers drag and drop functionality to move your notes and items around for easy access. A big plus for me is that you can see all your tasks in one place across a variety of notes.

Because its a web-based program, you can also access other web-based resources such as restaurants, contacts, and maps. You can share your notes with others (with other users or through Facebook, Twitter and email) and have reminders emailed or texted (sms) to you or one of your contacts.

My only beef with the program is that I haven’t found a gadget to add it to iGoogle, and it doesn’t look like I can text notes into the program from my phone. But for a free service its very robust and easy to use.

Check out SpringPadIt to learn more.

It is possible to much of your grocery shopping online. But if you don’t live in a delivery area for one of the grocery stores that deliver, you still need to go to the market to get fresh items.

I hate grocery shopping. The very worst part is the unloading and putting the items away. But I also don’t like the actual shopping. I can’t find thing I need and almost always forget something.

Dave Cheong had a similar problem and he found a way to fix it. He created at the grocery shopping helper which is an online program that can help you organize your shopping trip by providing you with a list of all the items you buy sorted by the isles they are found in. No more back tracking or hunting. Simply take the list, mark the items you want to buy, and head straight to the store and isle.

You do need to do a little leg work before using the program by creating the list of items and visiting the store to find out what isle they are in. But once done, it could save you loads of time in the grocery store.

Check out the Grocery Shopping Helper here.