How to Work From Home With Kids — And Actually Get Things Done

Summer’s coming. The kids are almost out of school. And if you’re a work-from-home entrepreneur, you’re currently either deep in denial or frantically Googling how to work from home with kids without completely losing your mind.

Same, friend. Same.

We dedicated an entire episode of the Get Booked Podcast to this topic because it is real — and the strategies that work look completely different depending on how old your kids are. We’re breaking it all down below: babies and toddlers, elementary-aged kids, and teens. Plus the mindset piece that nobody talks about but everyone needs.

First, the Mindset Shift You Need Before Summer Starts

Before you even think about schedules and strategies, you need to answer one honest question: what is your actual goal this summer?

There are three camps here, and there is no wrong answer:

• Option 1: Full summer off. Out of office goes up. Work doesn’t exist. It’s you and the kids and zero guilt. If this is financially viable for you, it’s a completely valid choice.
• Option 2: Full work schedule. You’re the breadwinner, the income doesn’t stop, and the kids are going into summer programs or camp. Also completely valid. Normal nine-to-five workers don’t get summers off either — no shame in that.
• Option 3: The in-between. This is where most of us land. You have to work, but you don’t want to be locked to a desk while your kids stare at the back of your head all summer. So you restructure — shorter work weeks, longer weekends, earlier mornings, strategic camp days.

Pick your camp. Then plan for it. Because winging it is how you end up resentful, behind on client work, and yelling at someone for asking what’s for lunch.

Work Strategies That Actually Work (No Matter Which Option You Choose)

Before the kids are officially home for the summer, do these things:

• Communicate your hours changes to clients. Send an email, have your VA send it, whatever — but give people a heads up. Let pending orders, design work, or active projects know your timeline is shifting and invite them to wrap things up before your hours change. People are understanding when you communicate. They’re not understanding when you ghost them.
• Set up a fun autoresponder. If your response time is increasing, tell people in a way that matches your personality. Make it warm, make it human. They’ll wait if they know what’s going on.
• Consider hiring a VA for the summer. Even if it’s just to handle client-facing communication a few days a week. The overlap season — early summer — is the time to get systems in place so nothing falls through the cracks.

Split Your Work Into Two Buckets

This is the strategy that makes everything else work: divide your tasks into full-focus work and can-do-around-the-kids work.

Full-focus work includes things like writing blog posts, placing client orders, SEO, anything you can’t afford to mess up. This requires uninterrupted time.

Around-the-kids work includes social media scheduling, responding to DMs, culling photos, checking email. You can do this from a patio chair while your kid runs through a sprinkler.

Once you know what’s in each bucket, you can time-batch accordingly. Full-focus work goes in the early morning, nap time, or during camp hours. Everything else happens in the in-between.

And set a hard stop. As Tim Ferriss says in 4 Hour Work Week On Amazon, we expand or contract work to fill the time we’ve given it. If you have a movie date at 11am, you will get more done from 7–11 than you would with an open-ended “work morning.” Make plans. Use external accountability. Don’t rely on future-you to just figure it out.

How to Work From Home With a Baby

Let’s be real: working from home with a baby is less about strategy and more about survival.

The good news is that babies actually give you a built-in schedule: they sleep. A lot.

• Work around the nap schedule. Two naps a day in the early months means two work windows. As babies get older and drop to one nap, you have one solid afternoon block. Protect it like it’s your most important meeting — because it is.
• Pull the play mat into your office. Melissa talked about this on the episode — throw the toys down, put the baby on the mat, and work right there while they play. You’re supervising, not entertaining. That’s the goal.
• Consider a Mom’s Morning Out program. Even one day a week of structured care gives you a block of time you can count on and look forward to. Alison did this during her homeschool years — every Wednesday from 12 to 3, she had a sitter, and knowing that window was coming gave her peace even on the hard days.
• Accept imperfection. You’re not going to produce the same output as you did pre-kids. That’s not failure — that’s math. Adjust your expectations for this season, protect your best work windows for your most important tasks, and let the rest wait.

How to Work From Home With a Toddler

Toddlers are chaos in shoes. But they’re also surprisingly occupiable if you have the right tools ready.

• Save special toys exclusively for work time. The Play-Doh, the sticker books, the water table outside — whatever makes your specific toddler’s eyes light up. Keep those things out of the regular rotation so that when work time starts, the special toy coming out feels exciting and novel.
• Set up a play zone near your workspace. You want to be close enough to supervise and far enough to actually work. A blanket in your office, a gated area on the patio while you work at the table — nearby but not on top of each other.
• Use screen time strategically, not guiltily. This is not the time to have opinions about screen time. A targeted 45 minutes of a favorite show while you do a focused work sprint is a completely legitimate parenting and business strategy.
• Work early. Seriously — get up before they do. Even 45 minutes of uninterrupted morning time before a toddler wakes up is worth more than three broken-up hours later. The sun rises early in summer. Use it.
• Hire a teenager or get a sitter for a few hours a week. Especially once school’s out, neighborhood teenagers are looking for ways to earn money. A few hours a week of mother’s helper coverage — even while you’re home — gives you predictable focused time you can actually plan around.

How to Work From Home With Elementary-Age Kids

Elementary kids (roughly K–5th grade) are in the sweet spot: old enough to entertain themselves, young enough that they still need some structure to do it well.

• Create a “list of occupations.” This is Alison’s secret weapon from her homeschool days. Before they get to ask you what to do, they have a list: read for 20 minutes, go outside for an hour, practice something, complete assigned chores. Screen time is earned after the list is done — not before.
• Teach them to make their own lunch. Melissa’s first grader can make a sandwich and heat up chicken nuggets. Yours can too. Yes, it takes a few weeks to train. Yes, it’s annoying at first. But teach them once and they’ve got it for the whole summer. Stop fishing for them.
• Implement “room time.” After lunch, everyone goes to their own space for quiet time. It’s good for them, it’s good for you, and it resets the whole afternoon. Give them a list of what they can do in their room — read, draw, build with Legos — so “I’m bored” never has to leave their mouth.
• Keep special activities novel. Craft kits, science kits, slip-n-slides, water balloons — these are work-time activities only. Not everyday toys. When it’s time to work, the special thing comes out, and suddenly everyone’s busy.
• Chores are not optional. Kids this age can sweep, dust, wipe windows, tidy bathrooms, and fold laundry. Melissa’s rule: if a kid is sitting on the couch while she’s carrying a laundry basket, folding laundry becomes the “tax” for watching TV. No explanation needed. The house is going to get messy — put them to work.
• Look into summer chore packs on Etsy. Browse Etsy summer checklists — there are really good ones for a few dollars that have non-negotiables, boredom busters, and screen-time earning systems already built in. Print it, put it on the fridge, and let the laminated card do the talking for you.

How to Work From Home With Teens

Teenagers are in a completely different category — and if you’re not using these years to your advantage, you’re leaving something on the table.

• They can get a job. Alison’s 16-year-old just got hired at Papa John’s and bikes there himself. Problem solved, character built, and your house is quieter. Sports camps, athletic programs, and community activities eat up significant chunks of summer for this age group too.
• They can work in your business. This one’s big. Melissa talked about having her older kids handle tasks like uploading content to YouTube, scheduling social posts, and video-related projects. Alison is eyeing slideshow creation for her photography business using Pic-Time. These are real VA tasks — and you can pay your kids for business work and potentially deduct it. Read up on hiring your kids here and then talk to your CPA.
• Full complex chores. Teens can cook whole meals, do their own laundry, manage a zone of the house, and prep their own food for the week. Alison’s 14 and 16-year-olds meal prep their own lunches five at a time. If they can do that, they can also make sure the kitchen is clean.
• The Zone + Week System. Alison breaks the house into four zones (living room, hallway/foyer, kitchen floor, bathrooms) and each kid owns a zone for a full week. There’s a 3×5 index card in each zone listing what “done” looks like. You don’t have to remind them — the card does. By end of day, each zone is reset.

One More Thing

We dove deep on all of this in Episode 98 of the Get Booked Podcast — how to work from home with kids is one of those topics that sounds simple but requires actual strategy when you’re running a real business.

And if you’re also homeschooling on top of all of this — first of all, respect — Episode 87 is exactly what you need.

If you haven’t subscribed yet — do it. New episodes drop every Monday. Over the summer, we air replays of our best episodes while we practice what we preach (a.k.a. we’re hanging out with our own kids). Subscribe so you don’t miss a thing.

You’ve Got This — Even When It’s Messy

Working from home with kids is not about achieving some perfect, Instagram-worthy productivity routine. It’s about figuring out what you need, communicating it clearly, setting up systems that run without you having to manage every moment, and being okay with “good enough” on the hard days.

Pick your buckets. Plan your nap windows. Set your hard stop. Put the Play-Doh out. And remind yourself that this too shall pass — usually right about the time they go back to school in August.

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Alison Bell is a Hawaii-based photographer and entrepreneur mentor at alisonbell.co. She co-hosts the Get Booked Podcast with SEO expert Melissa Arlena. She has four boys, has relocated seven times, and has opinions about chore charts.

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