Making strides

I'm not the most organized person in the world. I actually cropped the photo of my to-do list above so the disaster that is my desk wouldn't be made public. I will say, however, that as disorganized as I am, I can usually find things with little-to-no problem. That's because I have disorganized piles... that's the key. Piles.

With this new business venture (which you can find here - nisseworks Etsy store), I've been trying to get some kind of structure into my life, which isn't exactly the easiest thing with a 14-month old. For the most part, this is a very fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants operation... at this point. There's the ongoing search for spreadsheets that I can use to keep track of profits, inventory and costs vs. pricing. I have some experience using spreadsheets, but most of that was when I was in high school, 17 years ago, so there's a slight learning curve to that particular aspect of running a business.

I have some inventory - completed product - that I haven't listed yet, but I plan on having at least one product listed a week. If not more, depending on how sales go... I don't want to put 100 things the store and sell nothing because it's so saturated; I'd rather put 30-40 pieces in the store and hopefully hit the right markets with good quality work.

Having a 14-month old and being a work-from-home mom is infinitely harder than I would have ever expected. My iPod Touch - which may end up being the best Mother's Day gift EVER - lets me do a lot of the things I used to do when Maddy was down for her nap. And yes, I will take a few minutes, usually once an hour, to do a quick tour through my email, Facebook, Twitter and Etsy... and then I get back to spending time with Maddy, which lately usually involves getting her off the sidetable and away from the shoes.

Finding time to do anything that involves a stretch of time longer than an hour is really hard. I'm lucky that Keith is willing to watch Maddy on his days off and has no problem taking her out for the afternoon if I need some peace and quiet (with our house, my office is in the corner of the living room, right where Maddy plays, so it's rarely calm). I'm trying to set up some kind of schedule for nisse.works-work that still lets me do all the mom and household stuff that I've been doing for the last year or more.

What do I hope to get out of all of this? Happiness, for one. I'm tired of being inexplicably angry at my job, which ends up seeping into the rest of my life. I honestly think that working for myself, even if it doesn't bring in as much money as my last few jobs have, is going to be one of the best things I can do. There's also the whole working from home/raising my daughter thing, too... childcare was just not an option (without having to work 2 jobs, anyway) for us, so this was the only choice we could make.

I'm hoping to plow through quite a few of those points on that to-do list before it gets much bigger. Keith has already agreed to take on a few things for me (research, picking up loan/grant apps), which I appreciate so very much, and we're working on shifting some of the household chores so there aren't any more laundry-dishes-supper-making days that fall into one person's lap.