Home life

Being a parent working away from your family is really tough but you can get through it. This mumslist is brought from Sunningdale Park where I spent three days with work this week.

Sunningdale Park is an ex-civil service college, it’s stunning, has really well established trees, bunnies on the lawn, a gorgeous lake, but it’s missing something; my family!

Here’s my five tips for working away from your family:

1) Take them with you!

Consider whether you could take your family with you/have them visit – Hannah from Mumsdays travelled to Brighton with her husband and son recently so they could spend their free time outside of work together, this is a great idea if it can work practically for you

2) Quality time

If you have to leave them behind give yourself some quality family time before you go, Joss and I took a trip to our favourite museum and shared some really special reading and cuddle time before I went, and Daddy and I took some time to have a date night too, it meant I felt ready to go

3) Dump the guilt

I had to go on this trip, it was a big annual awayday and all staff have to attend, feeling guilty about going doesn’t help anyone and doesn’t make leaving easier, remember you’re paid to do it and plan in more of that quality family time for your return

4) Think team

Try to make life easier for those who are at home, they’ll thank you for it! I try to get ahead of the washing and get a decent shop in so that it makes life easier for my woring husband, he could have done this himself, sure, but we work better as a partnership and I wanted to leave him a step ahead so they could enjoy their quality time together on evenings after work, and so he could rest up a bit more when bedtimes arrived

5) Try to enjoy it and share your experiences

I don’t want to be the parent who brings something back from trips to make up for being away, instead I want to share my experiences with them and so I do try to enjoy a bit of downtime when I’m away, it’s something I do maybe three times a year but that still feels like a lot when you have a toddler at home that you really miss. Last time I travelled to London I took Joss’ favourite (OK not favourite, that would be silly!) toy with me and photographed him in and around the Big Smoke!

I can’t say it gets any easier to say goodbye but the return I got last night was so warm and welcoming that I appreciated my little family all the more!

What about you – Do you work away? Does your partner? How do you get by?

Blog life and Inspiration

Quiet times as work busied up this week, but I’m getting back on it with a great post about my trip to Liberty of London, fabric love coming up soon! Here’s some inspiration in the meantime!

(Source: Liberty London’s Facebook page)

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