My Work At Home Jobs (Part 1 of 2)

The next two posts in the Work At Home Series, I’ll share with you the various jobs I’ve held from home.  Maybe they wil spark some ideas within you, and maybe they’ll bring light to some of the not-s0-good aspects of certain jobs.  I’d love to hear your Work At Home experience, have you tried any of the following ideas?  Feel free to ask more detailed questions about the jobs I’ve listed as well.

If you’ve missed the first 2 parts of the series, you can find them here:

Part 1 – Working from home, do you have to?

Part 2 – A friend’s heartfelt response to my question “Do you HAVE to work at all?”

1. Housecleaning

My friend and I started a grass-roots housecleaning business early on in both of our marriages, with only the experience we thought we had of being “Cinderella” at home for our parents.  We told everyone we knew what we were doing, we posted ads and responded to want ads on Craigslist.  Housecleaning worked for a period of time but it wasn’t all that it was cracked up to be.

I had a baby – she was around 6 months old, she was a crier, and she was still nursing.  My daughter came with us, played in a porta-crib, swang in a swing, or she was strapped to me with our Ergo.  Cleaning with her in tow was NOT an easy task, nor was it fair to my friend who continued to clean while I sat and nursed the baby – I felt guilty, resentful, and overall grumpy.  Not to mention that my home was not being kept up, long days made for a very tired new mom.

Then there were the very strange homes we found ourselves is too, one complete with an urn and shrine for the long lost family pet.

2.  Avon

So from there I somehow got suckered into selling Avon, I have a horrible memory but I vaguely remember going to another mom’s house who was selling – I signed up and sold nothing.  Unless of course you count what I BOUGHT, and didn’t need.  The profit margin was very slim and I didn’t have a large base of  “clients” to pool from.  I’ve also never been into makeup, beauty tools, frangrances, etc.  I’m a fairly simple person – so selling that stuff wasn’t easy for me.

Avon DOES work for some, it’s not the business in and of itself that didn’t work for me.  What didn’t work was the fact that I didn’t love the product, I wasn’t invested in it.  That makes it a very tough sell.

3.  Nannying

This time I had my daughter who was 18 monhts old AND I was pregnant.  I nannied for a very sweet family with a 3 and 5 year old, only I wasn’t ready for the job.  It’s like I was thrust into my own life fast-forward 3 years when I had my own newborn, 18 month old, 3 year old, and 5 year old.  I kept up with the job for quite some time as the pay was good and it was full time.  For some this may be the perfect job, your kids are with you but for me personally it was probably the toughest job – especially because I was pregnant.  None of the kids got the best of me, my own included.

4.  Ebay

Now this was a very time consuming yet fairly lucrative business.  I bought and sold used baby/children’s clothing, equipment such as Bjorns, Bumbo Seats, etc.  Anything that was high in value and I could find used at a thrift store or garage sale at a good price.  I almost always made a profit because I knew about what I was selling and what it would sell for.  I made sure to buy low and sell high.  The only downside was the time it took to hunt for these items (although fun at times!) and the time it took to package and ship them out.  The upside was my kids always had very nice clothes, strollers, carseats and so on because I would buy them used, use them, and then sell them while sill making a profit!  The key to this is knowing, at an expert level, about the product you’re selling.

To be continued…