Twin Parents Working from Home: 8 Stress-Free Productivity Tips

Tired of only having babies to talk to all day four months into parenting, I was finally healed from my C-section and ready to return to work. There was just one thing I couldn’t figure out. How would we raise our children while both my husband and I worked from home. Surely, we had to hire a nanny or send out two infants to daycare… right?

The cost of living in Washington, DC is very high. And the cost of childcare for one child could easily run $2,000 per month! Honestly, as a frugal penny-pincher who’s lived on a strict budget for at least a decade, I wasn’t ready to take on that cost. So, we decided to continue working from home… and watching our children at the same time.

Setting boundaries is the key to successfully working from home while taking care of twins. Create a work schedule around your baby’s naptime to ensure you have time to get your work done. Be transparent about your work hours and when your work day ends so you can be with your family without interruptions from work. Do not try to multitask. Having a dedicated workspace to have quiet focused time for work responsibilities and work calls.

This article shares how both my husband and I work full time jobs from home, while balancing watching our twins.

Get your babies on a solid naptime schedule asap.

Juggling work and twins isn’t easy when you have two babies that need food, diapers changed and won’t stop crying.

It’s easiest to work when both twins are on the same sleep schedule and can fall asleep at a predictable time. Create a feeding and naptime schedule that enables you to work. In the morning, set your babies wake up time for a good time where you can do a feeding, some play time and read a book or two before the babies are ready for a nap.

Repetition helps to get babies on a routine schedule faster. Over time, they’re bodies will adjust to the get hungry, wake up and fall asleep around the same time daily.

Create your work schedule around naptime and feedings.

Getting things done will require a few hours of solitude to tackle the work projects and reach those big goals. You’ll need to take full advantage of those naptimes.

Creating your work schedule around your babies’ naptime will enable you to get more done. You can move your schedule earlier so that some of your work day starts before your twins wake up. You can block your lunch hour to feed your children and play with them, read them some books or take them on a walk. You can also split your work day up so that some work time occurs after babies’ bedtime.

When your work and parenting schedules work together you can create those clear boundaries that allow the work to get done without getting in the way of your parenting responsibilities.

Ask for help during important calls.

If you have a job that requires you to connect with other teams, work directly with clients or lead times, there’s no way around it – you’ll spend a significant amount of time on calls.

Try to schedule your most important calls during your child’s naptime to make sure you’re able to focus on important calls. If you must take a call while the children are awake and in your care, ask your partner for help. If your partner is unavailable, ask whether team members can help to support. Maybe another team member can run the meeting and you can only chime in when needed.

Sometimes conflicts are unavoidable. During those moments, ask for help from your partner at home or your partners at work.

Be transparent at work.

Let’s face it: there are some meetings at work that you just don’t have to be a professional for. That could include internal meetings with your team members, learning sessions or those 1-hour long company meeting where the boss tells you how much money the company is making and about all the office changes that don’t apply to you.

Transparency about your working hours around your babies schedule will help your team plan for any coverage that you need to take care of life outside of work. Come back to work feeling refreshed and knowing that your children are well. Let your team know when your work day ends so you can be fully present with your family at the end of the day.

There’s nothing worse than having your work phone out at the dinner table or answering emails and teams messages while you’re supposed to be watching movies with your kids.

Don’t multitask.

When you have children to watch and work to accomplish, it can get tempting to hold a baby on your lap while you type an email response.

Create the space to be fully present with your children while you’re watching them and, when it’s time to work, be fully present with work. Transition the children to a spouse or family member during your working hours. Close the door to your working space to limit distractions. Turn your phone on focus mode to make work your top priority for a short time.

Create a dedicated office space.

Stock photos of parent working always include a parent, holding their baby with one hand while typing with the other. I don’t know about you, but I need both of my hands to type efficiently and I can’t focus on my work at all with an adorable baby sitting on my lap.

Creating a dedicated office space, separate from the children’s play space makes working from home with twins a lot easier. With a dedicated space, your mind can make the transition between play and work. you’ll have privacy to take calls or dive deep into a project without interruption. You’ll also have less visibility into what your child is doing – which will help limit your distractions while working.

Create “deep work” time.

Cal Newport’s book Deep Work, explores the idea of working in a focused set amount of time uninterrupted for longer periods of time. The research that proves having longer, dedicated focus time to accomplish tasks will help you complete more than shorter, interrupted time.

Being distracted while working can take you out of focus, decreasing your productivity and making it harder to start over.

Meal plan for yourself and the kids.

Feeding yourself is one of the most overlooked time sinks in the work day. It takes a few minutes to walk to the refrigerator, figure out what you want to eat, make a new meal, then sit down to eat it.

Meal prepping is the process of creating several full meals and refrigerate them so that they’re ready to eat at a later time. Making your meals for the week in advance can help during the work day because you already know what you want to eat – you’ll just have to warm it up! Having healthy meals available will also help with your energy levels throughout the day because it’ll limit your desire to grab a sugary snack.