{Time Management} Are You Stealing Your Own Time?

If you had a job working for someone else and you got caught sleeping on the job, they would probably fire you. The reason cited would be theft of time. It sounds harsh, but it's true. You've stolen time from your company. They were paying you to work and you were sleeping!

Rarely will you hear the phrase "I don't have time" come out of my mouth. I have been given 24 hours in each and every day I am alive, and I choose to make the most out of them. There is always time!

The question I ask of myself is if I want to make time for this or that. If I really really want to do something, I will make time.

I get a lot of questions about how I run my business and homeschool. The answer is that I really want to do BOTH things, so I do them. I have never felt constrained by time at all. While my son is doing his seat work, I work. There is NEVER a point in time where I'm not doing SOMETHING. (Right now he's working on math, in case you're curious.)

While I don't get paid with money to homeschool, I do get paid to run my business. If your jobs (homemaker, mother, etc.) don't pay money, try to think about the benefits that you get "paid" from doing whatever it is you're trying to do. How can you use your time more wisely? What are you doing that's "stealing" your own time? (I have some guesses...Pinterest? Facebook, maybe?)

And just for the record, I DO sleep...at least 8 hours a night.

Shopping Small { I'm Featured! }

With Black Friday, Small Business Saturday and Cyber Monday already under our belts, there are only 26 days left to finish your Christmas shopping! Yikes! Personally, for me, this year has flown by. I’ve been looking forward to the Christmas season because I love giving unique, one of a kind items that my friends and loved ones treasure.

I also love to help {YOU} give unique items! It fills my heart up to hear that the items I have created found such wonderful homes. It makes what I do worthwhile.

Today, my new friend Stef has featured me on her blog! It’s Shop Small Tuesday over there and she is featuring my shop!

Stef and I just “met” through Twitter about two weeks ago,and we have a lot in common! She homeschools just like I do! So head on over and check out her blog!

Also, over at Overcoming Busy, is a good list of why Shopping Small is a great idea!

Pricing: What goes into an item?

Oodles of blog posts, written by other people, exhaust the topic of pricing in the handmade industry, so I don’t plan on making this a long post. My goal in this post is to show you what goes into making an apron, my best-selling item.

Step 1: Cut out the fabric. 5 minutes

• An apron is 6 pieces: Two neck straps, two waist ties, a pocket and the apron body.

Step 2: Prepare neck straps & waist ties. 10 minutes

• Fold under one short end of each strap & tie, press
• Then fold each piece in half twice, press both times
• Attach velcro to neck straps
• Sew neck straps & waist ties
• Add tag to one waist tie

Step 3: 5 minutes

• Finish all raw edges of apron and pocket with the serger, adding the straps in their appropriate places.

Step 4: 15 minutes

• Prepare apron & pocket for hemming. This means I stand behind my hot iron, turning up each finished edge to form a straight hem. I also miter the corners that can be mitered. 

Step 5: 10 minutes

• Topstitch along the top edge of the pocket.
• Place & pin the pocket in the appropriate location on apron.
• Sew pocket down.
• Hem apron along all the edges I pressed down.
• Fold nicely and put finished apron in my stockpile.

So the time it takes me to make one apron after a few years of practice is 45 minutes. I wish I knew a way to make it faster, but I don't think it's possible!

Other things that I include in my pricing are:

• Cost of machines & equipment (computer, camera, serger, embroidery machine, sewing machine, printer)
• Materials (fabric, velcro, magnetic snaps, etc.)
• Advertising cost (Etsy fees, business cards, any craft fair fees)
• Taxes (ugh)
• PayPal Fees
• Time for non-production things: Photographing items, answering emails, listing items, planning, ordering fabric, etc.

So if you do the math, you can see that a lot goes in to making an item. I hope this sheds better light on the handmade process and why prices are sometimes higher than you'd expect. We (crafters/artists) are not people who have production lines in China, able to spit out 50 items in one hour that cost $1. We are people who work in our homes, doing what we do because we love it and want to share it with others! Nothing makes us happier than sharing our talents with you!