When you are a working mom, your home life and work life tend to blend. The lines are often blurred and there seems to be no clear separation between the two. Right now I am in my last semester of school before I earn my Master’s degree. I am the Executive Director of a small non-profit. My husband is a Pastor, which makes me heavily involved in our church activities. I currently help lead praise and I am in charge of the Sunday School Program. We are in the middle of an adoption, which we are super excited about! And I am a parent.
Do you know what these all have in common?
They all need a printer.
Yes, you read that right. A printer. Let me explain.
I print off assignments for school. I print of lyrics for worship. I print off templates for Sunday school. I print off forms and applications for the adoption. I print off pictures of dinosaurs for my son. And of course, I print off lots and lots of things for the non-profit.
Because my worlds blend between home and work, I find it easy to be tempted to do this all at work. I receive an e-mail telling me I need to fill out the next form for the adoption process. I hear a song on Spotify and want to teach it at the next service so, I need the lyrics. I realize it’s the end of the week and I haven’t decided what I am teaching in Sunday school, so I browse Pinterest during lunch and find the perfect lesson and craft.
It would be so easy to do all of this when it is right in front of me. Yet, I know deep down, that technically, when it comes right down to it, it’s a little bit, well, um, err….stealing….?
Yes. It’s actually stealing.
We have all heard about stealing supplies, or stealing time. If we sit and scroll through Facebook for 20 minutes when we aren’t on break, that’s stealing time. And sometimes we might be tempted to grab a couple envelopes from the stack because we ran out at home and don’t have time to get to the store before we pick up the kids from school, rush home, make dinner, and then go to the school concert. We just have to get those things in the mail today! So two envelopes go in the purse.
Yeah, that isn’t cool.
Bummer. Life would be sooooo much easier if we could just do it. But you know that old song by Bette Midler? “God is watching us, God is watching us, God is watching us……from a distance.” It’s true.
These little things, when no one else is watching; count. That is what makes our character what it truly is. It would be easy to let stress determine our actions. But that doesn’t make it right. The Bible tells us that “You shall not steal; you shall not deal falsely; you shall not lie to one another.” Leviticus 19:11. If you have to sneak or hide, it’s not good.
I know this might sound trivial, but I happen to also be the one who buys the office supplies. It is crazy expensive to buy printer cartridges. If we are using this for our own private use, over and over, for large printing quantities, we have crossed a line. I know of another Director who had to fire someone because she was using the printer at work repeatedly to print off pages and pages of things for her church. It was for a good cause, but it was simply not the place to do it.
So what do we do to keep these two worlds separated in a way where we won’t get into any trouble?
Here are some things to consider trying:
- Set aside a particular day of the week to focus on one responsibility. For instance, I can make Friday the day to focus on teaching Sunday school. That way, I can use my lunch hour to browse Pinterest for great ideas.
- Use the old clip and paste link and e-mail yourself ideas like crazy. That way, when you get home, you can print off that idea that you came across at work.
- Try using your calendar as a reminder. If you find something you need to print and you are at work, put it in your calendar with a reminder to print when you are home.
- Not all of us have printers at home, yet we still have the need to print often. Most local libraries, Staples, and even some book stores, will allow you to use their printers for a small cost. Save your documents or photos on a thumb drive.
- And last but not least, don’t be too legalistic. Once in a while, when you are in a hurry, it is OK to use the company printer to print a couple of pages. No printing off e-books though. That’s not good.
We have lots of demands on us, and we are constantly trying to find new and better ways to keep our many plates spinning without having them shatter on the ground at our feet.
Let’s use the tools we have, like google calendar, e-mail, calendar reminders, and local places that offer printing services, to keep it on the up and up! The blurred lines become less blurry when we plan ahead.
Shannon, I love your concepts. It’s tough juggling all of those plates in the air on a daily basis, especially when the printer at the office always works. I got a chuckle out of how expensive office supplies are. I also buy them at my job and it is ridiculously expensive. I wouldn’t dare print anything at work for that reason, even though there have been times I was really, really tempted, for all the reasons you mention.
I also have dedication days to try to deal with my upcoming problems. These days my weekends are dedicated to keeping my head above water in my Master’s program and that rarely goes very well with the kids running around. I somewhat toyed with the idea of stealing away to a hotel room to be alone with my homework. I realized waking up at 5:00 a.m. on a Saturday gives me plenty of alone time and I save money that way! Great article there was much I could relate to!
Shannon, other online tools that could be useful include Google Keep, Evernote, and Dropbox. Dropbox and Google Drive can be read through self-serve copiers at Staples… If you remember your password! Or, you can email the file directly to their system, which will give you a code number that works for 24 hours. Some printers include a dedicated email to send a file to your home printer remotely. My laptop will allow me to queue up items to an offline printer. When I get home, I log into my laptop, and it releases the files directly to the printer. Each strategy has it’s own learning curve, but it helps to know there’s another way to get the printing I need when the avenue I’ve been using the most fails, usually at the least convenient time.
So many people do not see those lines clearly. I am amazed at some things people do. I once worked with a woman who called her boyfriend across country every day from work and literally talked for hours. Imagine the company phone bill. Not to mention the lack of, or quality of work. Oh dear.