BusinessReport.com

One thing you don’t often hear from working women—especially working mothers—is how much free time they have on their hands.

Imagine what it would sound like.

Sure, I can take on that new project. All my other work is finished. Oh, and you should get a load of my personal life. My laundry has been put away, I know exactly what I’m serving my family for dinner and my mini-van is spotless.

Instead, reality is a rat race full of responsibilities from both spheres, domestic and professional, which change daily and feature unpredictable twists and turns. It’s like the game Whac-a-Mole, except that emerging rodents have been replaced by an unrelenting task list. This is not a small phenomenon. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the participation in the labor force among mothers is 72.9%, and while not all of that represents full-time work, it has forced a substantial subset of the population to survive by multitasking.

In Business Report’s annual issue devoted to progress made by women in business, it’s fitting to look at not just career high points and life hurdles, but at the microskills that help the working family machine run day to day. I asked several local women what they do to help juggle the tedium.

“The trick is to think as far ahead as possible,” says Shannon Kirkpatrick, a tax managing director for KPMG and a married mother of three who was named one of Working Mother Magazine’s 30 Working Mothers of the Year for 2009. “We went to Disney World recently, and I had to pack our bags a week in advance because there wasn’t any other time on the calendar.”

It wasn’t the only trick Kirkpatrick revealed. She picks up “age-appropriate birthday gifts at the right price,” and stashes them for future parties. On Sundays, she cooks for a few hours to ensure the refrigerator is full of weeknight meals. She totes her children’s empty water bottles to work and fills them up in the staff kitchen before taking them to sports practices.

“I try to make every second in the day count,” Kirkpatrick says. Drive time is spent reviewing multiplication tables with her children, or listening to them read aloud. Once, she transcribed one of her son’s books so that she could help with words in the front seat while he read from the back.

In the spirit of mentoring and resource-sharing, here are tips gathered from working women in Baton Rouge:

• Don’t waste time by feeling guilty. It will only slow you down.

• Trust your child care provider. She’s worked with more kids than you have, and chances are she can offer good advice.

• Think and act efficiently. Take the shortest route when driving, update your phone numbers so you’re not looking for them later and fold clothes when they’re just out of the dryer to cut ironing time.

• Hire a responsible college student to pick up children from school and run errands. Even investing in this luxury once or twice a week can give you a considerable leg up, and a college town is full of potential personal assistants.

• Eat right and get enough sleep, two things you can usually control even when you can’t find time to exercise.

• Shop online as much as possible, even for diapers and pantry staples.

• Consider the radical idea of not sending out Christmas cards.

• Even if your home office is a mess, organize well the family’s most important documents, including birth certificates, tax returns, owner’s manuals and product warranties.

• When party invitations arrive, respond immediately, place pertinent info on your calendar and then throw the invite away. Your manners will be preserved, and you won’t spend time scrambling for an address at the last minute.

• Assign household chores to children that they can actually complete. It will give them a sense of accomplishment, and it will create a consistent routine.

• When these don’t work, employ my favorite survival tip gathered online: A juice box makes a great substitute for a mixer when you’re out of tonic water.