I can work Monday and Tuesday- what can I get?!

[Chunk9]

I am due to return to work in the new year. I can offer Monday and Tuesday as they are the only days I can get childcare in situ. My experience is in administration.

My current boss is insisting I can only go back if I work Mondays and Fridays- I can’t get Childcare on the Friday!!!

I am unable to commit to evenings and weekends because my husbands job requires him to work late and weekends.

Childcare is too much money- my current employer was paying £60 per day- little over minimum wage! So putting 2 children in childcare would have made working pointless financially.

But I can offer Monday and Tuesday! Any ideas what I can do?

(Supportive messages and ideas only please- we’re all mommas trying our best!)

Supermarket might be a good bet until the children are older. It's not the best job in the world but it's quite a social job.

Apart if finding another job, I don’t think there is much you can do.

Register with some recruitment agencies, you should get some administration work through them for a couple of days a week, although might just be short term contracts. I'm in a different line of work but I only worked a couple of days a week for a while and went through a recruitment agency who found something suitable for me.

Have a look on the civil service website, if there’s any roles near you. They’re very flexible and basically let you choose when to work.

These are great suggestions, thank you. I have already decided to leave my present role- I haven’t much choice and the day my boss chose to turn things personal about the childcare I decided it isn’t somewhere I’m prepared to work.

Recruitment agency sounds a good way to go, I think I am basically going to contact everywhere I can, be upfront about what I can offer and hopefully something suitable will come up. It is such a short time that the children are little, I can offer more of my time when they’re both at school! Just no more spending or fancy holidays for a while i guess!

Care roles tend to be flexible. When you go for an interview, tell them you are available all day Monday and Tuesday. It would probably be a flexi type role at first where they would contact you if there was work on a Monday and Tuesday so wouldn't be very solid but your aim is to work without childcare fees so taking the flexi option is probably your best bet. In time, they may find you a client where you go on a Monday and Tuesday and someone else does the other days or a mixture of other people do the other days.

Another option is private cleaning and ironing. You can safely charge around £10-£13 an hour and maybe find 2 clients for a Monday and 2 clients for a Tuesday to give you 5/6 hours each of those days. If your earnings stay below £166 a week as well, you won't be eligible for NI or tax meaning you won't have to do a self assessment tax return. You could always make a voluntary NI payment once a year though to keep you in line for things like maternity allowance and contribute towards your state pension.

Data entry from home is another option too

I like the ironing idea!

I’ve looked at data entry from home but they’re asking for membership fees and I can’t work out who is genuine! Does anyone know much about these? Thanks

My mum done some home help when we were young and she loved it. She would do cleaning and ironing for people who didn't qualify for assistance.