There are always distractions in my home. Some are ordinary, salesman on the phone type distractions and some are so hair raising that I won’t go into details. We homeschool our three boys. The two oldest do a curriculum and the 3 year old colors or “reads.” The house is small and there is no room to hide. If something is going on in the house then I am in the middle of it – literally. And there is ALWAYS something going on.
I have learned how to work amid the distractions, noise and chaos – sometimes by raw determination and sometimes by careful planning (and sometimes just by luck). It is possible to can keep your work on schedule if you plan, prepare and pretend 
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1. Plan your schedule out for the month, for the week and for each day. Mark down those times when things are crazier than other times (school time and after dinner are our wacky hours). It helps me to know what I have to do and then schedule around the off hours in order to be sure that I have enough time (and focus) to do what I need to do. It also helps to plan the down times (early morning and late evening hours in my home) so that I can put my hardest projects down for those times of the day.
2. Prepare for the unexpected. Something is going to come up – it always does. This is one of the biggest reasons NOT to procrastinate. Being ahead of your writing schedule will allow you to relax during the unexpected. As soon as you recover from the unexpected you need to build up your work ahead time to be ready for the next unexpected to come along (my goal is to be a week ahead – but I’m not there yet
).3. Pretend that you are all alone. Laundry days are the easiest time for me to do this. My “office†is next to washer and dryer so for about 7 hours on Thursday every noise is dulled for me. It helps me to block out the constant chant of “mom†from the toddler or the wrestling match I KNOW is going on in the boy’s room even though I never get to catch them at it.
Even if you have the ability to lock yourself away from the world just to write, there are still distractions. I can get up at four in the morning and not even the animals are stirring, but I can still find ways to procrastinate and distract myself from the task at hand.
To make it at home or to make it through the process I have to be willing to just do what needs to be done. It is time for me to stop making excuses and start making a dent in that to-do list that is sitting by my desk. Once I stop putting it off then I find that it can be a simple task to plan my day, prepare for those tasks that come up that are never planned and to pretend that I’m in a place of solitude that fosters the type of thinking needed to get the job done. 
