Naari – The Woman

Practical Home Business Ideas

In these times of recession, each responsible family member wants to contribute to family’s finances. Stay-at-home moms are no exception. But what could you do from home? Something that can help you manage your household chores plus spend your free time making some money?

Some thoughts:

1. If you live in big towns where most women work, you can sell your services to them. The errands you run for your home – like bring milk, veggies and other supplies, collecting kids from bus stops, booking gas cylinder, paying bills – you can start doing them for others in your colony, for a small fee.
2. Supply tiffins or lunch boxes to office goers.
3. Prepare food items like masalas, papad, namkeen etc and sell them to your local grocery store. If you can prepare things like “batti” or “dhoop batti”, sell that. Paper envelopes are another huge item. You can target medicine stores for their sale.
4. If you live near a factory, you might be able to start a sub-contractor-ship with them. For example, the bindi factory ‘outsources’ some of the tasks like sticking bindis in a pattern on their card. The children’s toy factories ‘outsource’ things like making dresses for the dolls, assembling the dolls (putting their head, hands and legs together), packing etc. You could approach someone from the factory to help you on this.
5. Teach.
- Take tuition classes.
- If you have a computer at home and are MS Office savvy, take computer classes for school going kids.
- If you are good in crafts etc, open a hobby center.
- If you can teach dance, start dance classes.
- If you can explain cooking, start cooking classes.
6. (My personal favorite) Write. Blog. Do internet marketing. Do copywriting. Write paid reviews, newspaper articles and more. (To know more about blogging from basics to advanced, click on the header image on this page. This leads you to a fantastic resource / workbook to help build “your” blog in 31 days.)
7. Take a paying guest, or start hostel / guest house if you have a room or two to spare.
8. Babysit. Open a crèche.
9. Open a beauty parlor or a boutique if you are qualified. There are govt. grants available if initial investment is an issue.
10. If you have the inclination and resources start creating homemade greeting cards and sell them. You can also sell your other handmade stuff online at www.etsy.com

Got any ideas yourself? Or do you do any of these already? Do let me know. I will be happy to help generate leads or spread the word.

Share/Save

Joint families – is the trend back?

My dad and mom were raised in a joint family. I grew up in nuclear. My kid is being raised in a join family. Are we coming full circle? Well, looks like to me…

Women have started taking up various roles in the corporate world to share the financial burden with their husbands. With the growing crime rate it is generally not considered safe to leave your house and kids to the mercy and care of maids or house-helps. Even if house-helps do ease a lot of burden on the lady of the house, it is always safe to have your family members, elders be in-charge while you are away. Therefore more and more people, specially young couples starting a new family are seeking help from elders. Co-families are also a common sight where two families co-exist in a symbiotic fashion – sharing chores, responsibilities and at times even financial stuff.

Some of the advantages for living a joint family that I see are:

a. Balance between house hold chores and office work for ladies. Symbiosis, what else?

b. Help with nurturing kids!

c. Help with finances. In most co-families, monthly expenditure is also shared. I have a friend in Bangalore who lives in a joint family of herself, her husband and kids along with her sister, sister’s husband and kids. They have devised a method for sharing monthly expenditure – supplies, rent and essentials for the whole family are budgeted from joint finance. Personal expenditure and the money spent on kids education etc is handled by individual families. Works well for both.

So what do you think? Are joint families the new “in” thing? How about the challenges of living in joint families?

Share/Save

Namaste!

Welcome to Naari – The Woman!

Here you’ll find all the things that matter to you as a young girl or a grown up woman. This is your blog. Our humble attempt to fulfill the information need of today’s women. If you don’t find something and think we should provide it, feel free to drop us a line.

As they say, “bonquets or brickbats are welcome.”

Hope you enjoy your time here and return again.

Best,

NTW Team.

Share/Save