Work at home online programmes offer a great opportunity for women, especially stay at home mothers but there is a trap; recognising the trap and avoiding it is far easier than getting out of the trap after you have been caught.

When you decide to work at home (online or offline), you need to watch out for household chores and ration the time you will spend even thinking about them Otherwise they will form a gang, creep up on you and rob you of precious time. You will end up trying to work at home online in the odd minutes left over from doing housework. You will then be tired (and probably bored) from dealing with the chores and in no state to concentrate on your work at home online project. So, you'll maybe check your mail and decide that you are too exhausted to do anything else. What you decide you will do is shower, get a good night's sleep and hit the floor running tomorrow. Yes, devote the whole day to your work at home online project and catch up on what you missed today.

Even if you have never before tried to work at home online, you will undoubtedly recognise this scene and already know what will happen when tomorrow dawns. If you have ever knocked yourself out preparing for an event, doing all the chores in advance to have a day free, you will know that having a whole day to yourself completely free from housework does not happen. The encroachment of chores onto your time will start early, it will begin with the irresistible urge to tidy up after breakfast.

Those nasty chores you despatched yesterday have lots of relatives and they will have gathered over night while you were sleeping. Mr Laundry has called in his brother, Mr Ironing and as soon as you wake up he will be there sitting smugly in his basket and demanding your attention. Mr Soap-Scum is nowhere to be seen and the bathroom is spotless - apart, that is, from Mr Soap-Scum's cousin Mr Lime-Scale who has sneaked in and dulled your taps. It seems that Mr Dust has brought along his whole family, you can see them in the sunlight, hovering, waiting to leap onto your furniture the moment your back is turned.

If you are the perfect housekeeper, you will deal with today's chores before you even think of doing anything for yourself. Whether your aim is to concentrate on your work at home online project, spend the day shopping for a special outfit, have your hair restyled, get a professional manicure (or anything else that is just for you), you can't ignore the chores. You would not be able to concentrate on shopping or enjoy pampering yourself if, at the back of your mind, lurked the knowledge that your ironing basket is full, the bathroom taps are not shiny and the furniture needs polishing. Before you know it, the day has disappeared. Household cleanliness has been raised several notches but your work at home online project remains in a state of neglect and is in danger of decline.

It is easy to slip into this pattern and allow it to become your day to day life. It won't be long before you are overwhelmed by chores, abandon the idea of being able to successfully work at home online and turn into one of those martyred women proudly proclaiming "I never have a moment for myself". You have to break this cycle before you turn into a housework zombie. The fact that you are at home all day does not mean you should be a slave to housework. It is an established law of physics that housework expands to fill the time available.

When you worked at a job outside the home and commuting, you would not have been available to do household chores between the hours of, say, 8.30am and 6.00pm, Monday to Friday. Like the millions of women who are in the same situation, you managed to fit in household chores and spending quality time with your family and friends outside those hours. Why have things changed? - Because you let them and the only person who can turn the situation around is you.

If you are having a problem with subduing the housework gremlins, set yourself a strict working day in which to pursue your work at home online project and fit the chores into the remaining time. Make sure you keep to this schedule, no matter how hard the chores try to tempt you away, for a couple of weeks Then review what you have achieved and decide where your schedule needs tweaking. Carry on for a week at a time doing any necessary tweaking at the end of each week. Within a month or six weeks you will find yourself able to happily work at home online without having household chores perpetually nagging at the back of your mind.

One of the great things when you work at home online is that you have flexibility as to your daily schedule. Provided you don't let household chores elbow their way in and take over, this is a tremendous advantage. You can organise your work at home online project to fit in with your husband's working day and your children's routine. No more begging the boss for time off to attend a function with your husband or to watch your child acting in a school play: you're the boss, it's entirely up to you when you work at home online.

If your work at home online project develops into a fully fledged Internet home based business, the flexibility of your working day will be complete. You won't have to fit in with your customers' hours because you won't need to visit them or phone them, most things done online can be automated and can be done at any hour of the day or night. You will have more time to do household chores. No! No! That was just a joke: use this marvellous flexibility to enjoy life, it's too short to be wasted in drudgery.