Barely Surviving :(

[Christina72684]

Well we've officially been open a year as of this week, and while we've been doing really good in the past couple of months, lately we are barely surviving. My mom and I own the DC together and have 3 PT employees that work 10-20hr/week. We have 10-12 kids a day. We were doing really good until one thing after another went bad. First we found a water leak, then mold, then we had to be closed for 8 days. I'm so sick of it and ready to start making some money again. Mom and I couldn't even pay ourselves this week


I guess the main reason we're struggling is we're in the process of building a second daycare on the same property where I will live in the upstairs and the downstairs will be for 3-5yr olds and this DC will be for 6wk-3yr olds. So while we're building mom and I have to go shopping for stuff (doors, windows, roofing, siding, flooring, etc) which means we have to give the girls some more hours. I wish we could do it with less help, but I don't see how anyone does this alone! We got a rough group with kids from 6 months to 10yrs (now that school's out) and gotta have 2-3 people here most of the day to keep our sanity.

Does anyone have any advice? I just cannot wait to open the Preschool, call all the people on our waiting list, fill up both DCs, and make some money! Not to mention have a place of my own to live! (I'm 28yrs old and have been either living in my mom's basement with my husband and 1yr old or have been sleeping in the back room at the DC with all my stuff at my mom's.....not ideal for my marriage BTW)

So any help or advice would be greatly appreciated!

[Michael]

You are over 100 posts in the forum. I can place your listing in our registry for a year for free. PM me if interested.

[cheerfuldom]

wow! this sounds like a really tough situation. I guess I dont understand why you need 3 part time helpers with just 12 kids though......I know a lot of providers that do 10 to even 20 with one part time assistant or none at all. I dont mean to be hard on you because I dont know all you are going through and all your regulations. I hope that things smooth out soon and all this stuff gets settled. It sounds like it is just a matter of waiting things out and making the best of things. Perhaps consider letting go of one or two kids and then let a staff member go for now, might end up making more money overall by revamping the ratios.

[Abigail]

Is this a home daycare or daycare center? Have you lost any kids or is this your maximum enrollment? I understand how you have 2-3 employees if they only work 10-20 hours because that is only a few hours a day or they only work 1-3 days a week. Maybe you have too many infants where you wouldn't need that extra help or those extra few hours.

Personally you'll just have to try to make it work. See if you can shop online or afterhours or on weekends. How far out is opening this second daycare? If it's in the near future then you should be interviewing now and making sure your list is accurate so if you find that your waiting list doesn't need care anymore you can plan ahead (NOW) and start advertising again.

[Christina72684]

I think we need so much help because we have 2 "age groups" of kids: 6 of them are 6months-2yrs and the other 6 kids are 4-10yrs old. So with two very different age groups in a tiny 1,000sq foot house (2 rooms aren't used for the kids, one is the storage room/office and the other is wear the babies/infants nap) if we don't have at least 2 people helping when all 12 kids are here, it's very hard. Like the big kids want to play with playdough and magnets and paint, but as soon as we get them out, the little ones are bugging them and grabbing at things and putting little pieces in their mouths, etc. So we have 1 adult take the littles outside while 1 adult keeps the bigs inside for center time, and then we switch.

For a while mom and I were working basically open to close (6:30-6:00) and then doing our Wal-mart/grocery shopping Saturday mornings and we were drained and exhausted and we were getting on each other's last nerves. So we cut back on our hours and gave them to our help.

We're opening our 2nd location mid-August, so yes we do need to start advertising, but I hate that we don't know when our exact start date will be.

[Abigail]

Do you want to just stick with younger ages? I don't see how it's possible to have kids up at age 10 playing on outside equipment or doing big kid activities with so many littles. I want to invest in 2-4 year old indoor and outdoor equipment so I don't want children who are enrolled in school unless they have a sibling or were here from a young age.

I completely understand how you and your mom can get on each others nerves. It's exhausting and M-F go SO FAST that I don't feel like I can plan anything during the week, only weekend. I work alone from 7 am to 5:30 pm and by the time I sit down I'm just "done" and need to get the meals in the daycare fridge/freezer for the next day and tidy up and sit for an hour (like i am now!) and go to bed. I've tried to do the grocery store on weeknight and it makes me want to cry when I get home and it's 8 pm and I need to hurry up to get things put away and get in bed. It takes a long time to fall asleep and 7 am kids comes early!

Make a list of things do to and see what you can tackle quickly. Can you enroll anymore kids where you are now to help with your extra employees? Can you cut expenses anywhere that will not change your performance? We barely turn on the lights because we get natural sunlight. You notice it's darker when you look inside but after 30 seconds you don't even realize the lights are off. That saves money. We keep the house colder in the winter and warmer in the summer to save on energy as well. If we have to drive someone we make sure we hit a lot of stops back to back to save on gas and avoid busy traffic times to be wasting fuel. Think of things like that and you might find something to help you out and make a permanent change too.