I started my home based daycare business in early 1990 when my oldest son was just 3 months old. My husband and I decided I would give it a try in order to stay home with our family. I was so shocked when I learned how expensive daycare would be for us when we had Christopher. I knew someone that worked with my husband that was going back to work and wanted a home based daycare for her baby. I agreed to watch their little one. That's how Day Care Plus started...
I was certified after a couple of years in order to add kids to my daycare. I watched several kids and found for me the more the better I liked it. After a year or so I decided I could do this and bring in a pretty good salary while being at home with our kids as they grew up. Home based daycare is not for everyone - you have to love kids a lot and be able to work with parents as well.
We had a ranch home with 3 bedrooms and a full basement. At first I used the main level and would nap the kids throughout the bedrooms. We had 3 boys of our own and I had several little munchkins running around as well. Our yard was fenced in for safe outdoor playtime. Over the years we finished our basement and we moved the daycare to lower level only. I had it sectioned off for nap time and playtime. I did daycare all day all year for 10 years in that house.
We moved when my oldest was 10 to another town about 30 minutes from our first home. Of course, as we were looking for a new house I was scoping it out for daycare space as well. We found a 4 bedroom colonial that would fit our family well and had a finished basement as well. I could see daycare down there very easily. We moved at the end of a school year so that our kids would finish school and the daycare families I was leaving behind would start fresh in the summer at their new daycare facilities. After a couple of years we added a bathroom and kitchenette to the basement rec room which then allowed me to move the daycare to the basement. I was licensed to do daycare in the basement after we added the regressed window. I have done daycare for 10 years in the basement when I decided to go part time with daycare (meaning before and after school only). Now my daycare is run on my main level kitchen and family room.
Benefits to running my home based daycare:
- be there for my kids they came home from school
- be there when they were sick
- available to do homework with them right after school so we could have our evening with daddy when he came home
- able to see what they were doing all day
- control the amount of tv, computers and game devices during the day
- got to see all the "firsts" as they developed
- got to take care of many many precious little ones over the years!
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