The reality of working from home

Frazzled. That’s how I feel today. It’s been a crushing week in Daddyville.

It’s been tough going for a couple of reasons. First: the kids have been off school for Easter, meaning they’re constantly around the house looking for food and entertainment. Second: our second car broke down, leaving me stranded in the house whenever Lisa’s in Belfast attending to her mother.

As I hinted at the end of that last post, I’m gradually, almost grudgingly, being drawn into the role of full time house husband. Today, I’ve been looking after the kids (Daniel’s slipping into a worrying phase of biting and hitting – picked up from two very viscious little critters down the street from us).

While Lisa was still in the house, I tried to jump start the car. No luck there, clearly it wasn’t the battery. I phoned the mechanic, who lazily said that he’d try to pick it up sometime today. On a Friday? He still hasn’t turned up and it’s 5:50pm. A weekend without wheels awaits.

So I tried to get a bit of work done on the website. No energy for writing, I tidied up a few things and was glad to see some contributors on the site had submitted some new posts. I find writing 20x harder when the kids are home, because the constant distractions derail my train of thought every time. If I’m not too tired, I’ll do my writing in the evening.

Turning my hand to the house husband thing, I decided to scope out a few recipes. The instability we’ve gone through recently has led to us eating far more take-aways than usual. We need to get on the home-cooking bandwagon again. So, I’ve picked out a few recipes from around the web – Chicken Caesar salads, Irish Stews and pasta salads that I can turn my hand to next week. Maybe they’re not the healthiest, but I can add them to my repertoire of cheese toasties and carbonara. You’ve gotta start somewhere, don’t you?

And after all that bouncing around, I stumbled upon this post about Myths Of The Working Parent. Fantastic. Even just looking at the timetable at the top of that page, I realise I wasn’t imagining the fatigue. And something in the back of my head wants me to drink myself to sleep, except I know I have to get up and do it all again tomorrow. I don’t need a hangover for a companion.

My goals for working from home

One of our goals in becoming self-employed is to increase our focus on our family. Lisa and I are both concerned about dividing our time properly between the business and our home life. And of course, working from home has the added opportunity for us to devote more time to the family. If we plan it right.

As I see it, with two of us at home, we should be able to more successfully manage the household workload and plan better meals, time with the kids and stuff like that.

My own personal goals for working from home are:

1. Better health – that means more exercise for me, whether it’s walking, playing racquetball or fixing that damned cross-trainer up the stairs.
2. Better eating – yeah, since the vending machine in work won’t be a temptation anymore, healthier eating is on the agenda. And with a bit more time on my hands, I’m hoping to do some better meal planning and discover new recipes where I can.
3. More focus on the children – I want to look at how we relate to the children, and for once sit down and think how we can improve our relationships. One on one time with the kids, outings, picnics and thinking about their education are going to become important as we do this.
4. More focus on the marriage? With three young kids, you spend a lot of time just getting through the day and the general business of running a family. Working together will be a great chance to reconnect, although it’ll also be important for us to have a little bit of breathing space. Finding a balance will be interesting.
5. Working on my self-discipline – or becoming better organised. All of the above isn’t just going to happen. I think we need to establish a good routine so that the balance between work and family is right. Self-discipline is one of my weakest points, so I’ll have to work hard to get a household routine that works for everyone.
6. Enjoying It – One of the main reasons for doing all of this is to have a better quality of life and to be my own boss. Probably the most important thing is to just enjoy what we’ve achieved so far and what we’ll achieve in the future.

So there you go. I’ll probably follow up on this post and refer back to it often (mostly to remind myself). Do any other work at home parents have any advice or thoughts they’d like to share?

Becoming a Work At Home Dad

I did a bit of an exciting thing during the week. I quit my job.

Now, there were a few problems in the office that I wasn’t happy with. Nothing to do with the work or the people who worked there, but more issues I had with my managers that have come to a head. Although I have decided not to divulge too much, the thing is that those issues led me to decide that working for an employer is too much trouble.

For one thing, employers have a different level of buy-in to a business than regular staff do. They expect blood, sweat and tears because they give blood sweat and tears. That’s fine, but I have a young family to think of. Plus, my wife has a small business that’s becoming more and more important to us. Why should I work to midnight for no extra money while all of this is going on at home?

And so, trembling with 50% excitement and 50% terror, I pushed the send button on the email that resigned me from my job. In a month’s time, I’ll be a full-fledged self-employed man. And as the reality of working with my wife on a home-based business gets nearer, Lisa and I are buzzing with excitement and making plans.

They’re not all about business and covering the mortgage. As important as those things are, we’re also planning to improve the quality of our home life – getting fitter, relaxing more, focussing on the children and eating better. I’m aiming to get back in the cooking game. OK, so far it’s been Korma from a jar, but I hope to bring those skills up to speed and start planning regular, healthy meals cooked by my own fair hand.

This means exciting times for this blog too. We’ll be blogging about our experiences transitioning to a work at home family, and how we’re changing things at home. I hope that we’ll be able to blog candidly about what we’re doing to build up our business and family life, and I hope that you’ll all be able to join us for the ride!

So, we’ve got the cleaners in…

Those of you who’ve spent time in any of our homes over the years will already know this – neither Lisa or I are remotely houseproud. Life’s too short for housework, so we generally do the bare minimum and occasionally freak out at just how untidy the place gets.

How many times we dreamed of having someone else come in and clean the house down to save us having to do it? At least once a week. Sometimes daily.

So Lisa went away and found a cleaning company (given the title of the piece, you were expecting that news, no?). She arranged for them to come out to the house today and give us an estimate for a one-off spring clean.

They visited the house this morning and showed Lisa all the services they carry out. So impressed was she that she signed them up for a monthly visit at £100.00 a time. And to be honest, that’s not bad. It means that once a month, these people will come in and clean the house to a certain standard, leaving us to maintain that level of cleanliness between visits.

Worth every penny as far as I’m concerned. It’ll be nice to have someone take care of the dirty work, and it’ll also save Lisa a fair bit of time and worry about keeping the house up to standard.

But I’m wondering – how many of you have used (or are using) a cleaning service to help out with the housework?