Mornings like this are the reason I work so hard through the week--Adam and I are enjoying some down time together this morning, and we're finalizing our plans for an awesome staycation we have coming up. It is so important for our relationship that we make time to relax together, because life gets hectic for us throughout the week; it's a strange phenomena of working from home with your spouse, because you're always at home together but you never actually talk to each other!
Adam and I have both worked from home together for over 3 years. To put things in perspective, we've been married for 4 years, so for majority of the time we have lived together, we have called our home our workplace. Working from home has its benefits for sure, but it is a very unique situation when you work from home with your spouse.
We could both be at home all day working, but we may only say a few sentences to each other the entire day. It's difficult for people to understand what it's like to work from home with your partner, since they just assume that you are constantly cuddling up on the couch or taking naps together. Well, it's not like that at all. If anything, Adam and I may talk for 2-3 minutes while we stand in the kitchen and wait for our coffee pot to finishing brewing. And then maybe I'll ask him what he wants me to make for lunch or dinner that day. Then, if we're lucky, Adam won't have to work overtime or I won't have a night-time blogger event I need to attend, so we can eat dinner together and unwind.
Benefits of working from home definitely outweigh the difficulties--perhaps the biggest difficulty we have faced since working from home together is that it can be hard to separate our home life from our work life. Let me give you an example: when we fall behind on chores around the house, it becomes a burden for either of us to have to take time out of our work day to get caught back up. If not handled properly, this situation could definitely start an argument and affect our relationship. Adam and I have learned through the years that if we each take some time to do a little bit of chores every day can help prevent arguments about doing laundry, cleaning the house, catching up on dirty dishes, etc.
My favorite benefit of us working from home together is that we are physically close to each other all the time. When Adam and I were dating, we were dating long-distance. And I'm not talking about a few hours drive. When Adam and I had initially started going out, I was living in Arizona and he was in Vermont! For years, we had to work to maintain a closeness while actually being so physically far apart we'd have to spend hundreds of dollars to fly just to see each other. So being able to say that I work 30 feet from my husband each day gives me so much joy!
Have you worked from home? What do you like about it? What challenges you?
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Great insight! Thank you for sharing! Josh and I are considering going this route sometime in the future... I'm not sure we'll be able to do it. Not unless we work in separate rooms! :)
ReplyDeleteYeah Adam and I have to work in separate rooms, or we'd probably just goof around all day haha
DeleteI don't know if Nate and I could work at home together... Neither of us have enough discipline to focus on our jobs. ;-)
ReplyDeleteHaha I completely understand! It takes a special kind of focus to work from home for sure
DeleteGreat post Cathy! Tara and I have been working from home, together, since 2005. We wouldn't have it any other way! We can identify with waiting on that coffee pot together too! Lol.
ReplyDeleteChris - SimpleFood365
Haha the coffee pot is like our office water cooler--it's where we do the most socializing in the mornings most definitely
DeleteThis is such an interesting perspective. Reading this really spotlights the differences in even work-at-home environments. My husband and I have worked at home together for over ten years. Our days are spent typically about four feet apart in our work area, and we converse all day long. We're usually working on very different things, but we chat about anything and everything throughout the day. It's always been that way for us. As homeschoolers with two young kids, there's always SO MUCH going on. :-)
ReplyDeleteWow, you two have worked together for quite some time! I can imagine that our work-from-home environment would be very different if we worked 4 feet apart from each other, too. I can only imagine how much you have going on with homeschooling too!
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