Why I’m Not a Work from Home Mom

I’ve always known working from home doesn’t suit me. I like the human interaction of being in the office with other people. And for a long time, my husband worked from home, and we most certainly do not have space for two of us to work from home at the same time. But still, I always have this fantasy that if I worked from home I’d at least be able to throw a load of laundry in the washing machine, empty the dishwasher, put a healthy dinner in the oven. And yet, on those odd occasions when I do work from home, it never quite seems to work that way.

Last week, for instance, my daughter had no school. Having brought her into the office with me on several snow days already this winter, I decided it would do us both a lot of good if I worked from home. And in between meetings and other work, here is what I did get done around the house:

• Helped my daughter chase down the class guinea pigs…for 45 minutes…to return these guests back to their cage after their requisite daily exercise.
• Cleaned up the vast amounts of poop said guinea pigs left under her bed.
• Raked four feet of snow off our kitchen roof by using the roof rake and leaning out the bathroom windows. (Hey, I’m lucky we actually own a roof rake.)
• Shoveled a generous space around our exhaust vent so that the snow I raked off our roof didn’t end up blocking our vent and lead us all to be poisoned with carbon monoxide.
• Chopped ice off our driveway before we all break our necks.

And still, the laundry remained undone. The breakfast dishes were still on the table, and I took the kids out for dinner.

Next time I think I’ll just go into the office.

RELATED RESOURCES:

• Telecommuting with Success: Mary shares some tips for working from home successfully
• Bright Horizons Online Community: Keeping Kids Entertained on Snow Days
• Read more posts about working parents and posts about winter from the Family Room bloggers

Share this article