Working At Home Involves Trade-Offs

A lot of working mothers like me are finding increased flexibility by working out of their homes.

There’s no boss, no set hours, no need to run out the door at 5:30 to pick up a child at child care. And you get to wear sweat pants and listen to Bonnie Raitt while you work.

There are trade-offs, though.

I once counted 18 steps between my computer and the laundry room. It takes a lot of discipline to stay riveted to the computer when piles of dirty socks and underwear are gathered so close by.

Because my computer is stuffed into a corner of the family room/ playroom, I have to wade through large messes in the morning, to include, on this particular morning, for example, plastic eggs and pretend cheese chunks that are supposed to be neatly arranged in the play kitchen to my immediate left; Monopoly houses, bingo chips, Tinkertoys and a Sorry board that are supposed to be housed on the shelves to my right; also a football, a stuffed Barney and two deflating balloons. Today, as a special treat, I found on my desk some rather large and numerous, unknown crumbs that the kids left while playing computer Lasso with Daddy last night.

When you work out of your home, you have to let go of personal space, professional respect and the motherly urge to slip on a pair of latex gloves and start cleaning.

When you work out of your home, you have to let the cars pass by your window without thinking you should be in one of them. I forgot at first. At first, I signed up for health room volunteer and told each of my children, yes, sure, I’ll come to your school once a week and have lunch with you during the hours when I’m supposed to be working. I went to aerobics twice a week during work hours and sometimes the grocery store.

I finally caught on when I almost missed a few deadlines: I am at work, not at home. (I’ve had to spell this out for a few other people, including the traveling food salesman who wants to stand at my door and talk chicken nuggets for half an hour and my sister who always picks this time to call for a chat.) Perhaps the hardest thing to get used to in the home office where I retreated three years ago after a dozen years in a bustling newsroom is human contact.

There is none. Gone is the computer butted up to yours with a person sitting in front of it who will listen to you complain about the husband who never takes the kid to the doctor, the kid who always has the ear infection and how are you supposed to juggle this working mother thing anyway. You want to know what somebody thinks of your approach to an important project? Try the cat.

E-mail would help. But in our house, we have neither this nationwide message system nor fax because neither me nor my equally computer illiterate husband can figure out how the software (hardware?) works. Oh, how I long for the days when if the “i” got stuck on the computer keyboard, all I had to was call Ext. 676 and ask for the computer guy. Worldwide Web? I imagine we will get it about the time Universewide Web comes out.

And yet, despite missing state-of-the art technology, a bottomless coffee pot in the break room and ergonomic chairs, I’d tell anybody the flexibility is worth it.

It’s worth it, even, listening to my husband, who has of late been looking at the household budget book and saying:

“Honey, I heard about this job …”

That’s another thing: money. There’s not a lot of it out here, nor a guaranteed amount, at least not for me as a part-time free-lance writer, although I am only working half a day so I can spend the other half doing things domestic. But that is the reason I did this to begin with.

That and meetings.

I don’t have to go to them anymore.

xxxx