Work From Home Couple

The weather here in the Chicago area is amazing, especially for Halloween. I think we’re at 69 degrees today. That’s good: My fourth-grade son does not want to wear a coat over his phantom costume.

Our son’s elementary school had its Halloween parade today. At 1:30 p.m., the students march around the school playground. Parents, of course, line up along the route and snap photos. It’s a nice tradition. And a fun one. Some of the costumes — one student went as a giant shower, another as a huge Lego block — are quite imaginative. Others are rather creepy, in a fun way.

Now, because both my wife and I work from home, we were both able to watch the parade, along with our 1-year-old son, who was dressed as a puppy dog. If I worked from an office, I’d miss the parade. And that would stink.

Because both I and my wife work from home, there’s never any delay in trick-or-treating. We can start soon as our older son returns from school. That means we get more candy! Hooray for our dentist!

These are the days when the benefits of working from home are really obvious. Who wants to spend Halloween racing home from the office to squeeze in an hour or two of trick-or-treating. Not me. And, fortunately, I don’t have to.

As a work-from-home freelance writer, I’m constantly searching for new clients. Earlier this week, I stumbled upon a blogging network that was looking for writers. Now, blogging networks aren’t exactly known for shelling out the big bucks to their writers, but I figured I’d give this one a shot anyway.

I was happy to find an e-mail message in my inbox this morning with a happy acceptance letter from one of the network’s honchos. Unfortunately, the pay rate was so abysmal — think less per post than what writers at Today get — that I had to turn down the gig.

I still hate turning down work. But sometimes you have to. There are editors out there who expect you to work for nearly nothing. There are others who go one step further and ask you to write for absolutely nothing. They promise exposure. I don’t need exposure. I need dollars.

So, too bad other blogging network, which I will not name here. Boost your rates, even just a bit, and maybe we could do something. But for now, I’ll continue scouring the online and print worlds for clients that actually make it worth my while to spit out some words.

You can get away with house problems if you spend most of your day in an office. But when you and your spouse both work from home? You can’t escape all those annoying little problems.

I write a lot about real estate, and I always laugh when I hear real estate agents say that owning a house really doesn’t cost any more than does renting. I have one question for these agents: Have they ever actually lived in a house?

A house will eat away at any surplus money you have in your wallet. In fact, I think houses know when you’ve just gotten paid. That’s when they decide it’s time for the furnace to go out or the water heater to blow. If you live in an apartment? You call the landlord when something breaks. Problem solved. Money still in your pocket. When you own a home? You call the plumber and the electrician and the carpenter and the water-proofers. Problem still solved. Money still in your pocket? Not a whole lot.

Our house happens to be about 100 years old. When we first saw it, it seemed perfect. It was small, cozy, warm, blah, blah, blah. Today? This house has taken up permanent residence on my enemies’ list. (Richard Nixon is not on my list, by the way, but only because he’s dead.)

Here’s what’s wrong with our home-sweet-home: The kitchen sink clogs all the time. The dishwasher has broken. The water tastes funny. Our basement leaks. That same basement gives off the oddest odor about every fifth time someone takes a shower. (Come to think of it, seems that most of our problems have to do with water.)

Now, if I left my home every day for nine-plus hours, maybe I wouldn’t mind some of these problems. I’d probably be so tired every day that we’d eat out more often and we wouldn’t mind that non-functioning dishwasher or clogged sink. (And, yes, we’ve called in a plumber to route that sink. It doesn’t work.) But I’m home a lot. I notice these things … a lot.

So, yes, if you want to own a home, go for it. But remember … if you spend a lot of time there, you might look back fondly at your days of nagging the landlord.

I sometimes wonder how much work people let slip away when they work full time in an office. I wonder because I know I let what seems like a lot of work fall to the wayside as I work from home.

There are certain weeks, like this one, where some jobs take over. This week, I’m in production on the real estate trade magazine that I serve as editor. This means I’m writing stories, proofing the work of my staff writer and columnists, laying out pages and selecting photos. It’s time consuming and, I admit, extremely tedious.

Unfortunately, it takes up most of my work day.

That means the other work I want to do — interviews for freelance feature stories, posts for my blogs and, perhaps most regrettably, scripting for a short comicbook story I’m writing and for a comicbook mini-series I’m working on — get pushed to the backburner.

The sad thing is, I enjoy all those other jobs so much more. Equally sad is the fact that this one job that I enjoy least pays more than any of my others.

It’s all part of the juggling act that work-from-home freelancers have to do, though. Just because some work is more enjoyable doesn’t mean it’s more important. Maybe this is the way it is with full-time office workers, though when I worked in an office, the only work I really wanted to do was to master computer hearts. (I actually became quite good at this game. Even in real life. The trick is finding enough other players to form a foursome.)

So do take heart when you find yourself stuck tackling a project that you hate. If it’s paying the bills, that’s all you can really ask for.

It’s the end of a long week in our both-of-us-work-from-home house. If you haven’t been reading — and tsk, tsk, if that’s the case — here’s a quick summary: My wife seriously injured her leg while measuring actors for their costumes at our local theater. One long emergency-room trip later, my wife found herself laid up all week.

That left yours truly to try and juggle working, caring for our two sons and juggling the cooking, cleaning, laundry and other household chores. Usually, my wife and I split these duties evenly down the middle. This week was a rough one.

I did a good job with the sons and the house, if I do say so myself. The work part? OK, but I’m terribly behind on some stories. I’ll catch up, but still …

Now, our youngest son is 13 months old. This means he zips around the house like a daredevil, forcing open cabinets, pulling heavy items down on his head and getting into our dog’s water bowl. (Our little son is absolutely fascinated with that darn water bowl. I can’t figure it out. But I turn around for one second, and I hear that little giggle that only means one thing: I’ve dumped the contents of the dog’s water bowl down the front of my new shirt, dad.)

It also means that it’s impossible for one person to watch him and do any work at all. If I dared to answer the phone, our son decided that it was a good time to try to unplug my computer. If I needed to write just one more paragraph, it was time for our son to bump his noggin on the kitchen table. And if I needed to jot down some notes, heaven forbid, my son decided to fill his diaper.

So this week only reinforced what I’ve long suspected: Anyone who can get any work done while his or her young children are actually awake is amazing. (These people are also show-offs. But that’s another story.)

My wife hurt her knee earlier this week, seriously enough to require a long visit to the emergency room. Since then, she’s been immobile. Not there’s any good time for an injury, but Lynn’s timing was particularly bad: She’s just started her latest costuming job, providing 30-plus actors something to wear for a local production of A Christmas Carol, the Musical.

We did get some good news today, though. Our doctor cut away Lynn’s temporary cast. She was thrilled, of course, to be able to take a shower again. She can also negotiate stars, which means she can actually sleep in our bed again.

It was a good day on the work front, too. I picked up some editing work from a comic-book company and a big assignment from one of my favorite trade-magazine publishers. I’m hoping that next week, Lynn becomes more and more mobile again, I’ll even have the chance to write some of those stories piling up.

My wife and I are fortunate that we both work from home. I’m able to be here when she’s hurt. It works the opposite way, too, of course. But it is amazing how things get so much more difficult to accomplish when one partner in a relationship is down and out.

Times like this demonstrate just how important each member of a relationship is. It’s the little things your spouse does — making the baby’s bottle, throwing in another load of laundry — that really add up over time.

Well, it’s off to pick up our oldest son from a school Halloween party. And then, for me, it’s off to bed. It’s been one long week.

We had an interesting day yesterday. My wife was at the local theater measuring the Ghost of Christmas Present for his costume. I was at home writing the beginning scenes of a new comic-book script. Son number 1, the young one, was upstairs in his crib, dreaming, I assume, of busting into the one cabinet in our kitchen with the broken baby lock. Son 2 was curled up on the couch, watching his allotted TV-time minutes for the day.

Then the phone rings. I figured it was someone I didn’t want to talk to. Instead, it was my wife. She needed to go to the emergency room.

Fortunately, it wasn’t anything too serious. She was measuring that Ghost of Christmas Present and squatted. Instantly, she heard a “crrrrunch” sound and fell to the ground. Five hours later, the ER docs sent us home with a temporary cast and a brand-new pair of crutches.

Thank goodness for good neighbors. Our neighbor from two doors down hustled over to sit with the kids while my wife and I sat in the emergency room. He didn’t even bother to change out of his flannel pajama pants. That’s dedication.

(And, here’s an aside: I know emergency room doctors are incredibly talented folks. They have more knowledge in their pinky fingers than I have in my entire body. I know, too, that they’ve seen everything — severed limbs, gunshot wounds, axe injuries, the works. But it would help if they’d show some compassion for even the more “mild” injuries they come across in the ER. I mean, not every ailment can be life-threatening! Let’s show some interest in the not-so-grave injuries, too. Now, back to the story …)

Today’s been a different day. My wife can’t get around much. She’s waiting for her doctor’s appointment to find out why even with crutches her left leg sends bursts of searing pain whenever she struggles across the living room floor. It doesn’t help that we have stairs, lots and lots of stairs.

I’m catching work whenever I can. It’s been in drips and drabs today, with me making quick phone calls and pounding out paragraphs as my youngest son snoozes or when he’s actually content in his exer-saucer. Fortunately, another neighbor has come through. She took our 1-year-old to her home –right next door — for a couple hours.

The moral of this story: Even the best schedules can fall apart when both you and your spouse work from home. And you’d better have nice neighbors to rely on when those schedules do come crumbling down.

When you work from home, and when both you and your spouse work from home, you tend to turn your residence into an office.

Step into our house any day, and here’s what you’d find: The latest garments and wardrobe scrapes from my wife’s costuming job spread across our kitchen table; my magazines, notebooks and newspapers piled on my desk in my home office; to-do lists posted everywhere; and phone messages left in the living room, dining room and everywhere else.

This is what happens when you work from home. Your work life spills into your home life.

This isn’t a problem … most days. But when you’re expecting guests, then it’s the mad scramble to turn the “office” back into a “home.”

I suppose all homeowners face a version of this when they’re hosting a gathering. After all, most of us don’t want guests to see the way we really live, right? We don’t want them to see the weeks’ worth of dust the flies off the ceiling fan whenever it’s turned on. We’d rather they not stumble upon that shoe that’s been resting on the loveseat for the past three days.

Whenever my wife and I host a party, we spend the night and morning before it cleaning and organizing like mad. The nice thing about this is that the house actually looks like a home, something that lasts a few days after the party. The bad thing? Well, housework is a drag! And by the time our guests arrive, I’m ready to take a nap.

This is life, though, for the work-at-home couple. There’s a juggling act between working and living. If you’re not careful, they become one and the same. We avoid that on most days, but on others … well, it’s what happens when both you and your spouse work from home at the same time.

When I first started working from home full-time about eight years ago, people tended to snicker: They pictured me lounging around the house eating potato chips all day. (I do eat too many potato chips, but that’s a different story.)

That might have been because the number of people who did work from home was still relatively small. Today, though, that’s changed.

According to the U.S. Census Bureau, 15.1 percent of workers worked from their homes in 2004. That’s up from 2.3 percent who did the same in 1980. Not a bad increase for just a little more than two decades.

Let’s not forget, too, that more people are working some days from home and others at the office. I have a friend who works three days a week a home and two at the office. His employer is more than OK with this; His company encourages it. In fact, workers at his company don’t even have regular desks. They sign in when they’re in the office and are then assigned a desk and computer. (They don’t have to sign up for the office gossip, however.)

Today, then, when I tell people I work from home, I don’t get as many snickers. I do notice some jealousy, however. And why not? Who wouldn’t want to skip the long commute to and from the office, the time wasted in endless meetings and all that office gossip? I sure don’t miss it.

So remember, if you do work from home, or if you want to work from home, remember that you’re far from alone. There are millions of us work-from-homers out there. And we’re getting bigger all the time! (Must be all those potato chips.)

I spent two days this week in beautiful Cleveland, interviewing commercial real estate brokers for Midwest Real Estate News, the trade magazine I edit. It was a whirlwind trip, and air travel isn’t my favorite thing. (I hate the fact that I have to take my shoes off at security. I don’t know why this bugs me so much — I always wear clean socks — but it really rubs me the wrong way.) But I was spoiled a bit. I got to sleep in this morning.

For me, sleeping in means 6:30 a.m. Usually, I’m awakened at 5 a.m. or so by the dulcet tones of our 1-year-old son. And then, soon as I get our son downstairs, our dog decides it’s immediately time for him to go out and take care of business. It’s a rude awakening at 5 a.m.

But this morning — I actually got to hear a real alarm clock. You’d be amazed at how pleasant that irritating buzz, or the explosive guffaw of a morning D.J., can be when it comes at the relatively late hour of 6:30 a.m.

Of course, while I was sleeping in, my wife had to get our 1-year-old son up and take out the dog. She then had to get our 9-year-old son off to school, and take care of our son all day long, by herself.

Now, I know most of the stay-at-home parents that read this will have little sympathy for either of us. After all, there are many, many parents who spend every day chasing after their young children. It’s hard to imagine for anyone who doesn’t have young kids just how incredibly hard that can be.

My wife’s evening didn’t get any better when our dog started barking, for no apparent reason, at 2 a.m. This, of course, woke up our young son, who wasn’t the least bit happy with having his rest disturbed. According to my wife, it’s a good thing our dog doesn’t understand English, because he would have been incredibly insulted. (I think it’s probably a good thing our son can’t talk yet, either, because I’d hate for him to spout back whatever it was that my wife said at 2 in the morning.)

My wife and I are a bit spoiled, though. We’re used to watching our young son in shifts. Now, we love our little guy dearly, but there are times when you need that break from childcare. We’re fortunate in that we can take it because we both work from home.

But when one of us is gone — and my wife will have her revenge later this year when she takes a scheduled trip of her own — it tends to make the one left behind truly appreciate how helpful it is to have two adults at home all the time.