Do the dishes distract you when you’re working at home? Housework that needs to be done takes away from your work hours if you let it. But is that a reasonable expectation of an at home parent? How do you balance housework and working at home?

There are a lot of challenges to working at home. You have a lot to get accomplished in the day and many distractions. It’s easy to have very high expectations of what you will accomplish on a particular day, and it’s not always realistic.

This is where the flexibility of some work at home opportunities becomes a disadvantage. You can set up your own schedule, and that means people start expecting more of you in the home and at work.

Worse, you probably feel guilty at times for focusing on work rather than on keeping a clean house. You’re home and you may feel like it’s a part of your job to keep that house clean. Traditional duty of the stay at home parent (especially moms) and all that.

But being at home should not mean that it all falls onto your shoulders. You need to look at what the appropriate divisions are.

What Are Your Work Hours?

How many hours you work at your home based job or business can play a role in how much housework is reasonable for you to do. Working a full time work at home job only differs from working a full time outside the home job by the length of the commute.

If you work part time from home, you may be able to spare more time for housework, of course. How that works, in reality, depends on what else you have to get done during the day. Don’t forget a little time to set yourself up for a productive work at home day.

Some of what you can take on around the house as a work at home parent may depend upon what time you work. If you have to work at the time dinner is normally made, you can’t be expected to make dinner every night. Someone else will need to handle it.

Does Your Income Matter?

Many a work at home mom or dad may feel as though they should take on more household work because they don’t earn that much yet.

Maybe your job doesn’t pay that well. Maybe your home business hasn’t taken off yet. But at this moment you earn significantly less than your partner.

Do you need to make it up by handling more of the household chores?

Personally, I would still count more by hours worked than by income. I’d rather have a partnership count these things by effort rather than dollars. In the end, you’re all contributing, right?

Another problem with taking on extra housework if your income is on the low side is that you put too much of your energy into that, and too little into improving your income. Taking on that extra housework can tire you out.

What Other Chores Are You Taking On?

Housework is often not the only chore that a work at home mom or dad takes on regularly. When you’re dividing things up, you need to consider everything that each person does.

I drive my kids to and from school each day, for example. We don’t live close to their schools, and while walking to and from would not be impossible, it would be difficult for the kids and very time consuming. Driving them makes more sense, even though it takes a chunk out of my day.

Chores like that have to be done by the person who is available since they must be done at certain times. Schedules are often planned around such things. It can more than make up for the lack of a commute for a work at home mom or dad.

How Do Want The Housework Divided?

How to divide the housework can be challenging for any family. People don’t always agree on how clean everything needs to be.

Get your spouse involved. Get the kids involved. Don’t let all the housework fall on one pair of shoulders. It’s important to talk about these things so that no one feels as though they’re carrying an unfair share of the load.

The division of chores with children depends on how old the kids are. The amount of housework I have to do has greatly decreased as the kids have grown. They can handle quite a bit.

But when the kids are young, they’re often more hindrance than help. When you can spare the time, it’s still a great idea to let them help, so that they learn how to do the job. It will pay off in the long run.

Some of the division may depend on what each person prefers to do, so long as everyone feels the division is fair. If one parent prefers yardwork to housework, and that takes an equal amount of work, there may be a good division right there.

Figure out what you will do at which times. Housework that needs to be done can be scheduled just like anything in your home business.

How well all of this works can tell you a lot about how supportive your spouse is of your working at home. If you both work a similar number of hours, yet you’re at home and expected to do a significantly larger chunk of the housework, you may need to have a talk to make sure that what you do is being taken seriously. Sometimes it’s not. Other times it will just be that your spouse hasn’t quite realized how much work you’re doing.

Pick The Right Time

Knowing when to do housework when working at home is key to keeping it from messing with your work schedule. There’s a right time and a wrong time to do things.

The wrong time, of course, is when you should be working. Laundry days are probably the worst for interfering with working at home – it has to be moved so often. Any chore you can save for when you aren’t working gives you more time to work on the things that earn money for you.

The right time to do housework is outside of your working hours. You can do little bits during your breaks, but isn’t it better to take an actual break for you sometimes? Save the housework for when you can get more done. Try these tips to help.

1. Clean the night before – If the dishes are done after dinner, and the clutter put away before anyone goes to bed, there’s much less temptation to clean during the day.
2. Make freezer meals – Plan out some meals that you can make ahead of time and put into the freezer. Seek out recipes that can be frozen and then put into the crockpot, pressure cooker or oven when you want to make them. This saves a ton of meal prep time if done right.
3. Get rid of stuff – The more stuff you have, the more mess you have. Declutter your home and you’ll have much less cleaning to do.

Know When To Let The Housework Go

There will be times when it makes sense to let some of the housework go. You won’t be able to handle it all, all of the time. Life gets in the way.

It’s common for things to be on the messy side when children are little, for example. Unless you’re very strict about toys being put away immediately, kids are super messy creatures. Odds are that you won’t be able to keep up with their abilities to make a mess.

A crisis, either within the family or your work, can also cut down on how much housework you can handle. If you suddenly add 10-20 hours a week to your work schedule, obviously you won’t be able to do as much housework.

Depending on your family, you may have to deal with the house being a mess for a time. The other possibility is that the other members of the family pick up the slack. That won’t work every time – a family crisis can make it harder for the entire family to keep up.

Is It Worth The Expense To Hire A Maid Service?

If your household income is high enough, sometimes it makes a lot of sense to hire a maid service. This won’t take care of the daily chores but can be a huge help with the bigger cleaning jobs.

The decision to hire a maid service can depend in part on how you value your time versus money. How does your hourly rate compare with what the maid service costs? If it gives you more time to work, a maid service can be good for your income.

Of course, if you can’t resist cleaning everything before the service comes, you may not want to hire a maid service. Make sure it will save you a good amount of time and effort in keeping your home as clean as you want it.

Talk About It If Things Aren’t Working Out

It’s common to find that whatever balance you agreed upon for housework won’t always work out. We’re all human.

Try not to let resentment build.

Instead, sit down and talk about what’s happening. Discuss solutions you can agree upon. Make job lists if they’ll help, or set up a calendar. Find something to make it easier for everyone to do their share.

If all else fails, hang a sign like this one:

and see if everyone gets the hint. It might be worth the smiles, especially if you have any Harry Potter fans in the house.

The post How Do You Balance Housework And Working At Home? appeared first on Home with the Kids Blog.

One of the things I enjoy doing with my kids is teaching them basic life skills. It seems like a lot of parents skip some of the basics with their kids these days, because it’s easier to do it yourself than to teach it.

Suckers. Teaching it is hard, but eventually the kids know how to do it for you. Then it starts paying off… aside from hearing the kids complain about having to do whatever chores you assign them.

My intent is to have both of my daughters and my son learn the basics of running a household. Not just cooking and cleaning, but basic repairs and dealing with technology too.

My intent is to have both of my daughters and my son learn the basics of running a household.

This incompetence in basic skills is something I remember seeing in my fellow students when I lived in the dorms in college. It was amazing how many had never done a single load of laundry.

You want to teach chores at appropriate ages. My oldest can cook a little bit on the stove, and will be learning more soon. She’s finally tall enough to deal with the controls on the washer and dryer, so more laundry is about to be added to her list.

My son does some basic food heating in the microwave. He’s also puzzling out how to make PB&J sandwiches – the thickness of the peanut butter still gives him trouble.

The oldest two both do chores that involve sweeping, mopping and scrubbing. It takes a lot of supervision still, to make sure they don’t do a sloppy job then give up. But they do them.

The youngest is still too young for chores.

Division of Labor

In some ways, my husband and I have a pretty traditional division in labor, mostly because I work at home so I’m there to get things done all day. But any chore I ask him to do he can do well enough, and I’ve learned to not criticize when he loads the dishwasher differently from how I would do it unless there’s a genuine problem that would keep the dishes from getting clean. We go nontraditional in other ways.

I want my kids to know that they can handle whatever jobs around the house need doing, whether it’s traditionally “men’s work” or “women’s work”.

I want my kids to know that they can handle whatever jobs around the house need doing, whether it’s traditionally “men’s work” or “women’s work”. They can all be competent.

That’s why I make sure that while I’m more likely to do some chores, sometimes my husband does them, and vice versa. Who does which has much to do with preferences and who can get a particular job done better or faster, rather than traditional gender roles. I handle just about all the technology stuff, for example.

Important Skills

There are a lot of skills I want my kids to have by their mid-teens at the latest, so they’re well practiced by adulthood. They include cooking a variety of foods, following a recipe, basic repair sewing, using a hammer, using a screwdriver, painting a wall, emptying the trash, sweeping, mopping, knowing when basic car maintenance needs to be done, mowing a lawn, doing the laundry, living on a budget, and more.

You can’t assume that kids will go from living with you to living with a spouse who has all of these skills, so I call them necessary. Just think about time spent living in college dorms or apartments where they’re going to have to handle many of these things on their own.

Don’t Let Them Feign Incompetence

Learning that you have to do your share even when you aren’t in the mood is a great lesson.

Kids are great at pretending that they can’t handle various chores. They’ll call them too hard when they really just aren’t in the mood to do the work, even on chores they do regularly. They’ll also try to claim a new chore is too difficult when they aren’t in the mood to learn a new skill.

Don’t let them get away with it. Learning that you have to do your share even when you aren’t in the mood is a great lesson.

Don’t let them get away with doing a sloppy job on a chore you know they’re usually better at. Wanting to head out to play with friends or to play on the computer isn’t an excuse for sloppy work. I usually remind my kids that I don’t have to let them do fun things until their work is done. They don’t like that, but it usually gets them moving.

The post Don’t Let Your Kids Be Incompetent in Basic Life Skills appeared first on Home with the Kids Blog.

The closer I get to giving birth, the more I loathe doing housework. As any pregnant mother knows, that tummy can really get in the way. These are some of the worst for me:

1. Laundry.

It’s actually hard sometimes to reach the bottom of the washing machine to get all of the clothes out. Then there’s digging all the way into the dryer to get them out after they’ve dried. I actually found it easier when the weather was warmer to just hang clothes outside.

2. Scrubbing anything.

OK, so this was an unfavorite before I got pregnant too. I just don’t like scrubbing bathtubs, dirty dishes, floors or anything.

3. Picking things up off the floor.

Of course, I hate having things on the floor that don’t belong there even more. Too easy to trip. But as with the laundry, this whole bending over thing really doesn’t feel so good anymore.

The post My Least Favorite Chores While Waiting for Baby appeared first on Home with the Kids Blog.

That’s right, male pattern blindness. It’s the only explanation I can come up with.

Don’t get me wrong. My husband’s wonderful. But if something doesn’t particularly interest him, he just won’t see it. On the other hand he’s a wonderful husband and excellent father.

Then there are times like this morning. He decided to go to the grocery store after taking our son to speech therapy. I mentioned he’s a good husband and father, right? He wanted to get a couple things there and I told him we were out of milk.

He couldn’t find the milk I usually get, which has a discount if you buy two gallons. He’s quite certain it wasn’t there, even though I’ve shown him it before, and it’s always in the same place. But hey, he bought milk, so the complaint is minimal.

He also decided to clean the kitchen today. Well, more precisely he loaded the dishwasher. I don’t think he has wiped down the countertops ever without being asked. Honestly. Not once.

Yes, I know it can be impressive that he sees the dishes in the sink, since some don’t even do that much. My tactic is simple. I let them pile up. Eventually he will want to use the sink, realize he can’t, and voila! I have a dishwasher being loaded by my husband.

I try not to let things get that bad too often. It’s not a situation I like. Good thing I know how to ask him to help out too.

I think he does better than average in some areas. He doesn’t too often ask me where something is when it’s right where it belongs, where it always is. But then it’s generally something he wants.

If it doesn’t particularly interest him, on comes the blindness! It ensures that I do most of the shopping so I know we’ll have enough food (and that it’s healthy!) and handle most of the cleaning unless I ask otherwise or company’s coming. Dirt and clutter are all but invisible any other time.

We’re fortunate in that I’ve always been good at finding things. It probably helps that I look behind and under stuff as necessary. If neither of us can find it, well, it’s time to blame the house gnomes.

As of yet, there is no cure for male pattern blindness, but any researchers out there would have the encouragement of millions of wives.

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I’ve often found that one of the big challenges to working at home is getting the housework done at least adequately. When you really enjoy your work it’s hard to step away even when you know you ought to get those dishes done.

But I’ve also found that my kids are a great help. They’re 5 and 2, and very good about helping with chores. It’s just a matter of keeping things at their level.

Both help to empty the dishwasher, for example. The trick I use there is pretty simple. Their dishes are plastic, and so they can put them away in the drawer. Once again, low enough that they can do this easily. They also know to put the silverware away, except for items such as sharp knives.

They also help to sort the laundry. My son is still mostly nonverbal, but he does understand everything we tell him, so he is quite good at sorting the laundry. He grabs and item and I tell him which pile. My daughter of course already knows where most things go and only occasionally has to ask. They also like to help load the washing machine and push the clean, wet clothes into the dryer.

I have a cordless sweeper that the kids love to use. It doesn’t work as well as a vacuum, but for those small daily messes that I don’t want to haul the vacuum out for, it’s perfect. And it’s very light, so the kids can use it, and shuts down if it catches anything it can’t cope with. It’s actually hard to get my son to quit using this, as he loves it. They also love to use brooms, but they’re only sufficiently effective outside where they don’t have to worry so much about exactly where the dirt is going.

My daughter is old enough that she occasionally gets to wash dishes. Obviously these are not the ones that need heavy scrubbing or might break easily. But she considers it a real priveledge yet.

Certain aspects of meal preparation are also pretty kid friendly. Making salads, for example. Kids love to tear lettuce. Mine are much prone to sampling along the way, but at least they are snacking on something healthy. I also let them put the veggies that I have chopped into the bowl.

Quite possibly the most challenging chore for the kids is cleaning up their toys. They love helping me. It’s cleaning up after themselves that they resist. It’s probably the only chore they actually consider to be a chore to get done.

I think the difference is that it’s their job, not having fun with Mommy or Daddy. If one of us helps to clean, they’re a bit more willing. But if we are trying to do our own housework, they don’t want to clean their toys. I don’t know how your kids are about it, but mine don’t let many tactics work more than once. The fast clean was tremendous fun one day, but never since, even though my daughter loved being done so quickly.

I would like to hear from other parents how you get your younger children to clean. I don’t just mean the helping chores – those are relatively easy. You can talk about them, of course, if you like. But what about the ones they don’t enjoy so much but really need to do?

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