15 Helpful Parenting Tips When Working At Home With Your Spouse

Working from home with your spouse can be both a blessing and a curse. While you do end up spending an incredible amount of time with each other, it’s easy to press each other’s buttons without meaning to.

If you and your partner are working from home, here are ten tips for successfully working at home with your spouse.

Make Separate Workspaces

Even if you’re not planning on working at the same time, each of you needs their own work set up somewhere. This should be different from yours, so there are no fights over a messy desk or unorganized desktop.

Communicate Your Needs to Your Spouse

Do you need silence for an early video call? Do you need music to write? These are some of the things you need to communicate with your spouse. You may even realize you need the same working conditions to get things done.

Avoid Your Bedroom During Work Hours

The bedroom should be for sleeping, relaxing, and romance. If one of those three goals are not being achieved, then don’t go to the bedroom!

Keep Your Work Areas and Living Areas as Separate as You Can

If you live in a small place or studio, you will probably have to be flexible on this one. Otherwise, try and have a separate office area where all things work is done.

Schedule Regular Check-ins With Your Spouse

It’s easy to go a whole day without talking if it’s busy at work. Schedule regular check-ins or meals with your spouse to make sure you catch up with each other.

Make Time for “Not Work” Fun

This is especially important if you are doing business together! Separating work and fun is so important, and it’s important to remember that your spouse is your life partner before your business partner.

Have a “Do Not Disturb” Place

This should be a place where you can escape and get some alone time! Make it clear that if you are here, you don’t want to be bothered.

Make Office Hours

Office hours can be a chance for your spouse to ask questions or talk to you. Let your spouse know what times work for you and if they will be changing from day to day. This will keep everyone happy and limit interruptions.

Establish Your Boundaries and Expectations

Let your spouse know upfront what is and isn’t okay with you. What do you expect from them, and what do they expect of you? If you can’t work with music on, let them know that you expect them to put in headphones if they need music.

Don’t Treat Your Spouse Like a Coworker or Your Boss

Your spouse will never truly be a coworker. Treating your spouse like a coworker can keep you from getting your work done and cause you to be distracted throughout the day.

These tips will not only do wonders for your sanity, but they can help make you a stronger couple even if you do work from home!

I’m so grateful for the opportunity to work from home alongside my spouse because it means we can spend more time together as a family. However, since we are both home, it’s easy for one of us to accidentally leave all the parenting to the other when we get swamped with work.

Coparenting is a big job, but it can be harder when both you and the kids are at home all day.

Here are some tips to help you coparent when you both work from home.

Remember that Parenting Isn’t Something You Clock Out Of

When you “go to work,” it’s tempting to clock out of the world around you until you’re finished for the day. The reality is that work is very rarely the kind of thing you can just clock out of if you’re working from home.

There will always be a reason to step away from your desk, and your kids will be one of them. Parenting isn’t something that you get not to do because you’re working, and this goes for your partner too.

Work in Shifts With Your Spouse

The best way to effectively work from home is to work when you are most productive unless you are working for someone else who dictates your hours. Use this method to set up shifts with your spouse.

Have one spouse handle mornings until lunch, then let the other spouse trade-off and handle the kids until dinner. Tackle dinner until bedtime together, then let each of you finish the rest of their work if there’s anything left after the kids are in bed.

Create Methods of Communication

Yelling at each other across the house can work in a pinch, especially if you have been holding your pee in for the last twenty minutes. But this is not always the best way to communicate with your spouse and your kids.

It might sound silly to text your spouse from across the house or room, but do whatever works for your family!

Stick to a Routine as Much as You Can

Routines will help make sure your parenting “burdens” are evenly distributed and that each parent can handle the parenting portion without much help from the other.

Having one parent cook, clean, and homeschool while also going back to work isn’t fair if the other one doesn’t have any of those responsibilities.

It’s Okay to Let Your Kids Have Screens So You Can Work

Screens are thought of as evil, but they can be used to help you get your work done in a pinch! If you want to make it educational, have your kids work in apps such as ABCmouse or play a learning game so you can focus on your work while they have something to do.

Parenting is not a one-person job, and it shouldn’t be! Coparenting is not only crucial for building relationships as a family but building relationships with your kids.

RELATED ARTICLE: 13 INCREDIBLE TIPS FOR A SUCCESSFUL MARRIAGE

Remember that while both you and your spouse are responsible for bringing home the bank, it’s essential to divide and conquer parenting responsibilities.

Do you work from home with your spouse? What helped you maintain an effective work environment and a healthy relationship with your spouse and partner? Share your tips with us.