Who would have thought that a big part of adult life would be deciding what is for dinner every night? Every. Single. Night. Now, don’t get me wrong: I actually love to cook and I love to be creative. Plus, I’m a big fan of “make-a-big-pot-and-eat-leftovers”. But generally, I need to confess: my creativity and my willingness to engage in protracted prep sometimes suffers at the altar of every single night. That’s when dinner gets pretty pedantic around here. Lately? Yep, pedantic.
The other thing about the whole “what’s for dinner” process is that it starts before 8 a.m. every morning. It’s currently about 7:30 a.m. BUT, if I’m going to get something out of the freezer, run to the grocery or both, I need to know what it is I’m making so I can plan around it. Tonight? I’m thinking tacos. Initially, I was thinking tacos because I had everything to make them. Then, as I typed the sentence above, I realized I needed sour cream. Still, I’m emotionally committed at this point: I just don’t want to go back and think of another idea. I’m done.
With the decision made, I can pull what I need out of the freezer – in this case ground beef – and simply plan to run quickly to the store during a break in my schedule today. Now, the rest of my day can continue.
Still, one of the things my husband noticed the other night was that we always have good meals and its true. I generally try and cook every evening or, in the case that I make something big enough for leftovers, at least five out of seven nights a week.
But one thing I’ve noticed is that when you work from home, you need some sort of definitive break between your home time and your work time. Otherwise, it can become a blended mess. Since I’ve worked from home – and part-time – successfully for six years now, I have developed a few tricks that essentially replaced my “drive time” transition from work to home and allow me that balance that makes home still home and work still work. So, what are those tricks?
First, dinner prep. Both picking up the kitchen and dinner prep are the perfect “drive time” substitutes. It’s largely mindless to pick up the kitchen but dinner prep takes some thought. That effectively stops my work thoughts as I focus on what I’m doing. Then, there is the outside walk. When it isn’t too stinking hot or too stinking cold, there is a little 2-3 mile walk I can complete just outside my door. That is almost a direct replacement for drive time. I leave and I come back.
There’s also kitty love. I’ve got four of the furry ones running around here. And generally, they’re not such a great break between work and home because cuddles often happen when the opportunity arises and not so much based on either a home or work clock. But, kitty cuddles perform an important function in my every day: it takes me out of the moment, focuses me on pure love and kindness and gives me an instant shot of relaxation before I go back to whatever I was doing.
Finally, I also take a little online shopping break when I need to escape both work and home. Now this is an interesting one because I mainly window shop, although I probably buy more than I should. And mostly, it’s at a few favorite stores that feature home décor (think: Pottery Barn and West Elm) and then the occasional women’s clothing store. But online window shopping helps me daydream about things like making my house festive for the holidays or just post-renovation decorations. That again takes me out of work mode and puts me back into home mode.
Generally, once I iteratively figured out that these things help me to create that all-too-necessary break between work and home, I have engaged in them for years to the point that they are routine and essentially second nature.
Working from home has been such a wonderfully balancing and personally satisfying experience for me that I could no longer imagine living any other way. There is truly no other work style that would genuinely fit me any better. I do have a home office but when we lay our new floors in our upstairs, my goal is to turn my office permanently back into a bedroom with just a small work desk for me. Otherwise, I’ve got my easy chair and ottoman in the fireplace room, the dining room table, the bar and stools in my kitchen and another easy chair and small ottoman in the living room. Everywhere I go to work in my house, I’m still home. I look out and I see my yard. If I want a snack, I go to my kitchen. And several times a day, I get to speak to my husband and cuddle my pets.
And that’s why making work from home work for me was so very vital to my professional and personal satisfaction. As a result, I may periodically become bored and even slightly disinterested in the question, “what’s for dinner?” But still, it’s a question I always answer. Not just because we need to eat a healthy meal each night, but because my lifestyle depends on it.
The Yuppie Homesteader 