My husband does the dishes 90% of the time. No, really, he does. And there are some days when he gets groceries, cooks and probably feels like a 1950’s housewife. But it works for us. Or, maybe it’s just me…he looks mighty fine in an apron. But seriously, those days when he’s manning the grill and the washing machine, I’m usually somewhere deep in a jungle of my own thoughts and productivity. I’m singing loud and working fast.
Our work/home roles are not very traditional. We like it that way. Running a business and a life takes BALANCE. We share all sorts of responsibilities. We have very specific and different job titles and duties for work. But, the rest of our life has a lot of blurred lines, depending on who has a deadline, if either of us is not feeling the best or just what we’re in the mood for that day. That may not work for everyone. Some entrepreneur couples we know have systems for every aspect of their life and it works wonders for them. Having structure with a side of flexibility works best for us.
When you work from home and have to manage your business and house/family simultaneously, it’s important to play to your strengths as much as possible. For example, I’m a morning person. This means that 90% of the time, I’m the one juicing kale and cucumbers at 7:30am; I’m the one emptying the dishwasher and switching the laundry by 8am; I’m the one who gets a couple hours of my most productive work in before my husband shuffles into the office, rubbing the sleep out of his eyes. He’s the one holding down the work HQs in the late afternoon; and he’s the one loading the dishwasher at 9pm.
It works out really well that one of us is a morning person and one a night person. We get to feel taken care of when it’s the other person’s go time. This means I also have to respect his strengths and weaknesses and not expect a brilliant performance at an 8:30am marketing meeting. And he knows he can’t spring business talk much past 6pm, otherwise my brain gets cooking all over again and I can’t sleep.
This is just us. It took a while to figure it all out. There are times when we hit some friction and need to figure out just a little bit more to make it better. But the bottom line is that it works. Not just because, but partly, because my husband does the dishes 80% of the time 😉
