When you work from home, it’s easy to let household responsibilities slide. You’re locked into work and 5pm roles around and the house is still a mess.

Eventually, my wife (who also works, though not from home) had to ask me a couple of times, “Hey, could you help with the laundry sometimes? It’s just a lot.”

My first instinct was to get defensive–just because I work from home doesn't mean I can just do chores all day!

But when I stepped back, I realized she wasn’t asking for much. Just 10-15 minutes here and there.

Here's how I balance those responsibilities while working from home.

1. Know who does what

One of the biggest things that helps us balance work and household tasks is clear agreements.

We know who does what, so there’s no last-minute “Hey, can you handle this?” surprises.

She makes breakfast, I make dinner.

She preps lunches, I do the dishes after lunch.

She usually starts laundry, I (sometimes) make sure it gets finished.

If I have a busy week or if she has an early morning work event, we communicate ahead of time so there are no unexpected burdens thrown on the other person.

If you don’t have this kind of structure, it’s worth sitting down and making a plan of who does what and when so you’re not constantly winging it.

2. Chores as a work break

It’s easy to tell yourself you don’t have time to squeeze in chores.

But many of them take less than 15 minutes, which makes them a great reset between meetings or projects.

Some of the best tasks for this:

• Doing a quick kitchen cleanup after lunch
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• Folding laundry
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• Sweeping up the ever present crumbs in our dining room

3. Hiring help

A few years ago, we started outsourcing a few thing, and I wish we had done it sooner.

✅ Lawn care – Instead of spending hours mowing in the Texas heat, we pay someone to do it. Also, I suck at weed eating.

✅ House cleaning – Once a month, we pay $200 for a deep clean. Could we do it ourselves? Sure. It would take us 5x longer than the cleaning team and wouldn't be as good. There's nothing like a spotless house. We often enjoy it for about 22 minutes before there are crumbs on the floor again.

✅ Curbside grocery pickup – We order groceries online, use the same pre-made shopping list each week, and just pull up to get it. Saves a ton of time. It's a little more expensive to have someone do all the shopping for us, but we make up for in the lack of impulse buys.

Hiring help frees up hours we can spend on work, rest, or family.

4. Getting the kids involved

My young kids love to help...even if their version of helping means more work for me.

But I try to let them help anyway, because it builds habits early.

A simple trick istying clean-up to something they want.

“You can watch TV once the loft is cleaned up.”

And something that's been surprisingly effective is not actually ASKING for help, but just announcing what I'm doing in case anyone wants to help.

“Hey, I’m taking out the trash if anyone wants to help.”

Somehow, that makes them want to do it more than if I asked.

Your turn

If you’re struggling to balance work and home responsibilities, start with one thing.

• Pick one small task you can handle regularly.
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• Treat chores as a break instead of another obligation.
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• Have a conversation with your partner about what needs to be adjusted.

You don’t have to do everything. Just do something.

Recommendation of the week

​A productive day in the life of a new dad​

Matt D'Avella is a productivity YouTuber and minimalist who is a new dad. This video is the first vlog he's made since his son was born (now 1.5 years old). Pretty fun to watch.

He shared his to-do list at the beginning of the video and I'm thinking 'there's no way he's getting through all of that. 😆' Sure enough, he got through about half of it, so I'm glad I'm not the only one who gets a little ambitious with his to-do list.

Also related pretty hard to sitting down at the end of the night with a book and thinking '...yeah this isn't happening.'

His biggest takeaway?

What about you?

How do you balance working from home and household chores?

Email me at thom@wfhdads.com and let me know.

Thanks again for being a part of this community!

Thom Gibson Founder of WFH Dads ​​​

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