Welcome to the final installment of our three-part series on working from home, a collaborative effort from three professional organizers and KonMari Consultants. Sandy Park, of Tidy with SPARK in Orange County, California is a mother of two kids and part-time CPA who fights the good fight against perfectionism and debt. Devin VonderHaar, aka The Modern Minimalist, lives in Portland, Oregon where she champions minimalism, sustainability, and the rebirth of the modern matriarch. Kelley Jonkoff of Organize with Kelley lives in Raleigh, North Carolina, where she advocates addressing the clutter in your heart and in your home.

We are friends and colleagues who are leaning on each other more than ever in these socially-distanced times. The second stay-at-home orders hit, we upped our regular Zoom calls together from twice a month to once or twice a week. Having a regular check-in has been so helpful for keeping our spirits up about life and our businesses while we all figure out how to navigate our present and prepare for the future.

This week, we’re talking about making life work with our new “coworkers” aka partners, pets, and kids!  

Kelley Jonkoff, Organize with Kelley

I’m a bit spoiled on this one, in that my “coworker” isn’t at all new. My husband Josh has been a full-time remote employee for over two years, so while we’ve had to adjust to a lot of things because of dear Ms. Corona, coworking from home hasn’t been one of them. We did, however, have to do a LOT of adjusting when he first went remote.

Josh had been with his company based in Arlington, VA for about 8 years when we realized we needed a change and were ready (like, super ready) to leave DC. While we knew it was time to go, Josh wasn’t ready to leave his job, so he asked his boss if he could go remote...and they said yes! Let this be a lesson to ask the Universe for what you want!

Josh got the OK to work from home in January 2018. I gave notice to my job at a high-end fitness center and my other job as an HR manager at DC’s premier yoga studio, and we began hunting for a rental in Raleigh. We took a trip down to tour potential homes in January, another trip in February, and moved in March.  

One thing Josh and I have finally accepted about ourselves is that we can’t settle for one complication at a time. If one big thing in our lives is changing, chances are we’ve suddenly decided its the right time to shake up a whole lot of other parts of our lives too. Two days before Josh got the go-ahead to start working from home, he asked me to marry him! So not only did we move south at the same time Josh started working from home, we also started planning our wedding.  

I was determined to get married that Fall (spoiler: we did! November 3, 2018, baby!). I was also determined to start my business and begin my training to become a Certified KonMari Consultant. Three weeks after our move, I flew to NYC and did just that.  

Moving is rough, no matter the circumstances. Getting to know a new house, new roads, new people, new routines, new errands, etc. is, in my experience, always a bigger adjustment than it seems. Reinventing ourselves as a remote worker, a solo-preneur professional organizer, and future married people on top of becoming Raleigh-ites was, to understate it, a lot.  

We both struggled with establishing new daily routines and boundaries. In the beginning, I became the annoying coworker who frequently interrupted Josh in the middle of a work task to ask him a question, totally throwing off his concentration. Because my business was just starting out and I had fewer immediate work responsibilities, most of our household errands, chores, and meals fell to me, heightening the stress I was already experiencing planning our wedding and starting my business. Josh is an extreme introvert and I am decidedly not. Since we only knew each other and two other people in Raleigh when we first moved here, I had unintentionally started relying on him to meet my extrovert social needs. We were both off balance and very much NOT thriving.

When things inevitably came to a head, we decided it was time to set boundaries and clarify expectations. We’d been so caught up in the stressful changes we were experiencing that we neglected to advocate for our individual needs. We each shared what hadn’t been working for us.  For Josh, he needed a relatively uninterrupted workday, for our tiny kitchen to be free for him to use when he took his lunch break, and for alone time to decompress at the end of his work day before interacting with me. For me, I needed some help with keeping the house clean and meal planning, dedicated time together each day, and more help planning our wedding.

I started respecting Josh’s closed door more, saving questions I needed him to answer for the end of the day, AFTER he went for a walk or chilled out on the couch for an hour. Josh started doing the dishes after dinner, both to let me chill and to give him a little more alone time. He also helped me plan meals and spent more time with me on the weekends sorting out wedding decisions.  

These small shifts gave each of us that little bit more energy and space we needed to have better work days. I was able to start focusing more on my training and my new business. He was able to stay in the zone and show his team back in DC that he could still write code from Raleigh like a boss.  

Nowadays, we’ve found our rhythm. We got married. Josh received a promotion last year.  I became a certified consultant and grew my business.  We built lives we love with people we cherish here in North Carolina. And we’ve settled into the routines we worked hard to establish. 

Working at home among our family/kids/roommates, etc. is in many ways a whole different ball game with Coronavirus stay-at-home orders, but the rules of the relationship game still apply: 

• Communication is crucial

• Check in with yourself about what’s working + what’s not

• Set, communicate + respect your own boundaries

• Listen to your “coworker’s” needs + respect their boundaries

• Establish routines

• Make time for joy

Devin VonderHaar, The Modern Minimalist 

As a thriving introvert, living with a sometimes extrovert sometimes ambivert, coworking has had its struggles. As with any marriage, there were alot of overpowering emotions to filter through especially as we adjusted in the first weeks of quarantine life. Once we adjusted, I’ve been THRIVING working with my new coworker. Like Sandy, as a solopreneur I’ve been used to working from home. My wife was not however. 

Here’s some things that have helped our adjustment. 

Communication. Communication. Communication.

 I can’t say it enough. Having conversations each week about our individual plans + specific needs has been huge. I love having a weekly meeting to go over our meal plan, our budget, discuss what went right + what opportunities there are for growth in our relationship and in coworking at the end of the week. 

Having two large dogs who need to be walked twice a day means we have to allocate extra time in the morning before our respective morning zooms begin. We discuss what time we’ll have lunch together, which is usually between 12-1, and what time work will be cutoff for the day for each of us. 

We are lucky that we have enough room to both have separate office spaces, so its much easier to distinguish between work time and home time. My wife Jess also has a work laptop and a work phone, however they had a tendency to use personal devices and work devices interchangeably. I recommended only using work devices in their office space, and only during work hours to create a boundary to reinforce a separation between the two. 

Creating + focusing on positive energy 

I’m also lucky in that my wife is a DJ, so we love having morning dance parties to set a positive mood, and get our bodies moving before the work day begins. We’re currently OBSESSED with Blinding Lights by the Weeknd. It's getting a little out of hand how many times we listen to it, but it brings us joy! Allow yourself to let go, be goofy, be present. Maybe you could create a special morning playlist to listen to with your family, your partner or roommates. Blow bubbles with your kids, sit in morning sunlight for a few minutes. Any opportunity to find joy and laughter is important to take, now more than ever. Continuing on that point, we’ve decided to eliminate joykills in entertainment during the pandemic. This means forgoing any scary movies, true crime documentaries (which we love), excessive news articles or anything that could allow us to dwell in a negative mindstate. 

Expect the unexpected 

Plans change, and it's important to learn to be flexible. As much as I love my wife, they can still drive me crazy if we don’t allocate individual time for ourselves. Alone time is important for everyone, even if it's putting on noise cancelling headphones and closing your eyes for a 5 minute meditation everyday. Meditation is the key to allowing ourselves to not overidentify with a passing emotion, a radical news headline, or one of your pups ruining your rug (which happened last week). As Marie Forleo says, everything is figureoutable! Give your partner grace as we take this day by day. And remember we’re all doing the best we can. 

No fear on our island 

Kelley will agree with me on this one. We’re currently reading Untamed by Glennon Doyle, and this point really has stuck with me. Sidenote: if you’re reading this, you MUST read this book. (Note from Kelley: YES!!) It's life changing. Continuing on the positive mindset point, getting intentional about not giving into the many opportunities to bring fear into our home oasis is crucial. Scarcity mindset can very quickly overcome our brains; we’re wired to feel more comfortable with fear than love. And this is exactly why we work hard to cultivate love + abundance in our marriage, and energetically with others. 

Sandy Park, Tidy With Spark

Overnight, my solopreneur days were cut short and I instantly gained co-workers, my husband and two small school aged kids, and my office of one became a co-working space for four.

I’d like to find words that speak kindly to our situation and the circumstances that many of us are facing amid covid-19, but I’m gravitating towards words like complete upheaval, invasion of space and privacy and disaster.

In my line of business, working from home is my normal. What isn’t normal, is working from home alongside a partner that now works from home while managing a schedule for two active children aged seven and four in a 900 square foot apartment with no outdoor space. Chaos is the new normal in our household and as we entered our fourth week of shelter in place, chaos oddly feels “normal.”

Admittedly it took the entire four weeks to adjust to the chaos. Now we’re heading into week seven with a well established routine. These following steps helped our family manage the overwhelm.

1. Communicate – I started to talk to my husband about his meeting schedule the night before a workday. This exchange allowed us to prepare for the day ahead of us. During this period, we are taking it one day at a time and our schedule supports this.

 2. Create a schedule – Chaos was too much of a free for all to us so we finally came up with a schedule for the entire family. Using leftover poster board already in the apartment, I created an hour by hour schedule for each member of the family. We posted it on a blank wall in the living room so that it was visible to all. Using post-it notes I designed a system that shows at a glance, the entire schedule for the day for all members in the household.

 3. Managing conflict – With two working parents with meetings around the clock (both our work crosses over multiple time zones across America), it’s a daily occurrence to have meetings at the exact same time of the day. Instead of fighting about whose work is more important than the other, we threw up our hands and resigned to giving the kids electronic devices during these times. Desperate times call for desperate measures and this pandemic seems to be a perfect situation to call in the reinforcements.

I’m happy to report that we have downgraded our status from “chaos” to “organized chaos” which suits our family entirely better.

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We learn so much through difficult experiences, global pandemics very much included.  We hope you find the practices and perspectives we’ve shared in this bog series useful beyond these present circumstances.   We three are grateful for how this virus has brought us closer together, fostering our creativity through collaboration.  Thank you for reading along! 

Where to Find Us

DEVIN VONDERHAAR: THE MODERN MINIMALIST + @THE.MODERN.MINIMALIST

SANDY PARK: TIDY WITH SPARK + @TIDYWITHSPARK

KELLEY JONKOFF: ORGANIZE WITH KELLEY + @ORGANIZEWITHKELLEY