Husband GOT UP

[BlackWhiteWhatNow]

I WFH in a highly creative role. I find it impossible to work during holidays / weekends when people are hanging around the house randomly chatting to me when I'm attempting to concentrate (locking self in bedroom seems to be no barrier to kids/husband banging on door and requesting snacks etc. Sometimes they text me to ask stupid questions like where is the milk etc).

Husband reliably sleeps in when he doesn't need to get up for something, he works in construction and is off this week.

I creep downstairs this morning for a couple of hours of peace / work and husband immediately pops up, yawning, asking for cup of tea. AIBU to demand of him why the hell he hasn't stayed in the bloody bedroom? He has NOTHING ON today. He is currently sitting there, slurping tea, breathing very loudly, preventing me from concentrating.

Go on then, flame me (it's his house too, etc etc, blah blah) but jeez I've had to put up with so many people in my face and space this week I might kill him

No I don't have an office

Yes the bedroom is cold and it doesn't have tea or coffee making facilities

I think Christmas might have broken me.

Agree - it is a male trait to irritate the hell out of women.

When Mr Viper retired he became a thorn in my flesh regarding the everyday. I've grown accustomed to it and can ignore much now, but the fact that he WILL INSIST on coming to do food shopping with me still drives me crackers. Especially since our local Sainsbury's closed their cafe and I can't even suggest that he sits down with a paper and lets me get on with it.

Don't get me wrong - he doesn't interfere and say what I should or shouldn't buy, but he is THERE and it drives me up the wall!

Every woman I have spoken to, whose husband has retired/ changed career and is now working at home/ is spending more time in the house for whatever reason finds herself close to drowning even the best of husband's in a bucket in a very short time.

At least Mr Viper keeps out of the kitchen cupboards. A close friend's husband retired and promptly went through all of her cupboards, re-arranging crockery etc, and sorting tins/ packets by some strange system of his own which turned out to be related to something like calorific value/ nutritional value/ vitamin B12 content or something equally obscure. Frankly, I would have beaten him to death with a tin of beans.

Apparently his system was more efficient, but
a) he never went into the kitchen to cook or even clear up
and
b) she couldn't find a bloody thing!

Regarding the cup of tea: I might pop over to the site when he's having a coffee break and get him to make me one too just to even things up

To the poster who said I was an abusive bully: harsh

100% this. So you set your own hours but you're raging as your family exist in the home weekends and holidays when you choose to work? If you're working then and also when they're at work/school during the week are you not having any downtime, or are you choosing to only work when they're off?
The bit about 'HE DISTURBED ME TO MAKE ME MAKE HIM TEA!!' Was a bit of a purposeful 'ooh he's a bastard' wasn't it, given you were actually in the process of making a cup of tea?

Usually these threads are about a husband who wfh and the consensus is he needs to clear off and allow the partner to live freely

now it’s a woman wfh, oddly the man again is the one needing to clear off

You need a sit down family meeting and lay out how this will go from now on. There is no way your teens cannot make themselves snacks. We had a specific snack drawer in the cupboard and one in the fridge, plus a menu so they knew what we were eating for dinner. That meant they didn't have to ask if they could eat X. They also learned to regulate what they ate and how close to dinner.

Going forward a place to work not inside your house would be a good idea. Could you build it together? Your children are old enough to one, look after themselves and two help with the build too. Yes mine have landscaped the garden, lugged topsoil in buckets etc so they understand physical labour and how long things take.

You’ve managed to post on this thread 15 times in under two hours. Are you really that busy with work?

It's the being there, isn't it? I suppose they cannot help existing. They need to take the risk of being drowned in said bucket though if they do insist on it

And yes, beating to death with a tin of beans would be my go-to in your friend's situation, presuming one could be located quickly enough under the new system

ya a teeny bit u for not having a separate working space.

but yanbu for feeling peopled out after christmas. he knows you are working and needs to respect that.

also peopled out here, though not working today. I'm off to a museum on.my.own. in a moment. plus cuppa in the museum cafe.

is there a co working space or cafe were you can go for half the day?

I don't think you popping to his work asking for a cup of tea is equivalent though. It's like at work making a cup of tea in the office and you ask colleagues if they'd like one too. You naturally just make them for who's there at the time. It doesn't exactly take loads longer to make 2 instead of one (well it wouldn't for me anyway, it'd be like seconds if I was making one anyway). If I was disturbed from my work and asked to make one, yes I'd be annoyed. But it doesn't sound like that's what happened here?

Good point.

No work is happening here that is true

We got a garden office pod. No one bothers you there because they have to come outside! Highly recommend.

Good point!

She might have had to use lentils, or whatever was to hand.

If it was about 8am, reasonable time to get up. I think Christmas has had an impact and had it been another time of year, maybe you would have reacted differently.

Agree about headphones that someone suggested.

Even though my parents worked outside the home, there would have been blood if we decided to interrupt them while they were sleeping to have them make something for us, or anything that we couldn’t do ourselves, especially at 12 and 14.

DS1 is 8, autistic, and speaks very few words and will get his own snacks from the fridge and his own fruit from the fruit bowl and has done since he was 6. DS2 is six year old and can get his own snacks.

YABVU in that aspect that neither you and your DH have taught them to be self-sufficient.

Saying that, I don’t think you are entirely unreasonable for finally losing it at your DH when he and the children seem to not take your work seriously. You could work in the bedroom but they bother you there despite the door being closed and you obviously didn’t work in the bedroom because your DH was sleeping, leaving you no choice but to work in the kitchen unless I missed something.

I think you need to sit down with them all like others have suggested and explain how what they’re doing is effecting you. You having to go to a hotel or a parking lot to do your work is ridiculous when everyone in the house is old enough to understand and respect simple boundaries.

My own DH wfh permanently and we’re having our own talk when the kids are back in school about him working in the kitchen but the difference is, he actually has an office upstairs but is not using it and could also work in our en-suite bedroom across from it (I sleep in the guest room with our newborn) but doesn’t. There is also a shared workspace in the centre of town. He has no legitimate reason I can see that he needs to work in there other than the coffee pot being there and even then he has a super large thermos he could take upstairs.

I've started to play the rocky theme tune everytime bickering starts.
seems to work.

So you’re complaining about your husband sitting around your house while he’s not working because you’re sitting around your house while not working?

Honestly, if the sexes were reversed here you’d have your arse handed to you.

It might be his home, but the work you do goes towards keeping it going, so when that work has to be done in the home, he needs to give you the space to do it. WFH can be difficult for other family members sharing the space, but it's the way things are for many of us these days and people need to adapt and be considerate if they want the income stream to continue.

I TOTALLY understand your frustration but this is such an interesting one...we have similar issues when it comes to the home also being a space for work. A home is a home first and foremost though I think, and a bedroom is a bedroom, not an office. I'm starting to think WFH only works if you have dedicated work space eg an office. Otherwise you might need to look into workspaces near you where you could eg rent a desk - for your own sake as much as anything? It's hard to ask people not to act as though they are in their own home when they are: you're asking the same space to take on multiple roles, and it's you that gets to push the button and switch from "home" to "office" based on your schedule.

It's all so interesting and a bit depressing how gendered this is, though. I have done a lot of reading about how different authors, artists etc worked at their homes throughout history, and it's very clear that men have always felt able to defend their space and headspace even at home, yelling at anyone who disturbed them, expecting their wives to leave lunch/tea outside the door and creep away while they worked without disturbance - whereas women who've tried to work at home always get sucked back into their domestic role in the domestic space.

You are right that you need to be firmer with them. I wfh and my partner and 8 yo know when I'm working not to disturb me. The 8 yo knows if he is at home while I work h3 don't disturb me during certain hours unless its an emergency (I have had to explain tv show he can't find is not an emergency from time to time tho so it's not perfect lol) but if he can manage that older kids and adults definitely can. And my office is in his room!

i voted YABU because presumably this is not new news to OP that people want to spend time in heir house, and while yes it is where she works and her DH doesn't normally do this - she has chosen this as her working environment.

So it is on her if she hasn't been loudly and repeatedly clear to EVERYONE that when she's working she is not to be spoken to. Wearing headphones would help with that, as a compromise, as would possibly setting up in a corner somewhere and designating that as "when I'm here, i'm not here and you have to cope by yourselves"

Her DH is BVVVVVU in asking her to make tea since he presumably knows how she makes her living.

Nonsense!

OP is sitting around not working because her DP sitting around not working is stopping her from working!

You need A Room Of One’s Own

op - Veignina Woolf was right.

seriously, go out to a cafe? Long yemr
find a desk space you can rent when you need?

i find boundaries are home easier to uphold when I am physically there less as they have to all find new habits when I’m actually out of the house

Google "coworking spaces", might a solution for however many days you need.

Yes this! And by this point I'm enjoying the mumsnetting as well so using it as excuse not to work (procrastinating is another issue).

I only expected to be able to work for a couple of hours while everyone had a lie in anyway, which is why it was so annoying that he got up at the same time I did