Experiences of full-time WFH please!

[Sweetlikechocolatee]

Hi all,

I have two children (5 and 1) and currently work full time hours spread over four days. I WFH for one day, but the other three days I am required to be in the office, which is an hour commute away. So on those days I see my children for 30 minutes in the morning and 30 minutes in the evening before I put them to bed. I'm absolutely shattered and barely have enough time for my children, let alone for myself. It's also impacting my husband's business as he is having to stay local to do school/nursery pick-ups etc on those days (I know, poor him...)

I'm considering a job offer which is completely remote but I'm just wondering if the grass is always greener?! I've been with my current employers for seven years, and aside from the usual middle-management crap, they are pretty good to work for, I get a lot of perks, and let me be flexible with the kids for appointments, sickness etc etc. I'm also worried that I'll get bored and lonely working from home (although I am a bit of an introvert so I suspect not...) so would love to hear people's experiences of working from home, especially with a young family?

Like a lot of people I worked from home during the pandemic and absolutely loved it but appreciate it was a different situation back then (and I only had one child!) I just think it will give me more time with my family and maybe even some time to do a bit of exercise on my lunchbreak as right now I'm tired, inactive and a bit fed up!

Thank you x

@shelbabab I feel exactly the same as you. I'm fine when I'm in the office and it's always nice to have a chat but ultimately I would prefer not to be. I think it's the commute that is the factoring thing here, and possibly my job as I've been there seven years and have probably gone as far as I can.

@Fuckitydoodah that's good advice, thank you. We have a dog so I would save a fortune on paying for a dog walker by taking him out every lunchtime!

@hoophoophooray so sorry to hear you had that experience, it must have been awful. Glad you are in a better place now!

@Homeywomey great to hear that it has worked for you - good luck with the job hunt :)

@stormytwilightnight we had to put up a sign in the ladies toilet at work as it was being left in an atrocious state - what is wrong with people?!

I used to work ft in an office with a long commute, never saw my dc.
Now wfh and I love it. It has chan here d my life completely. So so much happier.

Downside for me is I want to move but finding it difficult to find another 100% wfh job I really really don't want to go back into the office now.

Home has a lot of distractions & the technology (work's network system) lets me down regularly. So I like everything better about WorkatOffice except the expensive commute. Obviously these aren't big issues for other people.

One friend, I think she would benefit from more F2F interaction, gets too stuck in her own head WFH. She wouldn't agree with me, though.

I started a small business from home after being bullied out of my career so being by myself was perfect for me at that time.

Thankfully, my business became very successful as my prior career carried a very high salary/perks. The upside for me was being able to take breaks easily and having the ability to work set hours without the "Presenteeism" expectations.

I made telephone friends with a few colleagues who were in the same field and also worked from home as well as developing very friendly relationships with many clients.

I actually converted the smallest bedroom at home into an office with a lockable door and treated this just as if I was going into my office at work. I had a 24 hour ansaphone which I would check regularly but my clients quickly became used to my way of working so rarely was disturbed.

I took early retirement over 8 years ago and one of the first things I did was completely redecorated the office so I wasn't constantly reminded of work.

Altogether, I worked from home for 17 years full time and it worked fantastically well for me. Could certainly recommend unless you are a bit of a social butterfly.

I hated it. Felt really isolated.

The only think I would miss if permanently WFH is building relationships with people and also picking up on things in an office that you just don't do remotely. However as you've said most of your co workers WFH this should not be an issue.