How do you both work from home?

[Helpaladyoutplease]

DH has always worked from home 4 days a week, has the large converted attic which large computers and exercise equipment also up there. I'm applying for wfh jobs after working in a school for 15 years. My question is how do you people work from home? Where does the 2nd person literally go? I don't want to end up stuck in the kitchen on a dining chair until the kids come home then having to balance my laptop on my knees for 2 more hours sat on the coach! No room in bedroom at all for a desk or chair and no spare bedroom. Thanks all

So do we. DH has the downstairs office and I have a desk in the 4th bedroom.

We have just 1 DC who is at university.

If you both work from home you do need proper space or pay for a co working space

We used to have an office each but XH was so loud I really struggled to wfh when he was there. At the moment I'm working out of a small table in my parents' dining room. When me & DD have our own place I'll work from the box room. I've deliberately looked for somewhere with a separate space because I've swapped to 4 days wfh. There's some really clever solutions. Could you work out a temporary solution for sharing the attic and look at something like a cupboard in the kitchen/lounge that would close away at the end of the day longer term?

We also have separate offices (just one kid though, so the 3rd and 4th rooms can be used as offices). Before moving to this house we were on a two bedroom maisonette, we were lucky that it had very big rooms so initially we could have a desk in our room and in our son’s room. When the kid stuff took all the space in his room, DH worked from the dining table. I work hybrid and still found the situation tricky, it was tricky to disconnect with the work stuff in our room

My husband has a desk in the spare room and I have a desk in my daughter’s room. But we’re lucky that she is at after school club most days. On the days she’s not, she seems to accept that she has to play in the living room. I appreciate not all children would be ok with that, and she may not be as she gets older but needs must!

We have an office space each.

Are garden offices actually usable year round? Looking at a house that has one, does look properly insulated, has Internet and power etc too

DH works in the study and I work in the
conservatory.

we are lucky to have the space. It’s essential to have your own working space IMO

Not the point of your thread OP but it makes me depressed reading all the posts where the DH has the 'proper' home office and the wife just has a desk somewhere.
Could you build a garden room? That's what we did.

DH has the spare room, I use the conservatory or kitchen. But I generally only wfh 2 days and he's at home 99% of the time.

The women have to be near the kitchen to make the lunches and coffees when needed by the important ones😜

Depends on the circumstances though surely? In our case my ex has no company
office-his role has always been 100% remote. Mine is hybrid and I WFH through choice 40% of the week and usually non consecutive days. The days vary and I don’t need the same number of monitors so can move around at will.

For all my ex’s faults he hasn’t demanded a
garden office because he has a penis. I actually paid for it for him because his mental health was being impacted by living rurally and working full time from his bedroom (I’m substantially the bigger earner). If I wanted one for me I’d have had one but I don’t need the work/home distinction. His commute up
the garden has been good for him.

As it is we will both be starting over and neither will have it. But it’s added value to the house.

Not everything is about the patriarchy.

Although I have the 4th bedroom I have a proper desk set up with office chair, desk, laptop, full size keyboard, mouse and 2 widescreen monitors. My office is nicer than DH's office.

We share the spare room as an office. If we have calls that overlap, we rearrange ourselves, but we're mostly just sitting beside one another. I'm guessing most people couldn't stretch to buy a house with two offices

I work in the sitting room. But I do have a very large sitting room. I have set up a lovely work space at one end of it and I bought a beautiful large desk that could fit my monitors etc.

I used to have an office on the first floor but thought to myself one day, I pay a huge mortgage for this large house and I’m spending all my time in the smallest room of the house. So I reclaimed my space!

The kids are home from school between 4:30-5:30 and they can be in the kitchen or their bedrooms until 6pm when they are allowed in the sitting room to watch TV if they want, but not before.

When DH works from home he uses my old office on the first floor.

I thought the same thing.

So many posts where the man has a nice separate home office and the woman has a corner of another room or a corridor

I'm sure everyone will pile in with their reasons why it just has to be that way but not one person so far is a woman who has the nice separate space while their DH is in a corridor... Quite the coincidence

I have the nice separate space, three screens, massive office chair, sit stand desk.

Dh perches on the end of the dining room table. He prefers it!

Good for you! You are the only one so far

I have the inside office with my things set up in the spare room whilst DH has the garden office. Think that’s roughly fair!

Can't you work in the same space as your husband? It sounds big enough.

It might be a bit of an adjustment for him - if he's like mine and expects silence for teams calls and is always loudly talking on the phone himself. But no different to an open planned office. Even if you only work up there with him once the kids are home.

My husband has an office in our spare bedroom and I've got a little bureau desk in the dining room. I like the bureau desk as when I finish work I can close it all up and it looks tidy.

I think it’s important to consider whether your current set up is appropriate for WFH, I’m quite shocked by some of the meetings I have with people sat in dining rooms with toddlers climbing over them or teenagers banging around them from 3.30. Or even just sat uncomfortably on sofas with laptops on laps, that can’t be healthy or productive.

When covid hit and we saw the change we sold our house and moved to a cheaper area so I could jump on WFH bandwagon full time with my own office. If DH started WFH he’d have to convert his gaming room because it wouldn’t be fair to kick me out of my office or to bogart family space.

I dont think WFH is a right, you need the right set up for it.

We had a small study upstairs, initially used by DH to wfh while I worked downstairs at the dining room table as most days I was in the office. When I switched to full-time wfh, I took over the study and DH made half of the living room into an office space - the light end of the room next to the big glass doors to the garden. There was still plenty of space left in the living room and we didn't even need to move anything, sofa tv etc. DH put up shelving with plants to make a room divider, and a clever L-shaped desk to fit in the corner. During working hours we'd mostly call or even email each other rather than going downstairs/upstairs to say something, but we'd also make us both a tea or coffee several times a day. As we were both actually working and were far apart in the house - although it was a small house - it never felt like we were too much on top of each other. The one issue I had was when he played music while I was trying to write - the house had zero sound isolation - for which eventuality he acquired headphones.

Some of why this worked was just luck; I can imagine how it might not work though - if we'd had toddlers at home, or more than one child so needing the study as a bedroom; if the living room hadn't been large enough to convert; if we'd had jobs with irregular schedules so there would be people wanting to use the living room while DH was trying to work - etc. My boss converted a garden shed to a home office because of these issues - we were just lucky that the house worked out as we wouldn't have been able to afford that.

See my post above - I had the study and DH had a corner in the living room 😁although he did basically build himself a little office, rather than just sticking a desk in the corner.

[Edit: Sorry, I tried to quote the poster who said she hadn't seen a woman who had the dedicated space with a man working in a shared space!]