Create a Work From Home Routine

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Many of us are experiencing extended time working from home, When being at home all day every day, I found it is important to Create a Work From Home Routine.

Establish a Routine

I have for years dreamed of a work-from-home job. A job where I could work in my yoga pants and not worry about making myself presentable for the office. It would also eliminate my daily commute to and from work.

Well, now it has been mandated that since my job is not essential at the office, I will work from home. I have all the equipment I need to do just that and occasionally when the weather has been bad we have been lucky enough to work from home for a day.

For the past several years, I have been working at home. It takes a little adjustment and when it was just me at home I managed well. Now, my husband is also working from home.

So we are here together, all day every day. The first few days I felt overwhelmed with shopping, adjusting to working from home, and making sure I had a plan for dinner and all the ingredients I needed to make that dinner.

By about day 3 of this new world, I was done. I decided something had to give. My kids were on their phones all day, I was basically in my jammies all day and I felt like things weren't going great.

I decided we needed a routine. My kids needed some jobs to keep them busy during the day. We needed to all work to keep our house tidy since we were all at home all day. And I decided I was going to get up like I was going to work and get dressed like I was going to be in the office.

It really helped. Amazingly, my kids liked it too!

My Work From Home Routine looks something like this.

• Rise at a reasonable time and make our beds. This is later for my kids than it is for me but still applies to both.
• Tidy up our room and activities from the night before and take dirty clothes to the laundry. Start a load of clothes.
• While I am working, the kids have free time to do what they want or when schooling at home to work on assignments.
• After I am off work, we take a walk to get some fresh air and burn off some pent-up energy.
• Back at home we prepare dinner and eat together.
• After we clean up from our meal, we work on a puzzle or play a game.
• Free time for everyone. Laundry and other chores for me.

We all do better with a routine. The kids are much happier and know what to expect with their day and that helps keep everything in perspective.

Here are other areas to work into your routine when working from home.

Cooking From Home

One of the most important work from home routine is plan your meals. I try to shop for the week, but I usually need to make an extra trip or two.

Let's face it when we stock up on groceries, we also stock up on those non-healthy snacks. At least I did. I try to only head to the store once a week so I try to get every item I might need. With 3 teens at home, that includes snacks.

I have also stocked up on canned goods so my pantry is overflowing. A good recipe to use up all those pantry staples is Acorn Squash and Vegetable Barley Soup. Quick and easy soup will have dinner on the table in less than an hour.

Planning meals is important when you cook at home. I made one of my favorite meals earlier this week. A roasted turkey breast. I usually keep one in the freezer and roast twice a year outside of Thanksgiving.

Making a baked, bone-in turkey breast is great for meal planning. I assume I will get 3 meals from the turkey breast. Of course, the first is the roasted turkey with mashed potatoes, gravy, and peas. My family loves this combination. Then I make an easy and quick Turkey Pasta with part of the leftovers. I pick pasta and make an alfredo sauce and vegetables. Mix all together and layer half in a baking dish, sprinkle with cheese. Add the remainder of the pasta and sprinkle with cheese. Bake for 20-30 minutes until heated through. Kids eat this up.

The remainder of the turkey I freeze until I am ready to make hearty Turkey Wild Rice Soup.

This type of planning is crucial when you are buying a lot of groceries and cooking at home. Food is expensive and making the most we can out of it is important.

Watch Your Diet

With the media drawing us to the couch and limited options for getting out, watching your diet is also a good idea.

The Mediterranean Diet is a food plan that includes easy recipes that are flavorful and heart-healthy. This diet has limited rules and is easy to incorporate into your daily life.

The diet focuses on fresh fruits and vegetables, beans, nuts olive oil, whole grains, poultry, and fish. Many of your pantry staples work great with Mediterranean Diet recipes. Take a peek at my post, Mediterranean Diet -Learn the Basics to see how easy it is to follow.

Incorporating exercise and activity into your daily routine are other essential pillars of following the Mediterranean Diet and lifestyle.

Stay Active

Because I am working at home, we decided that we would plan a walk every day when I get off work. Today we walked to our neighborhood park. It was a quick 30-minute loop and we all loved getting outside. We agreed that we would regularly change our route to keep it interesting.

What's important is that we are getting exercise. Being outside is a bonus. And we are doing it together. It has helped us connect and it was fun. We did cross paths with other walkers, but we made sure to keep the social distance.

If you can't get outside, then dust off your exercise bike and start a workout plan. Your workout doesn't have to include hours on the bum numbing machine but could include a simple plan like 15 minutes in the morning and 15 minutes in the evening.

Another idea is to add quick HIIT workouts. This high-intensity, short workout helps you burn more fat. For ideas on adding these quick workouts to your day, read my post, 6 HIIT Workouts to Burn More Fat.

Spend Time With Family

The third pillar of the Mediterranean Diet and lifestyle is nurturing relationships. With everyone home for the next few weeks and maybe longer, we are all reconnecting.

When setting up our daily and weekly routines, one of the mandates I made was that we would cook dinner together and eat dinner together.

Preparing dinner and eating together is keeping us grounded. It helps me understand what is on my kids' minds and what issues they are dealing with.

Kid Activities

Like all their friends, my kids spend a lot of time on their phones playing games and chatting with friends, but eventually, that gets boring.

The following are some ideas to help your kids when they are bored at home.

Model Car Kits

There is a range of difficulty with these kits based on the age and skill level of your child or even you. Some kits are plastic and snap together. Others require paint and are more advanced.

Puzzles

When I first suggested a puzzle my teens groaned and rolled their eyes. But my son found one of our older 300-piece puzzles and he and I put it together one night and he was hooked. It took us about 20 minutes to finish and left us both wanting to do more.

Next, we moved to a 1000-piece puzzle. Now, these take a minute to put together and is something that is best left out to work on rather than start to finish in one sitting. A good accessory is a puzzle organizer that allows you to zip up the puzzle and put it away until you are ready to work on it.

Drawing Kits

My kids like to draw but they want a little help in making their drawings special. There are instructional drawing kits that could be used as art projects while kids are homeschooling.

Finish a Project

Making this use of forced time at home is a great opportunity to get caught up on those projects that you have been meaning to do, but just haven't had the time to do. A couple of things that I always have on my list are rearranging the furniture in our den cleaning out closets and drawers and reorganizing.

I recently reorganized our master closet. We had an organizer installed that has made it so much cleaner and useful. Read about that project in my post Reorganizing Your Reach-in Closet. What a sense of accomplishment when we were finished. Take a look.

Enjoy the Extra Time

Working at home affords you more time. You gain time in:

• waking up later,

• not having to get dressed, style your hair and make-up and

• you commute to and from work.

Make sure you don't lose this time. Find ways to use it. Take a 1/2 hour and read that book you have been wanting to read, or schedule a manicure or pedicure. Or just sit and enjoy a cup of tea and breath.

Let me know what changes and benefits you are experiencing while working at home. What is your work from home routine.

January 2024 Update: Minor post updates.