I Worked Outside the Home For One Week

In August for one week I worked outside the home to help out a relative. The relatives own a retail store and wanted to go on a family vacation so I did them a favor and worked for them while they were away.



I have been an at-home mom for the last twelve years. It was quite a shift for me to work six days a week outside my home. Even though it was part-time the fact that I had shifts six days in a row plus a not-easy commute made it difficult. Since it was August my homeschooled kids did not have their usual outside commitments for academic paid classes or extra-curricular events like Scouts going on so I was free to work.



I had to make special childcare arrangements. If the shop was larger I could have taken my kids with me to the store. Some of the days my kids were having playdates at friend's houses but most of the time they were babysat by my mother-in-law who lives near there. While with Grandma they basically watched TV nonstop. That was not ideal but when you're working and pulling favors for childcare, sometimes you have to accept second best. They were bored, but out of harm's way, that's the most important thing.



It was a real change for me to have to set my alarm and get up at a certain time. Because I don't live near that location I had to travel over a half hour (without traffic). However on day one I found out that construction was going on at the non-rush hour times I was on the highway. On subsequent trips I had to allow extra time for that. Additionally one day the highway department was mowing the grass and on another day there was some car broken down or something that made a snag on the road. Long story short, I had to leave an hour before I was to be at the store.



Additional pressure was on me since I was working alone. I had to be at the store early to open up and prep before the opening time. The store is popular and every day people were waiting at the door before opening time (one was there when I arrived thirty minutes early!). If I arrived late with a line of customers I surely would have had my nerves shot for the day, so I wanted to avoid that.



After closing I had to do paperwork and then stock the shelves. Twice I was asked to stay late to accommodate customers that couldn't get there while the shop was open. As a result of that combined with various traffic snags I arrived up to an hour late to pick up my kids more than once. I had major guilt over that because on some days when my friends were watching my kids as a favor to me, they were an hour late being picked up!



Also during the commutes I was stressed out over traffic, worried about getting to where I had to be on time and feeling bad for picking my kids up later than I'd said I would. It was annoying and made me angry some days. I then had to deal with my negative attitude and try to squelch that so I could be a 'good Mom' to my kids.



I also got sick that week, having had a fever the day before I first had to work. I had no choice but to go to work feeling under the weather on day one. Then being busy with work didn't allow for much rest. I was tired all week from the sickness and not able to "catch up" on resting.



It was amazing to me how putting the priority on working and getting to the job required putting my children as second priority in my life. The truth is that my children were my second priority that week. In order to be present at the job I had to literally stop thinking about my kids and focus on the work. I had to trust that they were safe and just not think about them. I had my cell phone with me in case of an emergency. This putting my kids in second place priority is not something I have been doing for the last twelve years.



Twice I goofed up and forgot to pack lunch for my kids. Good thing my mother-in-law had food on hand. And one day she took them out for lunch at a fast food restaurant.



I had not yet finished my homeschool planning. I'd thought August would be the final prep push if by then I hadn't finished it up. It felt odd to dedicate hours to working a job when my main priority of homeschooling my kids was not finalized for the soon-to-start new academic year.



There were some fantastic weather days that I thought would be fun for swimming or other outdoor summer fun. But that was not possible due to the job. When working, the season and whatever is happening with the weather is irrelevant. The work must go on! That came back to me quickly.



I was surprised how much less stuff I could accomplish at home during that time. I was just not here and not able to keep up with household tasks. Yet the dust still fell and the laundry still built up. It was very hard to deal with dinner. We had to eat take out food some nights or simple pasta dishes like boiled pasta with butter and parmesan cheese. Planning meals from scratch with good nutrition was just not possible for me to handle. I had no time for email, blogging, or much anything else online. I was too tired to read books or even magazines. I had no time for reading the newspaper or reading current news articles online. I barely knitted or took photographs that week either.



The good thing about the week was it was interesting to have the satisfaction of doing defined tasks at work, completing them and feeling a sense of accomplishment for those small successes. This was a clear cut job and I was able to do everything asked of me. It was different to be only with adults.



There was a trade-off for that though. It did feel odd though to work at THAT job since it was not my former career type of work. It also was not work I'd choose to do for personal fulfillment or even a pastime that I'd do for creative pursuit or for the intellectual stimulation. I'm sorry but I was not feeling the "personal fulfillment and use of my brain". Acting as a cashier is not something I'd done since I was a teenager working a minimum wage job while I went to college.


I did not like being judged by some customers as a middle-aged person working as a cashier. It was clear to me that some who worked jobs that were lower status than my former job were looking down upon me working as a cashier, being unkind and brushing me off as if I were some lowlife. (Some wore work badges or uniforms or had other indicators of what they did for a living and others I could determine by their clothing and accessories had either certain office jobs or at least were upper middle class or possibly wealthy.) I don't really care what those people think of me because I know who I am. The real me is not a person only capable of being a cashier, I am a whole lot more than that. But I still don't like being looked down upon, it's not a good thing to be aware is being done to you.



Anyway I left the week thinking that I much prefer total freedom and being more in charge of how I spend my time. I think I may have taken for granted the privilege of not having to work outside the home for money to survive.



I also realized that my life is more laid back than I'd realized. I think there is a slower pace to being an at-home mom. When mothering a baby that slowness is required and back then it was a downshift for me compared to my former pace as a full-time working woman. However now that my kids are older I think I'm a bit stuck in the slower pace and realized I could do a lot more with my time if I put more pressure on myself to ramp up the pace as well as cut out some of the fluff ways I spend my time. For example it was easy to clear my time to work that week and get all of that done so why had I not yet finished my homeschool planning, and why had the garage not been decluttered and cleaned up in two years? What was preventing me from finding the time to do tasks that should get done? The answer was I was not committing to doing those tasks and I was not being disciplined enough with myself to get that work done. I was letting myself get distracted by other things, more fun things, or just dabbling in diversions.



The last thing that I realized was that perhaps I'd also taken for granted the privilege that homeschooling my children is. I missed my kids that week and couldn't help but think of all the things I wish I could have done with them instead of working that week but the reality is if I wasn't working we probably would have spent our time doing other things. I would have been blogging, keeping up with emails, making meals at home and other ordinary things.



I asked myself what life would be like if I had to go to work and had to then stop homeschooling. I am certain that I'd be fine transitioning back to full-time work. It's just a different life, that's all. While working that week I imagined what life would be like to get up early every day, get the kids off to before-school care, have them in public school, have them in after-school care, then see them at dinnertime for the first time, work on their homework, and put them to bed early so they could get rest before their next before-school care appointment. That is all a very different life than the one I'm leading and frankly I can't imagine it as being my reality. If that was our life to date instead of what we'd lived I am certain I would not be the person I am today nor would my children have turned out to be the way they are now. I thought about our homeschooling and how perhaps I may have not applied myself to the task as much as I could have. I started thinking about ways I could do a better job than I'm already doing, even if it is something like insert a little more joy into the experience.



One thing I know for sure is if we needed a full-time income from me to survive I'd make lots of changes to our lifestyle in order to try to only work part-time or to work from home and also to keep homeschooling. I'd be willing to sell this house, even at a loss, to move to a very small house or condo for starters.



Working that week gave me a new perspective on my life and made me feel more grateful for the privilege of being able to not work outside the home, to be here to raise my kids all day, every day including homeschooling them.