The End of an Era (+ Future Possibilities for Our Home Office!)

A few weeks ago, I experienced a big milestone: for the first time, I am fully a stay-at-home mom without an additional job.

Back in 2017 when I was pregnant with LJ, I decided to take a step back from teaching special education. After six full years in the classroom I was excited to transition to being stay-at-home mom and didn’t intend to find another job right away, but when the opportunity came to work part-time from home as a virtual administrative assistant pretty much right after the school year ended, I jumped at the chance.

My role has shifted many times over the years, and I’m super thankful to have worked for a company that allowed a ton of flexibility as my family grew. I had the ability to get many of my tasks done in early morning or evening when my kids were sleeping and of course, nap time and (eventually) preschool was helpful too. During the days, I learned how to just fit it in whenever!

I truly had the best bosses and co-workers and felt very supported as a working mama; my kids occasionally interrupted (or just straight up joined in) Zoom calls, my coworkers knew that my availability was dependent on demands at home, and I was always met with patience and understanding. A few years ago I wrote this blog post which talked about how I balanced working from home with a baby and a lot of the things I talked about then were true all the way through my work-from-home experience.

That all being said, it was not without its challenges over the years. There were very difficult stretches of time where it was hard to find any semblance of balance in my life and I felt like I couldn’t keep it all up, but I was always able to stick it out and course correct until I got things back to a place that felt manageable again. Again, I’m so thankful to have worked for a supportive company that allowed me to shift my role based on my personal capacity, as that’s really the only way I was able to make it work for six years.

This spring, I started to feel a pull towards staying at home full time with no additional job. My kids are getting older and starting to get involved in activities like little league, gymnastics, and swimming. LJ will be going to kindergarten this fall and we won’t have as much time together each day. Ollie is getting bigger and we’re doing more family outings. It just felt like the right time to transition and focus my full attention on my home and family, and so I decided to resign from my virtual position at the end of May. It was a bittersweet decision! I loved my coworkers (we lived in different states but got to know each other well via video meetings over the years) and appreciated that this job allowed me to grow and utilize a lot of different skills while contributing to our family’s income, but I knew this was the right decision for myself and my family at this time.

I’m just over three weeks into this change and it is so clear to me that this was the right move. The shift in my focus and ability to be there for my family in ways I wasn’t able to fully commit to before has been a wonderful thing; I’m truly grateful and do not take this for granted.

With this transition, there’s another thing that’s changed: the home office is rarely used now. I had previously used this space multiple times a day and now that I’m not working from home, I’m just not really ever in there. It is truly one of my favorite rooms in our entire house so I want to make sure it’s used well and I’m thinking about what that is going to look like in this next phase of life. An art space for the kids? A music room for a piano? A lounge space for reading? Keep the desk and chair for bill paying/blog writing/just less frequent use? A hybrid of purposes? We will see!

As I reflect on the next phase, it’s also fun to think back on all my previous set-ups. I thought it’d be fun to take a quick little look back on where I’ve worked over the years.

In our last house, we didn’t have room for a full office but I was able to tuck a little workspace into the landing at the top of our stairs. It was small but it worked!

When we first moved into this house, I utilized the desk space in the corner of our kitchen as a home office. I had a little more room to spread out here, but because it was right in our kitchen, it always felt like work was right. there.

I started to desire a dedicated work space so I moved into what is now our home office and set up with things I already had on hand.

I loved having a dedicated space and decided to really make it the home office of my dreams in 2020. We DIYed this entire space! You can read all about that process here.

I’m not sure what the future holds in terms of going back to teaching/working part-time/working remotely/whatever other possibility there is. I’m also not sure what direction we’ll take this home office now that I’m not working from home. What I do know right now is that I’m thankful for the previous phases of my life, and I’m enjoying and looking forward to all that is to come in this next one!