Working from home with kids and cats

A typical day involves getting woken up by the kids. They are 5 and 2 and they don't always understand that it's still 5am! At 11am I attempt a Teams catch up with my work colleagues. I put the kids in front of the TV with a snack and hope I can manage half an hour without interruption. This rarely works. I try and catch up on my emails while the kids are eating or playing and if I'm lucky my partner comes out of our home 'office' (aka bedroom), where he is working too. I'm lucky if I get more than a couple of hours 'kid-free'. Lots of time is spent in our garden, where the trampoline keeps the kids busy, but the WiFi is patchy. I'm lucky that as I'm a communications officer quite a bit of my job can be done from my phone. The kids go to bed at around 9pm and I'll often work for an hour - not ideal but lovely and quiet so I can think clearly. This has been my life on every week-day since lockdown began

My message to the future is: at the start of lockdown it seemed impossible that we would get through this - but we have. It wasn't easy, but we humans are more adaptable than we give ourselves credit for. It has certainly tight me to value 'normal' and how glorious that can be.

2020-04 See all items with this value

Banbury, UK

Kiri Walden

These photos show the chaos of home life with young kids and my attempts to work in the middle of that chaos