How to survive working at home in Charlotte with your significant other amid COVID-19

Some couples were built for social distancing together — and some, well, were not. Maybe you are getting restless while your significant other’s body has made a permanent indentation in the couch.

Maybe one of you turned the living room into a gym while the other turned the kitchen counter into an office. Maybe one of you actually still showers while the other hasn’t changed out of yoga pants for days. Differences are what make us unique and loveable, right?

We asked CharlotteFive readers to share their work situations.* Here are a few of the answers:

Keith Ball: “He’s LOUD… but 25 years in, I already knew that!”

Meagan Cannon: “My fiancé paces all about the house while on the phone.”

Jake Fehling and Page Fehling: “Here’s our beautiful disaster ... with a little Page FOX46 inception in the background. We are sharing the same home office, and with our flip-flopped schedules, we’re making it work!”

Lindsay Lowry: “It’s so cute to watch @evanlowry work. He’s a real adult - never knew! Although, I wasn’t allowed to listen to the conference call.”

Barrie Topper-Glenn: “I’ve always worked from home. Now my spouse is here too … and what I’ve learned is that even though I say I’m on a call, quiet is definitely not one of his virtues!!”

Kim VanVeen: “I’m a newlywed (3 months in), and actually I’m loving working at home with my husband. He encourages happy hour, lets me bitch about the “Karens” and “Susans,” and is definitely an even bigger badass at work than I thought. Self-quarantine has been pretty cool.”

David Walters: “My wife, Linda Luise Brown, and I have a home office — even when the world is normal. But her South End painting studio, where she would normally spend a lot of time, is closed down so she has switched to digital art — scanning art fragments and collating them in Photoshop for digital collages, and digitally reworking her abstract paintings so they can be printed on fabric as scarves, cushion covers and the like. (That printing is done remotely, by another company). I sit at the next desk, separated by Linda’s bank of printers, working on writing projects, and getting up to speed with programs like Zoom to use in remote teaching situations when I’m asked to come out of retirement and teach urban design classes at UNC Charlotte. We have worked together for more than 30 years, aided and assisted by a group of small teddy bears that we have collected in our travels.”

Tips for working at home with your spouse

To help everyone out, CharlotteFive turned to a clinical therapist for tips to help get you through these times of ultra closeness as we stay at home avoiding coronavirus together.

“One of the things that is funny here is not only am I a counselor, but I co-own my company with my husband, so we are going through the same thing working at home, as well,” said Kim Matone, co-owner and clinical therapist of Thriveworks Charlotte.

She married her high school sweetheart, and together they started Thriveworks Charlotte five years ago; now they have two locations in the city she’s called home for 38 years.

Matone’s tips for couples working at home together during COVID-19:

• Try to stick to the same routine you had prior to social distancing for COVID-19. Set your alarm for the same time in the morning, take your same breaks during the day (i.e. lunch) and/or get in your afternoon walk if that is what your body is used to.

• It is really important to practice self-care — whether that is meditating, taking bubble baths, reading more, etc. — to help decrease anxiety and/or depression.

• Stay in touch with others so the person you’re living with isn’t the only person you have contact with throughout the day.

• Share your work schedules with each other — i.e., when will you be on a call so your partner can be aware and so he/she can be considerate and quiet.

• Determine separate areas of the house to work in, if possible. Claim a space for work and a separate safe space where you can decompress after the work is done.

• Take this time to do the following things together outside of work hours. Do something creative. Pick up a new hobby or even make a dream board or worry box to help process everything. Dive into topics you might not otherwise spend time on, like family history. Play games, inside or outside. And if there’s a game your significant other (or child) loves that you might know how to play, now’s the time to learn.

• Figure out your communication styles, expectations and needs.

• Declutter your house if that’s causing stress. The more time we spend in our homes, the smaller they might come to feel.

• Change who takes on certain chores. Mix them up, divide and conquer — whatever you need to do to make it a team effort.

Bonus pro tip: Name an imaginary coworker to blame everything on so you’re not nagging at each other. Is it the best way to communicate? Probably not. Is it a way to keep you both sane? Doesn’t hurt to try.

*If you missed our request, email us at CharlotteFive@CharlotteFive.com to let us know how you keep your work-from-home life sane with your significant other just feet away.