I Started Working From Home And Spending All Day With My Retired Husband—Here's How We Avoid Driving Each Other Crazy

work from home, stay at home husband
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About three months ago, I cut the 9-to-5 job cord to start my own business. This move was liberating, terrifying, and exhilarating by turns. And it led to a new work-related dilemma: how to maneuver around my husband, Ken, who retired 12 years ago. 

I had heard all the horror stories about men coming home after retirement only to drive their stay-at-home wives bonkers, but I never thought it would be me driving my hubby daft—and vice versa. 

After 25 years of marriage, we had long since worked out divvying up household chores, and I've always prided myself on being easy to get along with, so I figured we could deal with any small bits of friction that might arise. But this old couple quickly discovered that we needed to learn some new tricks in order to survive living in each other's lap. 


At first, Ken was happy to have me home. "It's like the weekend every day!" he said. "But," I replied, "you should consider me being at work during the week, just like always."

Ken is a wonderful man—scarily smart, funny, delightfully living life at right angles to "mainstream" popular culture—but he has his quirks. He's worked out exactly where he wants the pots and pans, which means that only he can empty out the dishwasher. Onions go into a cabinet, not the fridge, because he says they rot in the crisper. 


He also has some daily rituals. For example, at 3 PM he meanders outside to his favorite shady spot, smokes exactly one cigar, and then comes inside to rest. That's when we have to make one of the afternoon's Big Decisions: what music to stream over our 1939 Zenith console radio, our everyday audio player. Ken's not into technology more advanced than a vacuum tube (although he has learned how to surf the Web and print out schematics for whatever he's dragged home from the latest swap meet). So instead of Bluetooth speakers streaming Spotify or Pandora from a smartphone, we have a single nifty transmitter that sends audio to various radios throughout the house. That means we can hear music in almost every room—but we have to listen to the same station at the same time. 

While my keyboard smokes in the furious process of writing, editing, and rewriting, I'm grooving to Hawaiian music, classic rock, and the occasional classical symphony. Ken, however, cringes when he hears the Hawaiian version of "Over the Rainbow." He prefers doo-wop, 1950s oldies, and even the occasional hour or so of 1920s jazz. Roaring Twenties jazz, dear? Really? So we usually just settle on a boring Top 40 station, which pleases neither of us but is clearly cheaper than a divorce attorney—or a hitman. (Music actually has healing powers—​here's how it works.) 

Photo taken by Chelsea Fisher of cfisherphotography.com/Getty Images

Then there's the matter of the telephone. Yes, we still have a landline, as Ken prefers to have an old-school telephone in the house. Not a big deal, right? Except when I'm doing a phone interview on my cellphone, and the phone rings with calls from Ken's "radio buddies," his fellow hobbyists and members in the local antique radio club, asking for advice on fixing their old sets. Or the pharmacy. Or a junk phone call. Ken spends most of his day in his man cave—the workshop he created behind the laundry room—but there isn't a phone nearby. He doesn't want to miss a call, so his "solution" was to turn up the ringer in the nearby office. That would be my office. And because he's turned the ringer up so high we can hear it halfway down the block, it's jarring to say the least. 

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And, to be honest, I have one or two minor habits that annoy him. Ken will stroll into my office to see how I'm doing, only to find me playing Angry Birds Star Wars II. "Don't you think you should be working?" he asks. "I am working," I reply. "I'm thinking about how I'm going to restructure that paragraph about the progress made on the new Lower Colorado Basin Drought Contingency Plan." Eyes glazing over, he beats a hasty retreat—only water policy wonks want to hear about drought planning. Whether I was really deep in thought or just goofing off, his interruption has knocked me off my game. My train of thought derailed, I get further sidetracked from work and once again send Luke Skypeeper out to defeat evil Emperor Porkatine. 

I also have an unfortunate tendency to make Ken jump a foot or so when I try to tell him I'm leaving the house, because he has his own radio turned up high to whatever is streaming in his man cave or in his backyard woodworking shop. 

After a few months of just starting to drive each other a smidgen crazy, we finally sat down and worked out ground rules. Ken comes in around lunch time to see how I'm doing instead of popping in whenever; if he sees that I'm playing the keyboard as frantically as the Phantom of the Opera, he quietly steps away. If I hear the landline ringing, I'm to let it go to voicemail—at least until I can convince Ken to call the phone company and run a new extension out to his hobby space. And I'm going to knock louder at the entrance to the man cave, so he'll hear me and not risk a concussion from hitting the ceiling. (Here's why pushing retirement off for a few more years can be good for your health.) 

To solve the musical hassle, two days of the week he gets to select the music, two days belong to me, and the final day of the "work" week is reserved for radio station "KROL," the vast musical catalog of my iTunes account, which contains songs from both our collections. 

After smoothing out a few speed bumps, we're enjoying the adventure of being together all the time. One major plus: We can schedule a day off whenever we want, instead of waiting for the weekend. We can take a day trip to Sedona when it's not crowded with tourists, or enjoy dinner out without an hour's wait. But first I need to figure out where he put the microfiber dusters, because it's my turn to dust. 

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