The Work From Home Checklist: Things to Do Before You Leave the House

More and more people these days are freelancing or working for themselves. This also means that more and more people are working from home, which in turn means more and more people are becoming unhygienic shut-ins with diminishing social skills. At first the idea of working form home seems awesome, it doesn’t take long though to realize that you are very slowly going insane. Most people get off work and look forward to getting home and relaxing, for those who work from home, relaxing means getting the fuck out of the house, and usually getting drunk. Below is a checklist of things to make sure you do before you leave the house after working from home all day. If you’ve ever worked from home, you’ll know exactly what I mean:

1. Have you showered today? 

When “getting ready for work” consists of watching an episode of Game of Thrones while eating a bowl of cereal, and when your “commute” is trudging across your room to your desk, showering often gets put on the back burner. You’re like, “Really, who am I gonna see today? The creep who lives across the way and stares into my window is too far way to smell me.” And so you go about your work day without really caring. When it’s time to finally leave the house and you say “Did I shower today or was that yesterday?” Your best bet is to shower anyways, just in case.

2. Have you brushed your teeth?

Same as above really, but even more forgettable. We often brush our teeth while doing other things and it’s not as immersive as, you know, getting in a porcelain tub where hot water falls from above. So brushing your teeth can get completely overlooked. Are you leaving your house? Nobody wants to smell what your dreams tasted like last night. Go brush your teeth.

3. Have you talked to anyone today…other than yourself? 

When you work from home, often times the closest thing you have to human contact is masturbating to internet porn. Wow…I think I just wrote the saddest sentence of my life. But it’s true! I mean sure, you interact with people by emailing them and asking them to fucking pay you already, and you might leave a snarky comment on twitter or Facebook for a friend, but believe it to not, that is not human interaction. I’ll sometimes (read: all the time) find my self speaking out loud to myself throughout the day. I’ll be like, “I can’t believe that motherfucker hasn’t paid me yet…” and I can’t even pretend I’m talking to my dog because I’m not responsible enough to have one. If you plan on leaving the house, especially if you have an important meeting or a date, try to run a few errands on the way so that at least you have some practice talking to people and actually looking them in the eye. Otherwise you end up like this:

4. Are you wearing proper clothing?

I’ve already made it disgustingly clear that when  you work from home you have nobody to impress. Therefore you wear some really ridiculous things while working. This is a real photo I took of myself when I realized I was dressed like a blind person who was allowed to pick out their own clothes:

Those stripes and that plaid! Holy shit! If you’re not self aware enough you might actually leave the house looking like that sad bastard in the photo above. It’s one thing to run over to the corner store for some milk looking like this (is it really Stuart, is it?) but if you’re going somewhere you’d like to be viewed with respect and as a human being, make sure to set aside time to actually pay attention to your appearance.  Jerry Seinfeld explains it best:

5. Pick up your room.

Right now my room looks like it’s just been vacated by a band of junkie squatters. There’s clothes everywhere and magazines and books and a bunch of mail that needs to be taken care of. Why? Well, mostly because I’m a highly functioning train wreck, but also because my room is also my office and my living room. I’m always like, “eh, I’m too busy to clean this shit up right now” but honestly it’s because I spend so much time in this room that the clothes on the floor look as natural as the art on the walls. Clean your room before you leave the house otherwise it becomes a sick cycle of not giving a fuck, and you’re less likely to get fucked if you don’t give a fuck. Nobody wants to be brought home to a pigpen of a room…except maybe Pigpen.

6. Do one noticeable chore.

If you live by yourself this one doesn’t really apply, but if you live with a significant other or roommates this one is huge. If you work at home people are for some reason think your life is really like this:

Because you don’t go to an office all day, the people you live with don’t really get the fact that you are actually working. They think that since you’re working from home you also have time to do household chores. This can cause obvious tension. When this became an issue with an ex-girlfriend I used to live with I just made sure all the dishes were done every single day before she got home with work. That way she couldn’t give me shit because, “Look! The dishes are done!”.

Do you work from home? What things am I missing from this list? Leave them in the comments.

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images from IlanaWexler, weird space, esscentualalchemy, someecards, quickmeme, quickmeme