10 Weird But Unavoidable Things That Happen When You Work From Home
Remote work comes with a whole set of strange and funny situations you can't escape.
Magnet Me | Unsplash I’ve been working from home full-time or mostly full-time for the past 5 years now. When I tell people about my work situation, their first reaction is often, “I’m so jealous! I wish I could hang out at home all day.” And, yeah, many parts of working from home are pretty sweet, but truth be told, this lifestyle seriously skews your view of reality. Over the course of months and years of working from home, many odd habits and quirky routines start to feel totally normal. Here are a few of them.
Here are 10 weird but unavoidable things that happen when you work from home:
1. Viewing pants as totally optional
When you work at home, alone, pants are most certainly not required. You might even find you do your best work without them. Unfortunately, this is not a generally accepted view in society. It becomes this weird form of rebellion against pre-pandemic office norms. You start to feel almost silly putting on "real" pants just to walk from your bedroom to your home office. The really strange part is how it affects your productivity and mindset.
Some people find they actually focus better in comfortable clothes, while others discover they need to maintain some clothing boundaries to feel "work ready." You end up developing these personal rules like "pajamas are fine, but I draw the line at underwear-only meetings."
2. Getting out of bed five minutes before you need to be at work
fizkes / Shutterstock
The ability to walk 15 feet from your bedroom to your office at the beginning of your workday, often with a toothbrush still dangling out of your mouth, is both a blessing and a curse.
It lets you optimize sleep time and completely removes the stress of a morning commute, but it also makes you forget how long it takes to actually get ready and go to other places. I can wake up 10 minutes before I need to be at my dentist appointment across town at rush hour, right? Wrong.
3. Talking to yourself at length
I think most people talk to themselves occasionally, whether it’s a quick pep talk before a job interview or a to-do list muttered to themselves on the way to the post office. But when you work from home, those fleeting moments of self-talk often become full-blown conversations.
It's partly because our brains are wired for social interaction, and when that's missing, we create it ourselves. Talking through problems out loud actually helps with cognitive processing, but at home, there's no colleague to bounce ideas off, so you become both the speaker and the audience.
4. Taking showers in the middle of the day, just because
The hardest thing about transitioning to an in-office job after working from home for a long time? Not being able to tell your boss, “I’m gonna take a quick shower to clear my head” after a stressful team meeting. There's something oddly liberating yet vaguely unsettling about the midday shower phenomenon when you work from home. The hot water hits differently when the sun is streaming through the bathroom window at full strength. It feels simultaneously like self-care and like you're getting away with something you shouldn't be.
5. Feeling like you should get some kind of award for putting on a bra
Because seriously, that requires effort, valor, and diligence. And it's not just about the shows themselves. It's partly because working from home removes so many of the external structures that used to automatically guide our day.
There's no commute forcing you into real clothes, no office environment with social expectations, no physical separation between "home you" and "work you." When those boundaries disappear, your brain starts celebrating much smaller victories because they represent intentional choices rather than automatic routines.
6. Scheduling your work around a daytime talk show
You might realize that it’s worth it to work through lunch to take an extended break when The Chew comes on. It’s all about balance and priorities, people.
And it's not just about the shows themselves. The rhythm of daytime TV becomes your work rhythm. Commercial breaks become natural transition points between tasks. The predictable format gives structure to an otherwise shapeless workday. You know exactly when to take a coffee break (during the cooking segment) or when to tackle your most boring tasks (during the celebrity interview you don't care about).
7. Forming a genuine friendship with the Amazon delivery guy
Not that many of his customers are always home for deliveries, so it’s easy to get to talking while you sign for your Sephora delivery. All those little talks add up, and pretty soon you’re excitedly greeting him by name and asking how his daughter is doing in calculus.
The relationship deepens through small recognitions of each other's humanity. What makes it weird is the intimacy without an actual friendship infrastructure. You might know their route schedule better than their last name.
8. Cleaning your kitchen as part of your creative process
Drazen Zigic / Shutterstock
I don’t know about you, but something about scrubbing a pan really gets my mind moving when I’m feeling stuck. And I don’t think I would feel as enthusiastic about kitchen-cleaning as a brainstorming technique if I were staring down an office kitchen filled with random people’s leftovers and crusty coffee mugs. It’s so much more meaningful when it’s my own filth I’m cleaning.
9. Relocating your workspace to your bed when you’re tired/crampy/cold
This is a pretty sweet perk, I have to admit. The weird part is how it becomes genuinely productive despite seeming completely unprofessional. There's something about the cocoon-like environment that can actually enhance focus, with no office distractions, optimal comfort levels, and everything you need within arm's reach. You start to understand why cats always choose the most inappropriate but cozy spots to conduct their important cat business.
10. Considering the squirrels that hang outside of your office window to be close friends
When you don’t have coworkers, your workday connections can become, well ... slightly non-traditional. As is the case with the family of squirrels that live outside my window, who all have names and distinct personality profiles. Oh, look! Shelly is stealing vegetables from my neighbor’s garden again! Sigh. That is so Shelly.
Winona Dimeo-Ediger is the editor in chief of Livability.com. Her work has appeared in Rolling Stone, Country Living, National Geographic, and NPR.
