It’s hard to believe we’ve been living in this alternate reality for 3 weeks now. It’s been 3 weeks since Ali has gone to school, since work has been normal, and since we’ve been able to hang out with our friends. Not just here in Colorado, but everywhere. This time of year we’re usually planning summer trips, but this year, we’re in one giant worldwide holding pattern. It’s weird. So I thought I’d share what we’re doing.
On the homefront, things are made easier by our kids being young. After talking with parents of kids even just a few years older, I’m realizing how lucky we are to have young kids while this is happening. While they’re a little confused why everything is closed, and why we can’t see friends and extended family, they’re mostly happy rolling with it and getting so much family time. Since Ali is in preschool we don’t have to worry about actually homeschooling them, but because Ali has asked to be homeschooled for the past few years (mostly in the morning when he just wants to hang out and not go to preschool), it’s giving us a fun opportunity to “play school” everyday. Though we still take weekends off. Jurgs just goes with the flow, and expresses occasional annoyances about Ali being home all the time and in his space.
At work, we were making changes nearly daily for the second half of March. We would feel like we had a good plan in place, and then a new executive order would come from the Governor that sent us scrambling. We did our best to stay ahead of the mandates, and I’m proud to say that we always went above and beyond the minimum requirement, mainly because our staff clearly communicated what they were comfortable with and everyone worked together to find a way to keep ourselves healthy while keeping our business running as best we could. As of today, we are operating our warehouse and fulfilling orders (permitted under our statewide mandate) using a skeleton crew of 5-6 people in at a time spread out over 10,000+ square feet. If anyone is interested in more of the details, I’m happy to share.
Personally, seeing what we’ve gone through as a small business has me wanting to support as many small businesses as I can throughout this pandemic. Jordan and I have been ordering takeout 1-2 times a week from our favorite local restaurants and tomorrow we’re going to buy new running shoes from our local running store, Runners Roost, instead of from Zappos or Amazon. Looking ahead to Easter presents and just general activities to keep the kids happy and occupied, I’m trying to find smaller online shops to support, instead of throwing things in my Amazon cart. Don’t get me wrong – Amazon has its place, especially if you’re ordering essentials, but we have to be mindful of where our dollars go if we want our favorite small businesses to survive this. In my next post I’ll share some of my small biz finds.
How are things going for you? What would be interesting to hear about from our side?
