Oh, Gentle Readers. What are we, 7 months into this pandemic? I hope you’re holding up ok.
At first, working from home was novel. If you didn’t have a dedicated home office, you set up where you could: kitchen table, lap desk in the living room, wherever. And that was ok.
But then we realized that this working-from-home thing was going to go on for a while. So we started tweaking things.
My husband confessed that his desk chair was hurting his back. Come to find out it was a kid’s chair from Ikea, for crying out loud! I gave him one of my colleagues’ chairs, since it’s not being used. (Sniff, sniff.)
One of my daughters realized that her microscopic desk wasn’t cutting it, so she Zooms (excuse me, Microsoft Teams) from her desk but does her work on the floor. Not ideal, but she seems to think it’s ok.
(I tried to get my kids to work in my office with me, but they refused. I tend to mutter and I sometimes think aloud, so who can blame them, really?)
SO. Given that we don’t know exactly how much longer we’ll be working from home, it’s time to step back and assess. Is your home office working for you?
If you’re space-challenged and working from the dining room table, that’s fine. But please squeeze in some kind of storage cabinet that’s dedicated to office stuff. It doesn’t have to look office-y, but attractive file cabinets exist if that’s what you need. It is SUCH a bummer to eat at one end of a table with a laptop and piles of paper at the other.
If you have a corner into which you can fit a desk, make the desk a handsome one. Even if it’s small. When this is over — and it WILL be over, eventually — you’ll have a lovely piece of furniture you can keep or give to your adult child for his/her first apartment. (Unless that apartment happens to be in your basement, but even then…)
If you’re lucky enough to have a dedicated home office, even a small one, assess it. If you have piles of paper all over the floor, it could be because you don’t have a good place to put them. You might need a larger file cabinet,
a narrow console table as an additional work surface,
and/or built-in shelving to maximize your space.
If your home office is functional but unattractive, IT’S TIME. Paint the walls an interesting color.
And address the windows. See if your trusty decorator can squeeze you in for some beautiful fabric Roman Shades, or order natural woven shades from The Shade Store.
And for heaven’s sake, please make sure your Zoom background is attractive.
Lest you think that I don’t practice what I preach, let me assure you that these suggestions are based on experience. I have no colleagues to use as a distraction, so I’ve been noticing EVERYTHING that’s wrong with my office — also known as Annie Elliott Design’s World Headquarters. So:
- First, I cleaned. Like a maniac I cleaned. I actually ruined two keyboards by Lysol-wiping them too often and too enthusiastically. Fact.
- I replaced the old FLOR tiles with new, lighter ones. (I have the super low felt floor tiles that you can roll office chairs over. That was a feat. I’d slide a piece of furniture one way, replace as many tiles as I could, slide the furniture the other way, and repeat and repeat. It was an absurd process, but I managed to do it solo, and the office looks much brighter now.
- I got rid of stuff. Boy, did I get rid of stuff. Five bags of paper went to the shredder, boxes of PR materials went to the basement, and outdated samples went back to their showrooms.
- And finally, I installed built-in shelving behind my desk. Should have done it years ago. The office looks enormous now, and we created so much storage space that not all of the shelves are filled yet.
The real purpose of this post, Gentle Readers, is to give you permission to spend a little time and money improving your workspace and brightening your workdays.
You know how people refer to “self-care,” and they tell you to “be kind to yourself?” Well, this is my version of that. I promise you, it will help.
Did you enjoy this post? If so, you may want to check out 7 sanity-restoring rules about trim color.
Annie Elliott Design is based in Washington, DC, with offices in St. Michaels, Maryland and Middlebury, Vermont. Annie’s design work and insights have appeared in numerous local and national publications, including HGTV Magazine, The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, The Washington Post, and Washingtonian Magazine.