Healthy (and Separate) Home Work Spaces
Remember going to the office to work? The buzz of colleagues and copy rooms? Whether you’re yearning to get back to the office, or are totally embracing a new work from home life, one thing’s certain: the requirements for where we work will never be the same.
So where’s the office or school in your life now? How creative have you had to get to set up a place to work since the pandemic hit? Are you jockeying for the dining room table, or finding that you never leave your bedroom? Where do you get your “desk-stuff” done? Does it matter?
Well, that depends -when Covid hit, we entered the era of hot-desking at home, forced to invent unconventional spaces for work and school. Activities that always used to happen elsewhere were folded into home life. Hot-desking means you don’t have an assigned workplace. Instead, you take whatever space is available. This trend has fundamentally changed peoples’ needs and expectations for furnishings and home design.
With Covid we’ve been hot-desking from every room in the house, from kitchen islands to laundry rooms. If all you really need is a lap top and connectivity you can work anywhere, right? The flexibility affords us the opportunity to work from the coffee shop or the lake.
Take this fine example of the hot desking my sister jerry-rigged in a bunk room at our cabin: a serving cart complete with mousepad support made from Styrofoam and duct tape! Not a long term work space, but it did make working from the lake possible.
An infinitely fluid and flexible hot-desking at home situation is not a healthy, long-term solution, however. We need to start thinking of how to incorporate healthy work spaces into our homes with the same consideration we give kitchens and bathrooms. Think about it - we don’t cook in the closet or bathe in the kitchen for good reason.
Just as important, we should to pay attention to how these spaces help us to separate our work lives from everything else that happens at home. Afterall, our homes are not offices open 24/7! They’re places for restoration and so much more. Keeping boundaries is important.
What we have learned from hot-desking at home is that there are variety of spaces and situations where we can be productive. Consider your recent history of hot-desking at home. What’s been working for you, what hasn’t?
Ask yourself these questions:
How does natural light affect your mood or ability to focus?
Do you need a closed door, or does open space help you think?
Are you a filer (you easily sort and put away), or a piler (you always find what you need in various piles around you)?
What colors affect your mood and productivity?
What kind of seating helps keep your mind alert and engaged?
Your answers begin to define your ideal home office space. This may or may not be the conventional desk or room with 4 walls. Whatever describes your ideal workspace, getting it right will have a profound effect on your productivity and quality of work.
Growing tired of your current work environment at home? Wishing for a little more space and productivity? A bit more separation between your work day and everything else home is supposed to be about? I have the vision and resources to help you create a modern work space in your home that does it all. The first step is a free discovery call. Schedule yours by simply clicking here!