Working From Home: Comfort Or Chaos?!
Whether it’s as a permanent arrangement, a day here and there or just a quick hour or so to get something finished off, most of us have probably worked from home at some point in our lives. Since having Joshua, the flexibility of being able to drop him off at nursery and then do a full day’s work at home rather than trekking all the way to London for a few hours and then all the way back again before he needs picking up has been really useful!
The big downside of working from home though is that it’s not the most comfortable of places, especially when it is littered with toys, toddler furniture that has been strewn across the place and the remains of fish fingers lovingly prepared, healthy, nutritious meals mushed into the chairs!
Comfort
Surprisingly not all furniture is designed to be hunched over for 9 straight hours whilst you tap away on the laptop either, so when I’m working at home I’m generally wandering around the house trying to find somewhere half comfortable to perch for a while.
SPOILER ALERT – there is nowhere comfortable in my house to sit and use a laptop for hours on end!
The sofa is fine for a while, until I realise I’ve been sitting at a slightly awkward angle and something starts to ache, or cramp up, or I can’t get up again without doing some kind of ungainly roll onto the floor! The dining room table is OK for a while, but our table is just a little bit too high for the chairs, so I end up with my wrists positioned in line with my neck as I type, so they start going cold and tingly pretty quickly! And the chairs are so old and saggy that my bum is almost touching the floor (as I type this!!). Not ideal!
If you’re only doing a few bits and bobs at home you might survive with what you’ve already got, but if you’re planning on making your home your main workplace it’s probably worth investing in some high-quality office chairs to give your back and your bum a bit of a break!
Storage
Then there’s storage space. If you’re a proper home worker you’re likely to need somewhere decent to stash your files and folders. Ideally somewhere that your small person can’t get into and hurl your paperwork everywhere! After all, it’s not ideal when your neatly arranged, date-ordered invoices and receipts are all thrown into the air, or put in the dishwasher. Or just binned!
Again, if you’re only planning on engaging in the occasional bit of laptop action at home you might just have to deal with the resulting chaos! But if you’re looking at setting up something properly for your home-based career it’s worth considering some proper ergonomic office furniture – after all, your toddler will make enough mess all on their own without you adding to it!
You might even consider going all out with your home working plans and either dedicate a room as your home office, or even build an extension so you can really have your own space so that it feels a bit like a proper office! Not that building an extension with a toddler is a stress-free experience in itself, but designing a room from scratch that you can call your own is pretty awesome! At least I assume it must be – unfortunately our extension is just one massive playroom full of plastic, talking toys and train sets at the moment…
Whatever you decide to do and however seriously you decide to treat working from home, best of luck with it!