Your Home Office: Love it or Hate it?

I am cur­rently liv­ing in my ver­sion of a grass hut on the beach (it’s on the beach, but only a tiny patch of grass and none on the roof). And more to the point, I have been work­ing on a TV tray while seated on one end of my couch. While the view is amaz­ing (we’ll dis­cuss the bal­ance between dis­trac­tion and aes­thet­ics in another post), the “office” aspect of work­ing on the couch is not mak­ing the grade.

As an idea, it sure sounded great. And I totally grooved on it the first cou­ple of weeks. But when I had to add a pil­low to sit on and two at my back to keep me decently aligned with the key­board on my lap — I knew that the couch and I would not make it for the long-​​haul.

How did I come to be will­ing to even con­sider such a lack­adaisi­cal home office envi­ron­ment? Well, you have to under­stand that this is not my first home office. Nor will it be my last.

My first home office taught me a lot.

–It was in the dark­est room in the house.

I need light.

–It was the walk-​​through room between the liv­ing room and the kitchen.

I need privacy.

–My desk was a cor­ner of the din­ing room table. My chair was — you guessed it, a wooden, straight back din­ing room chair. I had a fold-​​up metal type­writer table on wheels for my state-​​of-​​the-​​art word pro­cess­ing type­writer. I sat hunched over to type because the typ­ing table (which exactly fit the word pro­cess­ing type­writer, by the way) had no place for legs and was too low for my chair.

I need a desk.

I did grad­u­ate from that dis­mal begin­ning. My next home office had a door and win­dows and a real desk with a pull out tray on which to put my even more state-​​of-​​the art word pro­cess­ing type­writer. Oh, and I had a chair on wheels that spun around so that I could either work at the desk or on the type­writer pulled out to the side. Whoo Hooo!

Home Office Success!

It gets bet­ter. For my next home office, I had an entire half a house. Yep. I bought a duplex. Opened up a wall, kicked out the ten­ants (well, they left on their own even­tu­ally), and lived in one half of the house while work­ing in the other half.

Pic­ture this – mul­ti­ple rooms, mul­ti­ple floors, and even a busi­ness entrance with sep­a­rate park­ing. I had arrived.

I have to admit, that this home office remains my favorite in many ways. And for the type of writ­ing, train­ing, and con­sult­ing that I was doing at the time, it was ideal. I had pri­vacy, a huge office with lots of desk space, a train­ing room, a meet­ing room, and kitchen. Clients could come to me and I could spread out to work on projects. And at the end of the day (when­ever I decided that it ended) I had only to walk through the door­way to my home on the other side of the wall.

Home Office Now …

And then I went to sea for five years.

Life is dif­fer­ent now. I no longer have my duplex. I no longer need that kind of space for my home office since I no longer have clients com­ing to me. Almost all of my work is online and when it is not, I am trav­el­ing. This is how I came to believe that work­ing from my couch might actu­ally be func­tional. Hey, if I hadn’t tried, I wouldn’t know for sure if work­ing from my couch would be prac­ti­cal and fit my needs.

Define Your Home Office Work Space

Your home office space should be defined first by need, then by func­tion­al­ity, and then by aes­thet­ics. I needed a work space when I moved to the beach, but my desk did not fit. So I gave away the desk and tried the couch.

Need neces­si­tated an inge­nious solu­tion. But in the end, func­tion­al­ity took precedence.

So, I bought a very small desk that fits the space avail­able. And because the aes­thetic of my work space is really impor­tant to me, I get to keep my view and the bright, sun-​​filled room. As I write this, I am watch­ing sea birds dive bomb for their break­fast only a few feet from my lanai. Amazing.

Define your work space at home care­fully, And be not afraid to make changes. Upgrade to more space if your job needs it. Down­grade to less. Keep it pretty, if that’s what you like. Keep it closet-​​like if you pre­fer a cave.

Samuel Clemens (Mark Twain) wrote a huge per­cent­age of his vol­umes of pub­lished work in an octagonal-​​shaped study perched on a high moun­tain top over­look­ing a lovely Chemung River val­ley. I have stood in the spot where his study perched and shared the view Mark Twain trea­sured. I have been in that study, although it now resides on the cam­pus of Elmira Col­lege. The study has glass all around. In it, Clemens expe­ri­enced the full range of sea­sonal change that upstate New York offers. The space would be con­sid­ered cramped with­out the vista; the view was ever chang­ing and lush.

“It is the loveli­est study you ever saw…octagonal with a peaked roof, each face filled with a spa­cious window…perched in com­plete iso­la­tion on the top of an ele­va­tion that com­mands leagues of val­ley and city and retreat­ing ranges of dis­tant blue hills. It is a cozy nest and just room in it for a sofa, table, and three or four chairs, and when the storms sweep down the remote val­ley and the light­ing flashes behind the hills beyond and the rain beats upon the roof over my head — imag­ine the lux­ury of it.”—Mark Twain, Let­ter to William Dean How­ells, 1874

How­ever you choose to cre­ate your work-​​from-​​home office, do your best to feel about it the way Clemens clearly felt about his.

Need. Func­tion. Aes­thetic. Don’t skimp on any of the three.

What are Your Home Office Challenges?

Tell us about your space. What do you love? What do you hate? What works, what does not work? What is funny, unique, odd, or even tragic? We’d love to hear about how y’all spend your days ensconced in your Work-​​from-​​Home offices.