Small Steps: Creating an Effective Workspace

An inexpensive solution.

 One of the best things about my job is that I have the ability to work from home. Whether it's an extra half hour at night to help my boss finish something, or a couple weeks at a time while my Prince is traveling, it's a huge blessing to avoid the hour-long commute and work from here.

I've never been able to do this before, so there was a bit of a learning curve in November when I first tried to do it for a string of days in a row. One of the things I learned was that our old desktop computer wasn't really up to the task – it guzzled down the electricity, downloaded mountains of updates almost daily, didn't like the remote log-in program, and was hard to set up in a functional space. Border collies, we have found, are not great respecters of cords and wires. They slide through them, get their paws tangled while trying to rescue to ball, and have no compunction about dropping their ball, their chin or their paws on your keyboard.

Why yes, that is an unloved border collie
and his blue ball of awesomeness waiting
for me to quit fooling around and get back
to what's really important.  :)

We made it through, of course, and I started thinking about how to make this more functional next time around. Experimentation proved that the end of our kitchen counter made the ideal work center. It's centrally located, so I can throw the ball for the furries, keep an eye on (and soak up heat from) the fireplace, gets lots of natural light, and is right next to the kitchen so I can keep an eye on dinner or make a cup of tea without effort. It has an outlet for plugging in the laptop and the phone, enough counter space to spread out papers, and is high enough to be safely out of Border Collie reach. But working hours at a time standing up was getting old.

So I bought myself a bar stool. Just shy of $30 at Target, it fits in well with the rest of our décor and has turned the counter end into the perfect workspace for me. Working from home this week has proved much smoother, and I know that when it's time for my Prince to travel again I'll be prepared for a much more effective run than I had last time. (Many thanks to my Prince for putting the stool together for me when we got it home!)

This workspace isn't what I initially imagined working from home would look like, but I'm delighted to found a (cheap) solution that fits my needs and makes the most of our resources.