Our office
The other day Susy of Chiot’s Run gave us a virtual tour of her home office, which she very aptly titled Where the Magic Happens. (Apt because Susy’s blog – and her new food/cooking blog Eat out of the Bag – are lovely, magical places and if you don’t visit them already, I’d highly recommend you do so!)
Despite wannabe illusionist John’s best efforts, nowhere near as much magic happens here, but I thought I’d share some pictures of our office anyway. We have both worked from home for about six years now so it’s an important space in our lives.
See that little table at the bottom of the picture? It’s 87cm square and that used to be our office in our old house. It lived in our living room and was also our dining table and, since it was right next to the front door, the place where all our junk got dumped on the way into the house. The two of us squeezed our laptops, and invariably a few cats, onto it for a couple of years — which made it all the nicer when we moved to our new house and got to have a proper, dedicated office with proper dedicated desks even if one of us can’t keep her desk tidy. That’s my actually-pretty-tidy-for-me desk on right, John’s on the left and now the little table is where our friends sit when they work from here for the day. It used to get tidied away to the far corner of the room after every visit but now we’re lazy and it stays there all the time. Thankfully the room is big enough to handle our laziness.
The room is also big enough for a sofa – which is widely regarded as Lily-dog’s sofa. The cats/us/guests occasionally sit on it but usually only if that’s ok with Lily. The sofa was an eBay bargain – we had a small budget for it but managed to find this one & get it delivered for less than half the budget – but still gets covered with old blankets to soak up the daily dose of muddy dog stench ;) I love the colour of this blanket – so vibrant even though it was my grandparents’ and thus considerably older than me!
Our office is on the “lower ground floor” of our house – our house is built on a slope so there are more floors at the back than the front – and looks out over our garden and the woods beyond. When the houses were originally built in 1897, this would have been the kitchen hence there being such a large fireplace opening:
It also means there is a “back door” opening right out into the garden, which I think is Lily’s favourite thing about the room. When it’s warm, the door stays open all day and she & the cats patter in & out all day, while we listen to birdsong & chicken noises from the garden.
We’re not very good at hanging pictures on walls for some reason so there isn’t much to share in that regard but I do like this little print John bought in London last year – socks arranged like chromosomes.
Artwork aside, we have customised our own spaces. Me with all my clutter:
And John, with his stars and insects.
Whatever you do – whether it’s paid work, self-employed stuff or homemaking, what’s your main workspace like at home?
I’m not able to work and call myself “half a housewife” but I have a desk, filing cabinet and printer for our household accounts, but unfortunately the phone is in the sitting room. The kitchen is fine; not perfect but well organised. My sewing table is in the same (spare bed-) room as the desk, but my sewing box is in the sitting room, by my chair, ready for little hand sewing jobs, and my materials are in cupboards and trunks all over the place. Fortunately our place is small and on one floor. I reckon my disorganised organisation came about because aesthetics are far more important to me than being perfectly organised.
I enjoyed your guided tour -thank you. And the view outside your windows, oh!! How lovely. I’m sure in summer the temptation to procrastinate in the garden is large…
My work space for my working-from-home(I have an office but work from home sometimes) is an ikea desk and filing cabinet next to my bed, in my room. Not ideal, but having the filing cabinet is a big improvement on before! plus I use the top of it as a desk extension/clutter landing-area.
I have just redecorated the room that will be our spare bedroom/music room/craft room, so insofar as crafts count as work, that’s my new workspace. I also have kitchen-based work (windows face into the hillside – very dark at this time of year) and garden-based work. Right now, though, I’m in the dining room/office, which is Ian’s workspace, as he was out today. This room has the view, at least it does when there’s slightly less cloud.
that is just idyllic
thanks for sharing
martine
I’m just loving Lily-dog! I have THREE springers. Yes, you read that right! I too have a Lily (10), Jess (9) and Poppy (2). The spend all day going in and out of the garden. We call it ‘busy doing nothing’.
I don’t work from home, but use the (tiny) dining table, which is in front of the living room window for my crafty type stuff. The kitchen table is bigger, but it’s dark in there & cold & I can’t watch the birds whilst crafting, so the living room it is.