Tips for Working from Home Part 1

Working from home… Sounds like a dream, right? I never really considered it an option because I spent twenty years in construction management which meant being on the jobsite every day. Fifty, sixty, and even seventy hour work weeks in places all over the south. Large cities like Birmingham, and Atlanta or vacation destinations like Pensacola, Florida. All the way to places you don’t hear about until they spring up on you like Newnan, Georgia or Pascagoula, Mississippi. Then there are places that I’ve been that I still have nightmares about like Kemper County, Mississippi. All places that required daily attendance and long hours at a desk in your office. The thing is, we all may have dreamed about working from home while in places like this or in a corporate office, but no one really tells you just how different it is. Until now!

Sure, the first thought when dreaming about working from home is that we won’t bother wearing pants or those uncomfortable shoes. For me, it was steel toed boots when we would have to leave the comfort of our office to perform a site review. May I never wear another pair of steel toed boots again! AMEN! Fact- home office workers don’t wear pants, well at least not this one. Pants are for the birds! Shoes? I have the ugliest pair of named brand rubber shoes you have ever seen sitting in my home office, just for me to slip on to check the mail every day. Other than that, gym clothes and bare feet every day! One of the first things (besides no pants and shoes) that I want to point out actually involves gym clothes.

Working from Home Fact #1- The Activity Difference

You would be surprised how much less active you tend to become just from transitioning from the business to working from home. No need to wake up two hours early and prepare for the day. Wear what you slept in after waking up ten minutes ago… No matter if you work at your desk part time or full time in the business setting, moving to the home office can really take the sedentary lifestyle to an entirely new and unhealthy level. The thing is, you won’t notice it at first. That bliss from waking up and walking less than fifty paces to your office will blind you to a lot of things until you actually have to put on a pair of pants a couple months later.

I didn’t notice it until I had put on about forty pounds! YES! I SAID FORTY! Like whoa, hold up what’s this? Successfully working from home in a healthy way requires a level of discipline that you may not be accustomed to. For example, have you ever been home and so bored that you get up to check the refrigerator like three times in an hour? Imagine doing that for the entire work week for months on end. Bored snacking is a lot bigger problem working from home in your home office than it is in the business office. It’s like this- you’re working and in the zone. You’re focused and getting things done after all, multiple studies have shown that people who are working from home are more productive than on-site workers. You’re grinding away when all of the sudden you realize your keys on your keyboard are greasy. Then you notice the half-eaten bag of chips to your left. You don’t know how they got there, but somehow you ate them.

If you’re working from home, it is imperative that you offset your office time with active time. Join a gym, or play a few rounds of golf a week. Take a walk in the morning and evening. Plan this out from the onset or you will be like me, trying hard to undo thoughtless damage to your body. If you played tennis when you were younger, pick it back up a couple days a week. Whatever it takes to avoid this pitfall, do it! Now there is a practical solution that I can share with you that will be a benefit should you be so inclined.

Working from Home Pro Tip- Get a Standing Desk

I wish someone had told me about the activity drop off that can come from working from home. I wish they had pointed me toward a standing desk for the home office as a practical solution to get me out of the office chair and on my feet. Studies have shown that standing while working at a desk for as little as twenty minutes a day can be the catalyst to an entire lifestyle change. (click the link below for a deep dive into the benefits of a standing desk.) To me, if my desk can give me a kickstart to a more active and healthier lifestyle working from home, then I see that as a huge win!

• Desk Risers and Sit to Stand desk Converters

As an example of a standing desk for working from home, let’s look briefly at this model from Office Star Products which is a leader in home office furniture.

What I like about this standing desk for the home office is that it has an L shape for more desktop when sitting. It provides excellent storage with the drawer configuration as well. But for me, thinking outside the box that stool height chair that’s used for staging the photo could allow you to work both sitting and standing without having to move the standing desk to a sitting position. The online marketplace of Madison Liquidators has several awesome stool height office chairs available to serve this purpose. It would be a huge just start in your move to working from home if you had a standing desk!

Working from Home Fact #2- A home Office isn’t a Business Office

Sure, that sounds self-explanatory but I’m taking this one beyond surface level. I wish I knew when I first started working from home what I know now, especially when it came to selecting the office furniture for my home office. I allowed my twenty year career experience in a professional setting to dictate which desk I purchased, and let me tell you, I went overboard. I selected a fantastic L shaped desk from Harmony Collection in an attractive Newport Gray finish. The issue I have, is that it is more desk than I need. From my experience in a business setting, the more desk that you have the more productive you can be. That’s not necessarily true in a home office.

Now before I really get into this, I want to say that the desk I selected for my home office is of the highest quality and is very attractive. I have absolutely nothing negative about the desk’s ability to serve my workflow at all. BUT… In my home office, it’s kind of a monstrosity. I would show you a picture of it but I have it junked up just the way I like it! Trust me. While it fits within the space exactly as I thought it would, when working from home- less is more! There isn’t a need to maintain a professional appearance and certainly no reason to try to make your home office feel like where you just came from! Maybe what works there, doesn’t necessarily fit working at home.

Working from Home Pro Tip- Find a Style Flow Between Home and Office

Madison Liquidators’ brand partners have really good home office furniture available on our online marketplace. Find a model that is functional but fits within the flow of your style when working from home. For me, if I had it to do over again, I would probably end up with something like this…

It’s professional and stylish but doesn’t scream “I belong in a business office!” It actually has more storage than my current desk wile having a nice open “homey” feel to it. Couldn’t you just see your kids sitting here doing homework in the evening? If you have kids any way. It functions the same without transporting you out of your home into a business setting. You can be at home and at work without compromising the home stylings of one of your rooms. Working from home doesn’t mean you have to bring that same work environment home! Be comfortable!

Maybe you can’t commit an entire room to the home office when working from home and need something like this. That’s okay, if you work from a laptop this is more than enough home office desk for you, and the storage is still pretty good. Notice how it blends in with the staging. This small home office desk could be perfect for someone who is ready to begin working from home but can’t commit an entire room in their home to office space.

Working from Home Fact #3- You Will Need to Find Balance

Working from home is a huge transition, I mean huge! Right out the gate you will probably find what worked in the business office doesn’t always crossover to the home office. You’ve seen that already in the office furniture choices I made versus what I would today. However, at home sometimes the 9-5 has to be more like 8-12 break 6-10 or if you are a professional insomniac like me, you may work from midnight to 9am, then keep working because you have nothing else to do…

All of the sudden, you are thrown into a professional setting within your own home. The place where a lot of us have spouses and children and pets or what you will eventually call distraction #1, #2, and #3. Full transparency, sometimes the refrigerator is distraction #4. Working from home in your home office will significantly change the routine that you have followed for your professional life. There will be some transition time when you first begin to work from home.

Working from Home Pro tip- Boundaries

From the onset of working from home, you must establish boundaries between your work and your distractions… I mean family. “If I’m in the home office, I’m not here” I remember hearing myself say. But that will not stand for long, especially with the children. If they follow you to the bathroom, they will have no problem following you to the home office. Personally, you are going to have a trial and error season to find out what works for you. When I first started, I was excited to put the Price is Right on in the background. It took me back to my childhood because whether it was summertime or being out of school sick, that show was must watch television. But after a couple weeks, I stopped working all together for that hour and just watched the show. I had to let it go!

Same goes for all those streaming services we have, or a radio playing. Background noise is one thing but now we are up to distraction #7 or #8. You will have to commit to actually working when working from home. Everyone in the house must also understand that too, because if they don’t, it will be very difficult. But also understand, these people are your family they are going to be there in your home office. We love them and will need to be patient with them during the first few months of the transition of working from home.

Final Thoughts

I actually have several more working from home tips for you but this is already pretty long so we will break here and, in the future, I will pick back up with a part two. As I sit in my home office where I have been working from home for a couple years now, I hope these tips help you in some way with your transition from the business office to the home office. Over the past few years there has been a huge increase in working from home jobs while there isn’t much useful information out there on the practical change that it brings, I hope this has helped in some small way. However, if you need more information about working from home or purchasing home office furniture, then reach out to our customer support team.

You can reach us by calling 888-831-1012, and we will be glad to help in any way we can. Our team has many years of customer support in all areas from conceptualization, to budgeting, to scheduling, and installation. If you want to furnish a home office but don’t know where to start, our team can walk you through every step and help you from beginning to end. Our team isn’t all about making the sale, they are about helping people who need office furniture and we know it’s a big step to move to working from home. So if you aren’t exactly sure where to begin furnishing your home office, give us a call today!