Working From Home: Know Thyself Be True By Diane White McNaughton
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nce upon a time, you sat in a cramped cubicle, surrounded by a mouse maze of other cubicles, in a spacious corporate office, dressed in your best suit and serious shoes. You shared a coffeepot, a state-of-the-art copier and the latest episode of “The Office.” Fast forward a week. At the hands of an unprecedented pandemic, you’re working home alone in your college sweatpants, on your Big Comfy Couch, laptop glued to your legs. No co-workers, no commercialgrade office equipment, no standard-issue desks. What just happened?! When the governor encouraged tele-working and issued stay-athome orders in mid-March in response to the coronavirus, the need to pivot from congregate commercial office space to a private home office popped up faster than a Taylor Swift ballad after a bad break-up. Countless workers had to cobble together a home office overnight, or convert an office “for display purposes only” to a “real” office. With only a day or two to prepare, many home office set-ups ranged from a dining room table and laptop, to a full-fledged office straight out of “The Crown.” Work as we know it is changed forever, business and commercial real estate experts say, with many companies now able to expand without the need for brick-and-mortar office buildings. Thanks for the memories, COVID-19. Stir-crazy central Pennsylvanians in search of something completely different are now pushing furniture sales through the stratosphere. Wayfair, the online home mega-store for furniture, décor, outdoors and more, saw the number of active customers increasing 28.6 percent in one year. Wayfair stock is up 14.4 percent over the past year, while the overall S & P index was down almost two percent for the period. According to interior designer Laurie Foster at David’s Furniture, with stores in Mechanicsburg and Lower Paxton Township, most desks cost anywhere between $200 and $2,000. But you can go for office uber-extravagance. Just days before Christmas, David’s Furniture sold 14 HARRISBURG MAGAZINE SEPTEMBER 2020
a $17,000 handmade desk that had to be lifted by crane into a historic residence in Hershey. Foster says she is seeing more customers than ever looking for desks, cabinets, chairs and other pieces for a pandemic-induced home office. Planning is where you start, Foster says. Think: What would you need to be happy in that space? “Anymore, home offices are about productivity, not just the business of life,” she says, so homeowners should think about how much workspace and storage they need. In pre-pandemic days, if a homeowner needed to furnish a room off the entryway, homeowners often bought a weighty executive desk, a credenza and a bookcase, Foster says. They now need to swap out fashion for function.
As One Door Closes
Foster offers one simple feature to achieve that elusive “work-life balance:” a door. When the door is closed, the worker is in. That desk and door must be in a quiet place, away from the droning TV and the inquiring kids. Foster says a walk-in closet may even suffice for your office. It has privacy, peace, and that all-important door. Lighting is also important for any home office. A dark office can have a sedating effect. And a Zoom call with you in shadowy darkness can make you look more like a lover of the paranormal than an industrious team member. Planning starts with examining your work flow for surface area and workspace requirements. Consider the frequency of meetings, days worked. and what will work for you, Foster encourages. In some cases, a few good pieces of office furniture may not supply the working office environment you need. Though it may not be what you want to hear, you may just have to move if you are in an open-floor-plan house and both of you (mom and dad) with kids are working from home.
