WORKING FROM HOME

Working From Home: Know Thyself Be True

By Diane White McNaughton

Once 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 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.

Many people even cobble together a card table for their desk, she says, which is workable. Just invest in a good, ergonomic chair.

If you don’t want to sit all day, you can invest in an economical desk that adjusts from sitting to standing. A two-tier sit and stand desk can be purchased in white from Wayfair for only $100.

Her advice on color: “For God’s sake, don’t paint it gray!” Harrisburg has so many rainy days anyway, and if you have Seasonal Affective Disorder especially, gray can be a giant Decorating Downer, she warned.

She says some home-workers are using their basement. In this case, they need bright colors that energize, along with good lighting. If that basement is without windows, she advises against CFCs or fluorescent lights.

But remember to check for an echo in Zoom meetings, Foster advises. And basement or not, note the background in Zoo, Skype or Teams in meetings. Will your teenager walk by in a towel? Or is there an old Grateful Dead poster from college on the wall?

Even if you don’t have added space, Foster says you can add file cabinets that are more writing desks. Matching faux cabinets can act as end tables. Today’s best writing desks come in all sustainable woods like mango and acacia. Many have three shallow drawers across the front.

Popular desks come in L-shape or rectangular. They can be contemporary chic, in steel, or more traditional, in wood. Most workers use desks that are white, black, silver, or walnut. Chairs can come in all colors, including Barbie pink and peacock blue. Dining room tables also make for a great desk, as they are usually the right height. A kitchen table or dining room table leaves can transition from workspace to eating space. Foster highly recommends a Stressless chair from Norway. It moves with you and is the height of ergonomic design. “It has ruined me for other chairs,” Foster says. She says they also make office chairs with a pneumatic lift, and, for core-strengthening, you can even sit on a medicine ball on occasion.

She says most home-workers want writing tables, such as farmhouse industrial and L-shaped set-ups, which are highly functional. Some have half-hutches as an option.

Foster suggests that office workers consider “staggering lighting levels,” and using color, art, and fans for a dash of panache.

If you have a task light, have it come from your left so it won’t cast a shadow if you are right-handed.

If you work in the basement, she says to avoid fluorescent lights and CFC, and never leave an unsightly bulb exposed.

If cords are running on the floor, tape them down or place a fun throw rug over them.

A Home Office that Works

Rose Zettlemoyer, a marketing manager at the Harrisburg-based customer call center, Dasher, has been working from home in her Middletown Cape Cod since March 16. Fortunately, she already had a desk in her house because she is the President of the school’s booster

association. Her boss provided her with a laptop, and the printer was already there.

She first set up her work station in the dining room. With her 16- year-old cheerleader-daughter and 17-year-old football player-son home, and a steady parade of people in and out, she needed a more private area. That became even more vital because she often deals with confidential information. She moved upstairs to the extra bedroom.

They had to move the Wifi box to her son’s room—right below where her office is.

She also realized that, “Eight hours in a dining room chair wasn’t working.” She bought a regular office chair.

The hardest part for her has been separating work and home. Her husband is an essential worker so he is not working from home. She has to ensure that her kids are doing their school work while she is getting her work done. They have to be quiet on her conference calls, and she on their Zoom classes.

The one big upgrade they had to make: she had an older cell phone, and the latest apps were not compatible with her older phone.

For sanity breaks, she takes her phone with her and walks with her neighbor, who is also working from home.

Her plastic alien “Hermy” hangs above her desk for comic and stress relief. She also set up paintings done by daughter.

“I just made it my own,” Zettlemoyer says.

Foster from David’s salutes her choices: “Create as cheerful of a space as possible.”

“You have to know yourself.”

“David’s has over 100 vendors so we can truly do everything: flooring, lighting, window coverings, we do it all.” She even created a cave-like work space for a radiologist working from home. No job is too unorthodox.

“We can make it look any way you want. We respect people’s budget,” Foster says.

Beauty aside, the office must function first.

Foster thinks about carpal tunnel syndrome often.

If your desk is about 30 inches high, your chair should be, from the top of your chair to the underside, about 8 to 10 inches away.

Your wrists should not be higher than your elbows.

To test out a desk-and chair combination, Foster jokes, “Assume the position.”

Set up your work station and see how high you sit. Can you reach your printer easily? Your phone charger? Your files?

Foster is prepared for your toughest design challenges.

“If I don’t get hugs and tears at the end, I feel like I failed,” Foster says.

Thanks to area designers like her and office supply companies, home-workers are finding success at home sweet home. 7