Julie sent me an excerpt from today’s Unshelved blog discussing a problem we’ve been banging our heads against for a while now. I’ll quote the pertinent section:
Our old family office had stations for me, my wife Sara, my housemate … Jana, and our kids. But while I work in the office 8 or more hours a day, everyone else just drops in for a half hour now and again. So now in addition to my permanent station the new office … has a nice old round wood table … two chairs, and a power strip (the printers and server went into a closet). Jana and Sara drift in, plug in their laptops, do some work, and drift out. The table is perfect for meetings (family and otherwise), paying bills, and the occasional need to spread out.
When we furnished our home office five years ago, Alex was two and Ana was still over a year off. The boy already had his own computer (for educational games) and we were planning on having another child so we decided to cram four desks into the smallest room of our house. The logic was that naturally everyone would need their own computer and that putting them all in the same room would give us the opportunity to keep an eye on the kids’ web browsing habits. We also felt strongly that each of the kids would need their own horizontal space for doing homework.
Well, five years went by and over time it has become pretty obvious that nobody goes into the study unless they absolutely must. The furniture is nice, the task lighting is adequate, and there’s a small window for natural light and fresh air. The problem is, when you put the necessary paperwork and office supply storage for running a family into the same small room as four desks it just becomes an unpleasant environment. As soon as Julie and I each had laptops, the study became storage rather than workspace. The allure of the cozy wingback chairs and sofa in the living room combined with the house-blanketing wifi was too great to resist. You get more work done (and have more fun doing it) when you’re in the most comfortable space. This is also the case for homework of course. Alex does his in the same place I did as a kid – at the dining room table while dinner is being prepared. We’re right there to help him through any problems and he has a vast, well-lit table to spread out on and be more productive.
In the ensuing conversation we hammered out the details of our new workspace. It ended with Julie proclaiming her undying love for sofas and both of us anxious to clean off and disassemble two desks so there’s room for a sofa and a nice coffee table in their place. Eventually we’ll replace the two remaining desks with one big desk and lots of shelves/cubbies over it to hold the necessary stuff. The big desk will be for paying the bills, doing taxes, or anything else that requires having lots of paper out at once. The sofa and coffee table will be the perfect place (when combined with the existing lighting) for reading, blogging, uploading photos from our cameras, doing homework, etc. We’ve already replaced the home server with an NSLU2 and two Passports so our file server now requires about a quarter of a square foot of shelf space. The printers can go on an end table next to the sofa with USB cables an easy reach for nearby laptops. As a final touch, we’ll remove the (previously closed and blocked by a desk) door between the study and living room and close the one leading to the hallway instead. It will end up being a semi-secluded extension of the living room rather than a room in its own right.
Tonight Alex learned how to Google by watching me locate his favorite flash games. Julie wandered into the study this evening and found him on YouTube watching nintendo character related fan animation. After getting over the initial shock (and concern) we laughed about the coincidental timing. It’s going to be fun converting our old-school office into the home productivity equivalent of the corner coffee house. A place we can all hang out, get things done, and have fun together.
Categories: home improvement, kids and parenting, toys
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, by Beth Lisick. I almost didn’t make it past the first chapter because I found her writing lacking compared to some of the bloggers I read daily. Plus I didn’t like her personality. By the end of her year-long odyssey, I felt like I could almost enjoy her as a casual acquaintance, but her relentless cynicism would probably keep us from becoming close friends.
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