My Tiny Home Office
SOMETHING SMALL Mail Holder by Alison Mazurek from @600sqftandababy
In 2020 when the pandemic hit, I was completely oblivious to how long we would be working from home. I thought it would be a couple of weeks, no big deal, and then we would be back to normal. So, my small dining table became my office, an arrangement that lasted a year before I finally accepted that I needed a longer-term solution.
Fast forward to fall 2020, I was bored out of my mind after living alone throughout the pandemic and my social life had reduced to socially distance walks and phone calls with friends, so I decided to use this extra spare time “productively” and applied to go back to school. I got accepted, and in January 2021 and started my Advanced Diploma in Sustainable Business Leadership at BCIT. Of course, it was completely online at this time, and so for the next year I worked from home from 8-5 on Teams meetings, and then several days a week I had classes from 5:30-9:30pm over zoom. The year after that, class went back to in person so I had the luxury of not looking at a screen after work. On the evenings I didn’t have class, and, on my weekends, I was working on assignments or working group projects (which there were A LOT of).
The chaos that was my dining table when I was working and in school, the double laptop and note book, reading three books at the same time life
At the time spending 12+ hours on my computer and my dining table no longer seemed to be a sustainable option. My head was tilted down all day and I was tired of eating my meals on my couch because I didn’t want to pack up my “office” every day.
I looked around my living space to see where I could squeeze in a desk. My apartment is one bedroom, 587 sqft, with an open concept living/dining/kitchen. The only place that would work was the small space between the wall and the couch, where I previous had my shelf with my record player and books. I moved the shelf to the other side of the room and found the smallest desk I could that just barely fit from IKEA. I also installed some floating shelves above the desk to help store some of the books I was reading for school and store a few office supplies.
My set up before I had a desk
My new set up with the home “office”
No, I don’t have a monitor, after a year of working at my kitchen table for a year, I mastered the art of the split screen and have continued to do my job just off my laptop for the last 3 years. Do I miss my extra two monitors I had at the office? Yes. But I just don’t have space for them so I have learned to adapt, and although I have to flip between a few files sometimes and it can be a pain in the ass, it works, and it is only less thing in my home.
I am glad I made the change because here we are in March 2023, I am still working from home most of the time, talking my team into meeting me at our completely vacant office once a week/month. I finished my Advanced Diploma and am now back to having friends over for dinner. The luxury of being able to leave my desk at the end of the day and have a physical delineation of space, with a raised screen so my neck isn’t killing me has been worth it. Best of all, I was able to stay in my apartment throughout this transition and make it work while so many people were getting into bidding wars over spaces with extra bedrooms or offices.