Working from home - by Anita

Like many of you, I have been working from home since March and have only popped into the office once to collect paperwork. I know that many people have lost jobs or been temporarily laid off, so my thoughts are with you, if that's the case. I'm very grateful to have a position that just needs a computer and internet connection (doing the accounts for a small business). I had actually resigned from my current role, but that's been delayed due to coronavirus and thankfully my new job will be solely working from home anyway. Therefore I have been thinking of this adjustment in working practices as a dry run for my new position, whenever that may start.

We used to have a spare bedroom, but my Mum moved in with us a couple of years ago. Thankfully we have space for my husband to set up his Mac in our bedroom, and I now have my home office in the corner of our spacious lounge.

Our office may be larger, but I much prefer my view now!

We only have a small garden, but are lucky to have a green at the back with sycamore trees. I also have a good viewpoint for watching birds on our feeder and bird bath. 

Strangely enough, I have never used a Filofax for my work, but my Kensington is within easy reach to help me focus to jot down anything that isn't work related. It's definitely been an adjustment with solely working from home and in the early days, it could be a bit too easy to get involved in home stuff, so I look at my Filofax once I'm done for the work day. At work, I normally use a slim A4 hardback notebook and Trello for recurring tasks (I used Wunderlist for many years, but sadly that was recently shut down, so I am trying out Trello, which is Kanban-based). 

Once I had decided to resign from my current job, I had a good think about what I might need to make working from home a bit easier. I didn't want to spend too much, but these were my essentials.

My first purchase was a used medium size Longchamps Le Pliage bag.
The majority of my new work will be done using cloud accounting software, so I won't need much paperwork. However, I decided that it would be useful to have a spacious work bag that won't take up too much room when not in use, so the Le Pliage ticked all these boxes. I managed to pick one up quite cheaply on eBay and it's perfect for holding a number of lever arch folders by my desk, without being in the way and it holds lots for its size. It's perfect as a mobile office too as they are comfy to carry and can take quite a weight. I had thought that I could take it with me to work in a coffee shop, but sadly that's going to be some way off for our household as we're still shielding due to my Mum's age and health issues.

I share our home with my Mum and husband, so I finally bought my first pair of wireless headphones. I've never owned any before and they are brilliant! My Mum can be on the other side of the lounge watching TV and I can work quite happily without distraction. 

My last purchase was a Periea handbag organiser. I'd originally bought this for my Filofax supplies, but then realised that it would be perfect for my home office. This one is the large size, but medium would really be big enough. It's very handy as it holds all my smaller office items, like my calculator, hole punch etc. As you can see from the photo above, it sits behind my monitor out of the way, but is close enough for me to get to when I need it.

I know that some people use the 'one life, one Filofax' approach, but in the past I've preferred to keep them separate. However, once I start my new role, I will be moving away from set working hours, so I can then see the benefit of having everything all in one place. I think it would be a struggle to fit all of that into personal size, so I may then consider upgrading to A5. However, for the time being, I am very content in my Kensington and will move into my Van der Spek, when I fancy a change.