20 October 2014

A sneaky bit of gardening

I discovered another sneaky advantage to having my office in my home today. The weather is starting to pick up with the approaching summer, so today at lunchtime, I headed out into the sun in the garden and did half an hour of weeding in the back garden at lunchtime! It's only a small garden along the back of our shed so I got it finished in the time I had, and then after tea, we all enjoyed the lovely longer evening and got outside: I mowed the back lawn (hubby did the front yesterday but because I had washing out to dry I wouldn't let him mow the back then!) and then we all went out and put down weedmat and bark on the garden I prepped at lunchtime. Unfortunately we ran out of weedmat and the shops were shut by the time we finished, but we can finish it off tomorrow.

I was all prepared for all sorts of problems about working from home, but I'm loving it. Hubby works from home too, so we get to spend morning and afternoon tea and lunch together - we often go for a walk or a bike ride at lunchtime - and we don't distract each other because he works at one end of the house and I work at the other. My office space is in our library, so I'm working surrounded by books which feels rather nice. All of my colleagues are within reach on the phone or email, and that will be even easier when we get the new VOIP system loaded on all the computers. They're testing it in our major offices first to iron out the bugs, before they roll it out to all the satellite offices like mine.

My office is also "favoured space" for the cat: he often comes to sleep in my office because I have a heater on in there in winter (I have to - I have a thermometer in there, and it's been 9degC in there on frosty days), and at the moment it gets a nice morning sunbeam that he likes. In fact, on Saturday a couple of weeks ago, he came in after breakfast, went trotting down the hall calling me, wondering why I wasn't working in my office (and turning the heater on for him!). He's good company: it's nice working with him quietly snoozing in the corner.

The other distinct advantage to working from home is being able to take advantage of the weather. If it's fine, I can slip into the laundry before work and throw on a load of washing, and hang it out at morning tea time. It's also good if the weather packs up - I can rescue the washing before it all gets sopping wet again!

So that working from home thing? It's working out just fine, thanks!

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