Home Work

Like many, I now work from home. And, things have been going well enough that the presiding Bishopric has asked us to pilot some work-from-home patterns to see what works, and we were asked to submit a proposal, following some basic guidelines. Our team has proposed to work from home every day except Friday, possibly coming in on Tuesdays if we feel we need more face-to-face meeting time.

My desk is in the downstairs family room, and it is really noisy sometimes, especially when children come over. But, I hate trying to get everyone to be quiet when I am in meetings. And, my set up is pretty sloppy. So, I took some steps to make my "office" more conducive to work.

I started by purchasing a very expensive set of Bose noise cancelling headphones, with speakers that also block out most everything except my voice. So far, they have been excellent.

I also decided to get most of what I have in Riverton and bring it home. I especially wanted my new, large, 4K monitors. I even brought home a large, heavy piece that sits on the desk and lets you raise your monitors and keyboard to a standing height. I really like it, but it filled up my desk so much I didn't have room, and I didn't like the way the cords in the back would get trapped and pulled, so I took it back.

Cords are the worst. Messy. Dusty. All-over the place.

My desk is an old one I purchases for $40 from the Cedar City Institute when they were upgrading offices. It has the old-style typewriter pop-up on the left, and I decided to see if I could use it to some advantage and get rid of some cords.

Getting started.

I made a simple template from the bottom of the power strip to drill holes.

I attempt to put all the cords and cables either up off the floor or under the bookcases.

This reminded me of the snakes coming out of the wall in Raiders of the Lost Ark.

Not bad! Charging cords, DVD and Blu-Ray plaers, external drive, small headset ...

And behind my laptop, a most important office feature: the bamboo back scratcher.

Voila

And one of the best things is the relatively uncluttered desk behind the monitors.