“Working from home”, Pt 2

Following on from my last ramblings about “working from home”, I was thinking that it’s strange there’s not more of a trend of working from someone else’s home.  Or having someone else work from your home.

My aunt works from home, and she could probably do with a bit of extra income.  Her son has the front down stairs room, which is a perfect space for an office.  You can get to it from the street without entering the house or yard.  You can cut it off from the rest of the house and there’s a kitchenette and toilet that can be easily accessed...  If she kicked him out to the granny flat, she could convert that room and rent it out as office space.  Parking would be awkward, but I’m sure they’d work something out.

There are probably a lot of houses that could have a section converted to office space.  You hear about people converting part of their homes into a separate living space so they can rent it out, but it doesn’t seem to be a common thing for people to convert a space into an office to let.

From the home owner’s point of view it would be less intrusive than having someone actually living in your house, but still a source of income.  And if you were running a small business and needed an office it would probably be cheaper than renting a space in a commercial complex, and possibly a more pleasant environment.

This way, even if you lived in a one bedroom flat and you wouldn’t particularly want to work there, you could still “work from home”.  Just not your home.

And it would potentially be a much safer investment on the part of the home owner.  People are odd, and treat the place where they live in a way they would never treat the place where they work.  A professional working in an office is likely to do much less damage (I would expect) than someone living in a rented room.  And it would be so much easier to evict someone who’s mistreating the place if they don’t actually live there.

This could be a thing.  How do we make this a thing?

“Working from Home”, Pt 1

“Working from home” is a funny phrase, when you think of it.  Really, you’re working at home.  I don’t know why (in Australia, at least) we us the word “from”.  Perhaps it’s to create some sort of distance from the idea of house work.  Can’t have people thinking all you do all day is vacuum, now, can we?

I was reading something in the paper recently about a company which is encouraging its workers to “work from home” at least one day a week.  I mentioned it to my manager, who then got this dreamy look on her face and said it was a “lovely” idea. 

She maintains the biggest problem she has with getting stuff done is the office environment, and she’s probably right.  We are a nest of distractions – and, ironically, most of the time it’s our work distracting us from our work.  All of the little things just eat away at the time you need to tackle the bigger things.

I suppose you could say I’ve been “working from home” one day a week for the past couple of years – but I’ve actually been “studying at home”.  No one’s paying me to be here on my study days (no one’s paying me at all on my study days) and what I do doesn’t directly benefit my employer.  I know that I have been learning a lot that has helped me do my job a bit better, but it’s not really what people think of when you say “working from home”.

I’m going to miss it when this Master’s degree wraps up at the end of the semester and I have to go back to working full time.  There’s something oddly wonderful about being at home during a weekday.  When my attention starts wandering I can always clean something or bake something, which makes me feel useful.  And just being able to have the place to myself and potter around is lovely.  It’s somehow more relaxing than the weekend, when it feels like everything is being crammed in and shuffled around.

Additionally, because I’ve chosen to keep the Internet out of my house, I’m not fragmented by a steady stream of emails and interruptions (just interrupted by the occasional desire to write a blog post).

Of course, if I ever did “work from home” (in my current job), I’d have to get all connected and let those emails come.  Unless, that is, I could magically create a job for myself that brings in enough money to live on and grants me the freedom to only check my emails a couple of times a week when I pop into a library.

And I don’t think I’d want to “work from home” full time – I do enjoy going to work and conversing with real people.

All I need to do is find a part-time job where I can be with other human beings for half the week, and then a hobby that pays it’s way so I can “work from home” for the other few days.

Simple!

I finally did something!

Sure, it has 10.30 at night when I finally remembered that I was going to start making things on Monday nights, but I remembered!

And I actually did something!

It's this thing:

Okay, it wasn't all of that thing.  I actually only did five rows of it - but still, that was five rows that hadn't been there prior to last night!

What is it, you say?

Well, it's a cross-stitch, obviously.

I did commit the cross-stitching sin of reversing the direction of my stitches, but hopefully you'll be so blinded by the fact that it's an unfinished work that you won't notice it's also badly done.  And badly photographed.

Hooray for doing stuff!

The trouble with stairs

Over the past few years I’ve come to view the stairs in my house as a problem.

Growing up in North Queensland, stairs are a fact of life.  Except for a couple of years when I lived in a ground-floor unit, I’ve lived in high-set homes all my life. 

In the last few years, however, I’ve been seriously questioning the logic of any house design that renders the living areas accessible only by stairs.

It’s all well and good if you are young and fit and mobile and can bound up those stairs with vim and vigour… but the older you get, the more potential those stairs have to make getting in and out of your own home a problem.

My grandmother spent the last few years of her life virtually house-bound because the stairs became more and more of an obstacle for her.  By the time it got to the stage that we had to install a chair lift to get her up and down the stairs, getting out of her own house had become an event in itself.

Not only did she only leave the house when the occasion was worth the exertion – she almost never spent time in her own gardens because the effort it took to get to the lift (which was installed at the front of her house) and get around to the back yard was simply too much for her. 

Without those stairs, she could have just walked out her back door and spent time surrounded by trees and things.  Or, if she wanted to go out, she could have just walked out the front door and saved her energy for getting in and out of the car.

I honestly believe she would have had a better life if she had moved to a low-set house (with few or no stairs) in her sixties. 

In her sixties, she was still young and spritely enough that a move would have been something she could tackle with energy and enthusiasm.  In her late 70s, she was stubborn and grumpy and her health was shattered from 50-odd years of heavy smoking.  She was entrenched and determined to die in her own home (which didn’t happen) and resistant to any suggestion of moving – even though, in hindsight, that house was seriously bad for her quality of life.

For the past year or so, we’ve been watching my old dog struggle with the stairs in this house.  She slept downstairs and spent most of the day there, but when we were home she loved nothing better than to come up stairs and be near us – in the living space where we spent most of our time.

We’d been wondering what we would do when she could no longer make it up and down the stairs.  After all, you can’t install a chair lift for a dog – but being left downstairs would have made her miserable.  Additionally, she’d been very unstable on her feet, coming up and down the stairs.  Yet we had to make her go downstairs on a regular basis to pee, or go out for a walk, or go to bed...  We were honestly wondering if she would fall down the stairs and break her neck before she got to the point where she couldn’t make it up or down the stairs at all.

Well, a couple of weeks ago she tumbled down the stairs and did herself some serious harm.  So serious, we had to put her down. 

I know – deep in my soul, I know – that her quality of life and her length of life would have been vastly improved if we didn’t live in a house where the living areas were only accessible by stairs.  And I’m at the point where I know (deep in my soul, I know) that I could say the same for my grandmother.

It really brought home to me the fact that smart people don’t grow old (and don’t let their loved ones grow old) with what amounts to a feature of an obstacle course built into their own home.

When you are young enough to climb stairs or walk up hills without a problem, you don’t care about this sort of thing.  Heck, you could enter via rope ladder and exit via fireman’s pole, if that’s what you wanted to do.  But the minute you find yourself regularly getting to the top of your stairs (or steep driveway) and feeling a bit worn out by the experience, it’s time to move on.

My mother is in her sixties.  She’s still young enough and spritely enough to tackle a move with energy and enthusiasm – and she has arthritis in her hips and knees and regularly notices the effort it takes to get up and down the stairs.  Because I love her, I’m going to keep pestering her until she sells up and moves to a more practical house. 

This house has been in the family for almost 50 years and I love it, but I’m not going to let it swallow up the lives of anyone else I love.  It’s time to go.

If someone you love is living in a house with stairs (or any other obstacles), do what you can to push them out before they get stuck there.  They’ll never notice how much better they have it, but you will be giving them better quality of life in their later years.

Toys R Addictive

Confession time – it has been several Mondays since I mentioned my plan to try to set aside a night a week to make things, and so far I haven’t made a blessed thing.

Well, I did decorate an Easter tree with hand-made paper baubles, but I’m not counting that.  There’s craft and then there’s craft.

However, I have developed a new hobby – obsessively staring at toys to see how they were made.

I’ve lost the ability to walk past a teddy bear.  I have to pick it up and pour over it to see how its butt was stitched together.

I’ve been borrowing books about toy making from my public library – which is the way I usually take up new “hobbies”:  vicariously, through books.  Sure, I haven’t made anything from any of the books yet, but I have developed a much better understanding of and appreciation for how toys are put together.

Most soft toys are actually remarkably simple, and the more I look at them the more I think “I could do that!”

Of course, as someone who hasn’t touched a sewing machine since high school (and was particularly bad at sewing at the time) I may be completely delusional.

But, still.  Even if I haven’t graduated onto making toys as a hobby, I’ve well and truly taken up looking at toys as a hobby.  It’s not as active, but oddly addictive.

A very close friend

My dog died.

She was 15 years old (which is really good innings for a dog her size), and had been getting quite frail and stiff in her old age.  She'd been struggling with the stairs for some time, and we were wondering what we would do when she was finally too frail to make it up (or down).

We've really been expecting her to fall down the stairs and do some serious damage for quite some time.  Last Thursday, she finally did.

She fell down the stairs and broke her hip.  At her age, and with her pre-existing hip troubles (and some dementia), we realised she was not going to recover from this injury with any quality of life, so we had her put down.  It's a kindness we're not allowed to give ourselves, but we can still grant the animals we love a soft death.

As it was, she had a pretty good week.  Right up to the pain and blood and everything.

I've been thinking about this thing we do, with pets.  We know an animal is only going to live for a fraction of our lives. When we bring a dog or cat into our lives, we know that they are only going to be with us for 15-20 years.

We bring something into our homes.  We forge a relationship with them that sits somewhere between "very good friend" and "member of the family" - and we let them live with us just long enough to make sure that their passing is devastating.

I say "my dog died" - but it would be far more accurate to say I lost a very close friend last week.  I feel the same kind of loss and pain I would feel if my best friend - whom I see every day - died.

Because that's exactly what happened.  She was my best friend.

And my flatmate.

And a member of the family.

But, when I say "my dog died", it doesn't really embody all of these things.

She died the day before I took a test.  She died two days before I was booked to leave town for the weekend.

I went ahead with all of these things because I was keeping myself distracted - but I found myself wondering what I would say if I had to cancel anything.

"My dog died?"

It's odd how anyone who has ever owned a pet should understand how significant that is, but no one actually does.  Pets die all the time, don't they?

No, I think I'd go with the greater truth:  "I lost a very close friend."

Easter Tree, 2015

Well, as it turns out I didn't have the energy or time to do much with this.

It could be because I decided to leave the tree at work this year, instead of taking it home to decorate it there.

Hey, at least when I do stuff like this at work, the general vibe is "Oh, that Sharon - she's so eccentric!" rather than "Oh, that Sharon - she's so high maintenance" (which is what I usually get at home).

But, it did mean that I basically used six pieces of memo paper, some staples and a small length of twine to decorate the tree - and in moments snatched during coffee breaks and before and after work.

Still, it looks kind of festive, don't you think?