Moving Office!
By Julie Maxted of Horsham Publications Ltd
A few weeks ago I moved offices! Not to a grand office in a serviced block (a la Regus) or even renting a room. No, I moved out to my garage and what a difference it has made to my work-life balance. No more nipping in to keep checking on my emails at the weekend or thinking I’m a bit bored in the evening and I’ll ‘do a bit of work’.
Now I am finding that I am actually working during the day – and not putting the wash on, unloading the dishwasher between phone calls and generally tidying up – I am working when I am supposed to and doing all the domestic chores when I finish.
Last year, it became apparent that I need to do ‘something’ to change the way I was working.
Although we had a dedicated office in the house (it was built as an ‘Executive Home’ so came with its own study), once my husband started from home too, I decamped to the dining room and transformed that into my home office. However, it was right by the stairs and in the central part of the house. Once my children started to be a college and university, they were coming in at all times and I was frequently having to deal with my 16 year old coming home in the day with his girlfriend and hear them giggling in the lounge (which was adjacent to my office) or cooking their lunch in the kitchen, not to mention the constant ringing of the doorbell!
It became even more unbearable in the last school holidays, so we started to actively look at alternatives. However, I realised once we started looking that we would need at least two offices as I just couldn’t work in the same room as my husband (we are both quite loud), so the prices were going up and up.
We then had a builder friend of ours round and he gave us a quote to build an office within our garage. Now I don’t know about you, but our garage was like Steptoe’s Yard. Someone could have even set up home in it. It had a sofa, a fridge and a freezer and even a wardrobe!! So, we got a skip and literally had a glorified clear out and Freecycle came in handy too. It’s amazing what ‘tut’ you think you have and someone else is quite happy with it.
And so, our office started to be built. We did check with the local council to see if we needed to adhere to any regulations and their only stipulations were that if we put a window in (which we did) that the opening was big enough for someone to be able to get in a hurry and we had a smoke alarm.
In all, it took about six weeks and the result is marvellous. I have a window to look of (ok, it does overlook some of our conservatory, but there is the laurel bush as well) and being lined with a specialist insulting board called Celotex, it keeps warm and I just have a small electric radiator.
I now work in peace and quiet and the results are dramatic. No longer do I keep getting interrupted and aware of other noise going on around me (apart from the odd squeak from the guinea pigs outside!) and I achieve so much more that I don’t have to keep working over the weekends to catch up.
It’s certainly been well worth the investment and we worked out that the cost of the work would have paid for 3 – 4 months rent on premises, so if ever we did grow far too big for our garage office, we haven’t lost any money (and I know my son has his eye on it for an art studio!).
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