My workspace has undergone many changes and locations shifts since we started this adventure more than two months ago. I started out working in our office, attempting to share the space with my husband. That didn’t last long, as it was quickly apparent that I needed a separate space for recording my lesson videos and having student meetings. So I experimented with doing my Zoom meetings and lesson tapings in the living room, and then moving to the office for computer work and lesson prepping. But it turns out my husband is on phone calls or conference meetings for nearly his entire workday! Even with my noise-canceling headphones (which are a lifesaver for shared workspaces!), I couldn’t concentrate in the office. So I moved my whole work station out to the living room, which turned out to be a great idea.
I was determined that my new workflow wouldn’t create a permanent mess in our living room, which is the space we disconnect from work, rest, and play. So I devised a system that allowed me to spread everything out all over the place while I worked, but quickly and easily hide it away when it was time to stop working. I cleared out one of the drawers next to our couch and filled it with all the piles of books, baskets of teaching to tools, and stacks of papers I need on a daily basis. I even fit some of my teaching puppets way in the back. Then I made space on top of a cabinet to keep all of my electronic devices neatly stacked when I wasn’t using them (during one day, I might use my laptop, my iPad, my Bose speaker, my earbuds, my noise-canceling headphones, and my Phone… yikes!).
During the day, my space is a mess. The papers get spread out, the pens are everywhere, books are all over the couch. But as soon as I’m done working, I sweep everything up and stuff it back in the drawer. It’s actually quite a miraculous system, considering my track record with cleaning up after myself. As my husband tells me, I am notorious for getting something out that I need, and then leaving it there and moving on without bothering to put it away! But honestly, it takes me about two minutes to shove everything back in that magical drawer, and even I can handle that.
Adapting as time goes on
Now that we’re eight weeks deep in distance learning, I started noticing that my back was not happy working on the couch for all those hours. I was often hunched forward, with no back support, working on a coffee table that was really too low for any kind of computer work. With one-on-one student sessions, I would usually plop on the floor, angling so that both my face and my table surface was visible to the student. Not so good for the body, as it turns out. So now we’re onto workspace 4.0, the dining room table! I’m still using my little drawer, which is luckily close by. But now everything is spread out over the table, and I’m able to sit in a real chair! With back support and cushioning! This is only day one in this new workspace, so we’ll see how it goes moving forward. If there is one thing we’ve all had to learn in this pandemic, it’s how to be endlessly flexible in ever-shifting circumstances!
How have you been organizing your workspace?
xoxo
Laura
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