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Useful Home: Working From Home

Let's talk today about what makes a home um useful and thank you for joining us poor melissa would have been my alone studio audience member I would have had to brought her up on stage where are our solo conversation? But I'm glad that you're here and I can't wait to hear about your unique challenges said but we're going to talk about some fun things that make that make homes useful in in different ways so we've been learning for two days um how to solve our problems right because what a lot of people had were specific function problems and then a lot of people had the problem if not even really knowing that their home wasn't working for him or why it wasn't working for him but just constantly buying things are moving things around trying to make things ah little more easy to use and so we've hopefully gotten some ah ha moments over the last couple of days and then yesterday we really started showing how you could lay out your space and really make it work free on today we're just goin...

g to continue that conversation into showing some ideas that could be really, really useful in your home specific to what the way that you want to use it so we have some fun picture sports today too so um here's some things to think about for the most useful home so it's really that idea of catering customizing your home to you and we don't think about her house is that way sometimes we just move in and we take it at face value and I quite this sometimes to fashion because it's the difference in buying something off the rack are buying something off the rack and having it tailored because we all have different shapes and curves and heights and all sorts of things well, that's the same thing that happens in her house, but ah lot of times people don't really think to customize their house to really fit their own specific needs. S o really creating a space that actually serves your specific purposes and I know we have lots of people watching that are in the the photography profession and other creative professions that air working from home or have certain kinds of equipment we have people that are watching that have children or that of pits and so there's all kinds of things that go into that equation of what makes your home uniquely you even like to think of it is almost a personal brand and had to make your home support that specific personal brand that you r s that's where my little business side sneaks over into the design side there it also is very useful for you if it gives you a really practical place to live so it's interesting how many people spend time in their life working around things in their home that they could really just pretty easily change and make a lot of things easier and it's sort of that I can't see the forest for the trees, trees sometimes you're too close to some of the the issues, and you just never think it think about changing it, and I'll look at this person space and go, why don't you just move this over here? Combined these areas and I think, oh, wow, I never thought about that I would make life so much easier. So thinking of I'm a very pragmatic person. I love things to just be simple and practical, even though they could be very beautiful. I'm never accused of being simple in the way if I love decoration and color but inform and layout, I do like things that are really simple and really put practical and really common sense on, so I hope that you're getting some ideas about how to bring that kind of practical, simple living structure and layout to your own house. It's going to make it much more useful. S o really it's very functional at its core. If it works for you and that's, just a question we can ask herself, is our house really functioning for us? And I can certainly say my last house that I designed specifically for my family we lived in for eight years we want remodeled the kitchens in the bathrooms and got it really organized it was so functional for us in every way and then I moved into a new house to get a little more space, get a swimming pool, get a nice big fright yard that was one of the only things that wasn't working for us is our front yard and back ever really sloped and we wanted a nice place for it our daughter to play s o we upgraded to that and we downgraded so much fun ction on the inside and I'm starting that process all over again of taking a different space but going back and adding in all of those things that work for us it's really fun but it's also frustrating in the meantime it takes a lot of money a lot of time a lot of energy and most of us can't just do that in a second, right? So it it's it's a process um and then really making the most of all the space that it has so yesterday we had several people get some ah ha moments in the afternoon about using their vertical space especially the people who had loft scenarios and I thought, you know, I hadn't really thought about the fact that I'm only using what's right here on the lower plane on the floor and there's all this vertical space that I could be using with either shelving units or something decorative that's adding beauty to my life, there's a million options for using some of the vertical space, and they were thinking our houses to smaller we're too cramped, or we we're not organized and and really missing the fact that there were nooks and crannies and and tall areas in the home that could really start making the most of every itch of the home, which is really important. Um, so here's, some of those specific activities or useful purposes that we've been alluding to all week that we were going to get to and talk about and the first one that a lot of people are interested in is that home office or sometimes it's, not just a specific place in the home that's, the home office, but the entire home is where you work. And so how do you really make your home useful for the home office? Another really fun and exciting area? I think that you're gonna like some of these fun ideas and some of the pinterest pins that we have are in the category of techie homes, tech and wired and inspired holmes that air really forward thinking, smart homes. Really cool innovations that can make your life not only fun but also makes them simple auras well, so that's a fun area to look and we're going to take a look at that today and then homes that really function for and with children so uh you know there's a difference between just creating a home that feels like the kiddie play land and and they have all their things there versus holmes that work for adults and children equally and that everybody feels at home in that space and do you have do you have children? I have a dog okay? You have a duck? I thought you seemed a little young maybe to have kids so no kids here yet, but we've definitely had people and not only in our studio audience this week that have children, I have an eight year old little girl almost nine and then many people watching us I know have kids and deal with both children and pets and so how to make those homes that function for the kids and with the kids um and there's a there's definitely a balance that has to come in there to make spaces that work for everybody and it doesn't feel like the toys are everywhere but it also doesn't feel like the kids have to be grownups all the time and there's some great inspirational ideas today they're going to help with that um then small space is a lot of people have small spaces here in the city small spaces that take advantage of every square inch and we talked about I think it was on day one the trend for holmes to really be trending smaller again and even there's this whole movement of the tiny house phenomenon of four hundred, square feet or less and I know just in general and cities lots of my friends who live in it's, a new york city have no more than four hundred square feet anyway, so that's what they're dealing with and a lot of you are dealing with smaller spaces as well so gonna look at some fun ideas for that on the flip side where I come from there's a huge homes there's you know, five thousand eight thousand ten thousand square foot homes and really, what in the world can you do with all of that space and really make it function for you? And sometimes it makes perfect sense because I deal with people who have four or even more children and they really do need a lot of space, but sometimes people just love a luxury home and like to have a lot of different rooms for a lot of different purposes but making sure that they're all working for them and they're not only living in, say, four hundred square feet of this eight thousand square foot house so we'll look at some of those ideas of large spaces that can still be what I call brought down the size so they're cozy and comfortable so let's take a look at the first category which I know is a very important one and and j k o you'll have to let me know if we get a lot of feedback from the web because I know working from home is a category that we've we've been waiting for this matter a lot of people are asking about the last couple of days and this is something that's really important because it's something that has now become so much part of everyday life and we looked at the numbers just the other day and it was in america I can't even remember what it's like thirty million or I don't remember some huge number that we talked about just a day or so ago we've looked at lost this it's statistics second reference that again if we need to know that but just millions and millions of people all over the world are working from home it's going to keep going in that direction for a number of reasons so let's just think let's look at that a few reasons why people are working oh, I don't even have to look it up again because it's right here on I was close it's just exactly right thirty million people working from home in america today so that's a lot of people and it's actually expected to increase by sixty three percent by twenty eighteen so that means it's gonna more than double right are well let's say half of that it'll be forty forty to fifty million by twenty eighteen so a lot of people working from home for a number of reasons and here's some of the reasons it allows them to be more flexible and be more productive in a lot of ways because people go into work environments that really don't support getting a lot of work done and there's a lot of downtime and wasted time and so when people work from home they actually often are are more productive if they have the right kind of workplace that really supports their needs in their job also this is a huge win for a lot of people just the kim commuting time and there's four point two billion hours each year spent by people driving in traffic so removing that amount of driving time I'm putting that back into working time of course it's going to increase productivity lower people's costs in a lot of ways and just make people a lot happier and less stress. So all of those air reasons why people not only are now working from home where they're going to continue to work from home right? So what is required for a workable home office will again there's some basic things I'm going to show you in just a second, but it depends on what category, what profession that you're working in and what all your specific needs our butt from the before we even get to that and what your equipment is and your names are let's look at a few things that actually make for a functional and happy home office space, so one of the first things would be to choose an upbeat color. You don't want something to serene you don't want to be a feeling like you're going to take a nap all day every day while you're working, so you need something that at least is fresh and that's upbeat that gives you some energy allows you to be really productive and we talked in the color class and we looked at some color psychology about what color's really work for people that give you energy. So it's gonna be a combination of looking at colors that are energetic but also colors that you love, because if yellow gives you tons of energy but it's also a color that you really dislike, then that's not going to be a good choice for you so that's where that the practical and the studied tried and true meets your own precut your personality and you want to blend those together but certainly something that's going to give you energy is important this was really important. We've been testing this out all week in the studio, right? You've been trying different chairs because just like you sit here for eight hours a day and in the studio, people sit for hours and hours in their home, and I know I've even really experienced lower back pain and leg pain and all sorts of things from, say, working in my bed or sitting with my legs crossed or things that just really aren't a great fit for a home office scenario, so you really do need a really good organ. Ah, mick chair and I don't know if we have ergonomic in our glossary, but in case we don't, what that means is that's the study of the body in comparison to the piece of furniture. So it's really about making furniture that is fit to the size and scale of the body and supports the different places in the body, like the back sitting the hips, and gives you support and all the places that you need. So it is good glad, together with functional ism parfitt, which we have, we decided, is that it really aware a functional is, um, we're going to canada, if not it's a toby word, right? So with the cheer you really need to invest wisely here, this is this is like a mattress it's not so exciting to think you want to spend a lot of money on things like this, but you're going to be spending tons of time there so super imported another important really important thing is good lighting and you can have fatigue from not having the right kind of lighting it can cause you to have more energy if you have the right lighting especially if you have daylight it's wonderful to have a mix of daylight and task lighting in a home office because if you don't know about you all but have any of you ever worked in a room with no windows like this room were in all day long it's really really difficult to stay energized and to not feel more fatigued than normal when you have no sunlight coming in and there's also it's great for your eyes if you're working all the time if you're looking at a computer to then be ableto look farther away at a window not just at a wall so rest your eyes there's a number of reasons why good lighting is really really important of course we need lots of storage this is what everybody's been saying and lisa unfortunately is not feeling well today she's not with us but hopefully she can watch the segment later because one of the things she said she really needs to take away from this entire course is lots of storage for her home office, so she said paperwork and, um, filing systems and all the things that go with her, her business or what really become the biggest challenges faras clutter and storage for her. And then we've looked at a few ideas of this already at ways to hide those pesky chords, but that also drives lots of people crazy, it's just it's, it's, clutter, it's, visual noise, it's, it's, bothersome and teo if depending on your personality, if you're like me and you like things really tidy that's one of the things that can be distracting and frustrating to you while you're tryingto work can feel like a project that you need to stop working and go fix the the bundle of chords that are really distracting. So let's, take a look at some of examples on pinterest of some really cool and functional home offices. We have any, any thoughts or comments or questions so far out on the web with? Well, this is this's something I know it is really been a big challenge for a lot of our audience and probably all of us here in the studio as well. I mean, just those statistics that you've been using toby's all of us now at least to some part of our our working life at home it's just you're working on email so whatever it is and you know for coming up with the right space and having the right light and not feeling confined but you had some great examples yesterday of how you convert the tiniest space into a space you can actually use for working so I think a lot of the audience is looking forward to more of that we're going to see more of those right now so that's great. So eh? So let's look at it there's all kinds of things here that we found that we love that I want to show you so here's one option for helping to control some of the clutter so um sally's not with us anymore but so she was not feeling well either I think but here she's gonna want to know this site because she has that great um, glass desk with all the cords and so this would be one way it would really look great. I think on a black desk where it would really almost be invisible but just wasted at least start containing some of the cords and not have them run off the back of a desk particularly if you're floating a desk in a space so there's all kinds of gadgets that people have been coming up with because there's so many people that struggle with these same things. If we've heard it this many times just in the chat room for this course, that means that there are millions of people out there struggling with the same things, but just in example, of a way to start thinking about how you can control cords and the mess that they bring to the work space. Now we talked yesterday just is a reminder of the option if he if your budget allows, or if you have, the resource is and the the people, the artisans to help you with this, you can create custom pieces of furniture, and I do this often where we actually run chords through the piece of furniture, or even take a piece that's already pre made, and we'll drill through it either just threw the table top or even down through a leg or part of the structure toe hold the chords, but that's not always the case, and most of us, most people are dealing with something like this, where it's, a store bought piece of furniture, whether it's from crichton, barrel or archaea are one of those places in office store and you're dealing with something like this, it might not be the most beautiful, ideal scenario, but it's certainly going to every little bit helps okay, and we looked at a few clever storage pieces yesterday but I I thought this one was really great this is something I think you could even easily build yourself but it's a storage file box it could go if you were even working at a desk beside the bed like we talked about this several times yesterday so if you had to have your work station is one of your bedside tables this kind of a bench could easily be it the foot of a bed it could have an upholstered top but when you lift it up there's even a court board on the inside there's a desk tray to hold things like push pins and scissors and then underneath that there's a filing system so my favorite kinds of products and ideas even built in cabinetry have features like this where you can get two or three functions out of a single piece so it just really maximizes every single square inch you there not even wasting that little bit of space between the files and the top of the cabinet they have this tray inside so really clever use of space there and again if if you were working in a room that either you were this could go at the foot of the bed or if you had a specific office and it could tuck under a window or somewhere where was perfectly fit for the space and traffic flow moved around it it could be both actually really attractive and functional someone could sit on it um so certainly multi purpose there even just this idea of shelving that we all use things like this, but I think what makes shelving work for most people is the ideas of putting containers inside of them and using some kind of system for labeling. We've talked a lot about this we all wish we had this magic peel this magic machine, this magic product that could just make everything easy and simple and we wouldn't have to do any extra work to stay organized but that's not really the case it requires us to be disciplined, but we're only going to be is disciplined as we create a system that's easy to use if it's complicated if you have to drag something out of the closet every time you're probably not going to put it back, you're gonna end up finding a tabletop to dumb thinks anything's close at hand easy to use these open top two baskets are really easy to drop things in and then maybe for the things that you don't use this often they go in a container that has a lid but all really handy with a very specific place to go. I don't know if any of you were like me I'm sort of a geek when it comes to organizing and actually find a lot of pleasure out of setting up systems like this do you labeling things I love a good label maker and I spend the whole saturday just cleaning out and organizing and labeling it makes me really, really happy basic like a shelf but very what you've done with it is very starving yeah and the and the other thing is it something like this is so simple to build so if you needed to customize it to your space in your home, what I would do is I would do the op I would reverse ingenuity I would go out and buy the baskets and the containers that I want that really work for me and measure them just like we've been measuring everything else for two days and just sketch out and draw out this really simple bookcase to fit the needs that you have that way you're not going all over town with your little you know basket tryingto hope awfully fine the one piece of furniture that actually fits what you need it's it's actually easier to go the opposite way and I think you know that's just the same is when we talked the color of course it was always surprising to people that the paint was the last thing I picked on a project because it's so much easier to match a paint sample because there's so many of them to all the fabrics and other things in the space I really think that's the same about organizing finally containers and and other pieces that really help you first and you can always build some kind of simple structure even the box we just saw in the last picture could easily be constructed it was really simple it didn't have carving or anything ornate about it and it can just be paint grade would which is a lot less expensive and so you're not staining it or making it into some heirloom piece of furniture it's literally just a simple functional piece with a good coat of paint on it I love the idea of well there's a lot of fun ideas here I would like these um clever little uh put almost like clothes lines toe hold things like invitations and business cards and things that you want to keep at hand or not forget events coming up but I really like this storage system at the bottom with the drawers that pull out so I love anything that's easy to use the second sort of sea inside a little bit what's in there and I would love this to organize all sorts of things as a designer we could put um fabrics and then we could put wallpaper samples folded and then we but little door knobs and samples for that we could put tile samples there's a million things that I used that are so small that would be great in some kind of system like this so I think this is uh, fun and interesting there's little labels on each piece of again, this is where it gets very specific to your line of work. So some people have gigantic equipment, like cameras and things that are really heavy and big and places to be stored, and then something like a designer like, may I have some larger samples, but most everything I have it's pretty small, and so we need lots of small drawers and bins and cubbies and baskets to hold all the things that we work with all the time. Um, and several of these just take on the same idea that will that we've been looking at, but just add a little twist on it. So, again, this is this looks like a metal cabinet, but so so simple, and it really looks to me like it was made to fit these baskets, because you're either you know, or either it was sold together is a set, but probably something like this was made to fit this system basket seemed to work great for a lot of people. I love that they add texture depending on the style that you love, like, if you are that sort of artistic traveler, like we talked about last time, you love something that has this texture and substance, it's a it's a little bit like the reclaimed wood we saw on the wall yesterday. It brings that kind of warmth into a space, and a lot of times in office could be a very cold space, just teo, sleek and everything's, a hard surface and so it's, really nice to bring texture in, um, here's, that chalkboard that melissa is a little over, but in certain, I'm just teasing her, but in certain parts of the home, it actually could be really, really functional, or if you don't like a chalkboard, maybe it's, a whiteboard or some other source of memo board that you can use. The thing that I do really love about the chalkboard paints that they have now is that you can make them magnetized and shot board so you can use magnets on them so you can write on them with chalk board, or you can hang things on them with magnus, the same thing that works with a lot of the white boards these days. So I'm always looking for anything that has at least two functions or two purposes, if I'm going to bring it into the house for organizational reasons. Um, and then, you know, just they just have a simple system of keeping their binders on top, so nothing fancy here, but just really works and they know probably exactly where everything is and this is much like how I keep my own design firm and how we keep client information and binders and um contained I think this is a fun space just starting to show that just because you have a new office space, it doesn't have to lack and personality so there's some kind of a wall covering on the wall there's a pattern on the lamp shade they've hung something on the wall behind the posters or something. I think on the wall behind there's a cow print pillow in the chair so I want to encourage people to not think that the office can't be a place that's fun and I think that we're all morons aspired when we surround ourselves with things we love now there's a a fine line, I guess sometimes between keeping things neat and tidy and having too much stuff there, but don't forget to use those vertical spaces like the walls to bring in color and pattern and other things that make you feel inspired and make this space feel beautiful. I often even just loved to use um and we talked about this is an accessory and one course fresh flowers and so don't forget about all of those things in your home office and what it takes to make you feel really inspired and working at your your best level people seem to be talking about is chairs it's just that that feeling of being comfortable? Yeah, and you really almost have to go try them out. This chair actually does look like some of the ones that I've used traditional office office chairman it's pretty modern and a lot of chairs like this are pretty our economically design and have the right kind of give and spring and adjustable height, usually with it so that some of the things you want to look for it is here. You want to make sure, first of all, you want to try it out and sit in that yourself, but adjustable height so that you can raise and lower it is needed if you like, toe lean back or, you know, make sure that it has that kind of give that it's not too straight up, and everybody chairs are so specific their lot again, like mattresses. People have very specific needs, and you really need to go test, drive the chair before you purchase it because it's something even maybe even j k o would agree that a desk here, of course, you can find many sleek and stylish options, but you really do need those to be pretty comfortable if you're going to sit there for eight hours a day. Or longer and a lot of times we're sitting in them like you said and our home office after we've already worked a full day and then we're coming home to start working our second full day at home esso and that's when most of us have makeshift desk or we're sitting on a sofa working from our laptop and it can really take its toll on you and your body so I think I love this idea of this home office I like the built in I like the ten on tune pattern on the wall I love the little pop of color on the desktop so and this could easily just be in a little nook or corner of any space, right? It's it's very attractive it could be if you were in a loft space it could really be fine in just in a corner of the room and if you had the space it looks like there's maybe something a door or ah uh window drapery on this side I can't tell but you could potentially make that table part wider and a little longer and it could almost serve as your dining table is well in some instances are specifically if it was modular and it was just sitting next to that but it was made to go with it that's the kind of things we were talking about yesterday of thinking of ways to use things in more than one's own or with more than one purpose, so imagining if it was your desk most the time and if you were single or there were just two of you could easily eat it that surface, but if it could pull away and you could have additional ottomans tucked under at which you easily could hear are tucked under the window or an additional chair, then you could turn that into a dining table and I really love this one for that reason uh, and I do think it's it's attractive the way it's displayed and used to be just part of the living space not having to be tucked away another similar idea of having a little additional piece made on teo to a book just a bookcase and we saw some yesterday in a kitchen where this one actually looks like it's it's stationary because of the window unit, but you can create this sort of a scenario that actually pulls out and pushes back in. So if you're really really tied on space creating or designing some cabinetry that allows you teo modify something where it could pull out and be a desk and tucked back in after you're finished with it or even thinking of building cabinets like a secretary like you can imagine like a a second is that what you call them? And do you call them the same thing you're a bureau everywhere, like either the doors open and a desk drops down or a shelf pulls out, so just because you see those in pieces of furniture that you purchase doesn't mean you can't take those same ideas to accustom piece of cabinet tree in your home. So that's, another great way to have a little secret office space in the middle of a living room or a loft area that you could, whether it's an armoire, a secretary, that you could close it off during the day and open it back up when you're working and it really makes you have that dual purpose while it's beautiful at the same time, and you could hide all the clutter when you're done by closing the doors, I think it requires this sort of this sort of modular and multi purpose thinking. Um, teo, get creative about how you need to use your space, and then I always tell people to take cues from things like pieces of furniture, like a secretary, because if it was created already for a purpose, it's proper there's probably some good evidence that it's working for people. So if you can go take cues from other desk or secretaries or things that exist. Even if you're going to make your inner customize your own that's a good place to start when you just start trying to design furniture on your own like you're like prototyping things and a lot of things can go wrong, so take cues or model it after a piece that already actually works that you've seen, you've tried out, you've tested and you know that it works okay? This is a fun space depending on your style because it just starts to bring in a very industrial look, a collected look, so I think this feels creative and clever and interesting depending on what kind of person's working here so some of us want to surround ourselves with things that we love and that's another reason people like toe work at home, it doesn't fill sterile like some works workplaces dio that you're able to be comfortable in your space, so I just thought this was a creative expression of I love the lighting the task lighting is really great here um dependents hanging over the desk I love how the desk is looks like it's pushed up against the wall was shelving above it, so a lot of times you don't have to float a desk in the middle of a room it may be more functional of scooted up next to a wall and use all the space around it with shelving as well any thoughts or comments you had about any of these things anything exciting, any of you? Are you either of you ever working in your home spices? I do work at home quite a bit er just on the weekends or what not and I've definitely think you've explain this quite a few times in this course because it's all about functional is um um it's the idea that when you are living in a space and you don't take the time to customize it and make it truly adaptable to your lifestyle, you're wasting so much time and like that one extra minute it takes to unplug the coffee maker to plug in the toaster or having to reach for a pair of shoes that are in an un accessible area of the closet. So it's just just like you taylor close to work better you're living in your house, you might as well taylor it oh, every yes. So hopefully again we just teach you to think differently. And I think I said that the first day if I was just gonna have one thing that you took away from this bust was really just to start thinking out of the box or even getting rid of the box and starting to look at your space uh with a totally fresh set of eyes and seeing what works free uh I love that this workstation holds two chairs or to death, so you could have a lot of people. I know that our designers that worked from their home actually have other people come into their home and work with them, and I don't know if that's the case in the photography industry, if you have your assistance, come and work out of your home studio with you, but designers definitely do this that have homebase studios, and so sometimes they're having teo accommodate two or three other people coming into their space every single day, and so that can add stress, and you need to make sure that everybody has a place for things to go. And where do they also the whole idea like yesterday of bringing all their belongings in their bags and purses and things? And how do you make that work? So this is a a good start to taking a fairly small room and seeing that there's two great work stations here and probably even potentially room for another person and even in a small room. Toby officer, you work from home quite a bit with your home office and pure design interiors is asking she's, an interior designer, and they want to know about how you store all your samples, he says, basically. Her interior designs to humble their now overflowing into or different spaces throughout her home and she doesn't like a lot of visual clusters and maybe we'll get to some examples of that so I do work from home sometimes but I also have a fairly large pretty large she would all think it was very large office that's outside of my home as well but I just used to work from home because I also get a lot more done a lot of the time because when I go into the office all my team and staff for needing to ask me a lot of questions and and I spend the whole day working with him which I do that several times a week but there's at least two usually a couple of days a week if I'm not traveling a cz muchas I have been lately that I try to work from home so my design samples typically stay in our office work room and I really actually just posted a photo of my design where our video with my design work room in it on just on tuesday this week on my block but people could go watch and we have this great island built in the centre of the room and it's full of drawers and the fronts of the drawers air plexiglass so that you can see what's on the inside of the drawers and I have all my samples like fabric samples coordinated by color and pattern so like blue solids blue patterns, green solids, green patterns red solid red pattern because I said I'm a little lonely, geeky sad when it comes to organization and that way I can just go right to whatever it is I need I can see them inside visually interesting inspiring what colors aaron there on it's really fun but I also use containers like boxes and fabric covered containers like we've seen in a lot of these to keep each client's samples in and so a lot of times when I'm working on a client project from home I just love that box in my car and I could take the whole sample box home and has everything that I need inside of something I'm working on so I love tohave containers per project so I can open it all out lay it all out on the table do design work sketch match fabrics um pick paints and that I can fold it all up and put it back in the box and it can either go on the shelf for go with me some all about using containers and other things to help me stay really organists and keep things in one place because again most of our systems came from like you were saying earlier having to look for things and you can waste a lot of time a lot of hours and minutes and then there's a sauce logistic recently and as you can tell with my course that I love statistics and I love to think about, um members, I guess that's that accounting part of me but I saw a statistic and I think it said were distracted on average twenty four times a day from our work and so things like stopping tohave to go look for something that you need is a distraction. And then why do you get out of your desk and you got to start looking at someone asked you a question and it even had the statistic even had how many minutes on average it takes you to get back to your task and it's several it's like eight or twelve or something it's a lot of lost time and so getting organized can really increase the productivity. So most of these air just more of the same, but just thinking about how to either make things beautiful so they can work within an existing space and be visible. And also the idea of using the vertical space eyes really important. Let me see if there's anything else in particular that we want toe look at that that's especially inspiring I love this workspace so that's a really look how tiny that spaces and it has to work stations. It has that great organizational system on the end with the binders and containers toe hold everything and it's also still artsy and inspiring with the art above it's got great task lighting on the desk natural lighting overhead lining I'm not sure this chair what would be the most comfortable possibly it depends on the person but there's ah work share a desk chair at the other end um and I think that's really hip looking yeah, I like that space what's on the ceiling that it looks like corrugated metal so it's probably there like a as one of it was like an old shipping container that been converted possibly it kind of does look like that and it's not very large but all that's becoming quite a trend let's see, it doesn't say really attractive and I love that white bright clean space I think that is a great color if you add some other things in of interest what they've done here to break it up a little bit you don't want to be in a white box all day you could really get a little overwhelming, but as long as you have some interesting things going on in there, I love the cleanliness and the brightness of a wide office and just a few uh our economic chairs that we've talked about chairs there's so many different things to take into account the way whether you want arm rest, whether you like it to swivel and spin and rock and lean and be raised and lowered so everybody has different preferences on this and also from a style standpoint I mean something like this that brings in a color so this is a knoll which is the you know famous tried intrude designer of all the beautiful uh mid century pieces that a lot of us love and usually very, very comfortable and our economic and stylish so do we have any specific questions or comments or thoughts on this is a great little space to on home hopes on home offices we have ah want from susan news is saying all of her closets have in her house have standard metal shelves and so she's finding its very is no easy for stacking her binders for stacking for smaller items etcetera but I'm not quite sure why she hasn't changed but she's asking the suggestion for working with what she has yeah that gets a little difficult so if you can't change things and that's and that's what we run into sometimes with interiors were talking about that as the layout sometimes it's because they can't change them they're not allowed to it's a rental or whatever reasons which sometimes its budget but sometimes people just think well this these air perfectly good shelves why would I rip them out and start over? But if they're really not functioning for you they're not perfectly good shelf so sometimes we have to detach a little bit from the idea of removing something, even though it brings a little cost into the equation because the return on investment is so much greater to go ahead and change it that it really is up paying for itself. A lot of times and so many people have is because they are in rental situations and so limited limiting things you can do, right? So maybe she has to come up with a completely different, um, system as opposed to binder, so maybe chef sees boxes or some other kind of container, and she would just want to measure the space she hasn't go out and go shopping, even using that little my measures at you could take a picture and dropped the measurements in, so she remembered and could take her phone out with her and go start looking for containers that help work within her system. It's certainly it's certainly difficult when you can't, um, adjust the shelving, so if you're going to add shelving to your house, be sure to put adjustable shelving in because you never know what you're going to be using it for. Okay, so think we've can go back to the power point we've covered a lot of home offices, but hopefully gotten cem. Answers that for those questions that we've had we've cut we had already given a lot of answers over the last couple of days in that category too, but if anything else pressing comes up, be sure to let me now when one thing that people really seem to be a story, the virtues office ike and some of the the expect expert it furniture which you showed there, which is all about cubbyhole on it comes in various different shapes shukan build onto it. So this is very good, but you need that I think how you showed it with that stylish use of boxes and baskets and set out to make it actually work and pop. Otherwise it just looks like messi looks messy, and then people also feel the need to decorate it with things and chachi keys and stuff. And then you get right back into that trap of filling, cluttered and having things that are really filler that aren't maybe beautiful or things that aren't meaningful for you so I would much rather you see see you fill an entire shelving unit in a home office or even even in a living space with baskets or bins or boxes so that it was really contained and simple as opposed to feeling the need to put a lot of stuff in it now we just touched on chairs and share seems to be big russian and curious one is just saying for toby personally watch have you found to be the most comfortable and good looking for long hours at your death I used one that is not unlike one of the ones we just thought similar to the knoll has a mesh back it's actually black but has arm rest it's adjustable and has the mesh back and it does rach I do when I'm talking on the phone a lot I do like to be ableto lean back in my chair it's just what's comfortable for me um and it swivels around so I could make because I work at a desk in front of me and then I have a credenza with my computer and all the built in storage behind me so I'm constantly swivelling back and forth depending on what task I'm doing I use the desk for riding for laying out samples and then I used the workstation behind me for the computer filing, printing and all of that stuff to be contained in in cabinetry so I need something that will move around easily um and yeah that's what I was good now susan is asking this is a very specific question I know a lot of our audience have but she's clearly a photographer saying do you have any good ideas for storing cameras and is props accept her in a home office? Well since I'm not a photographer, I don't know it exactly what they are, but I do work very closely with my photographer cause we photograph so many of my projects we work together at least twice a month for three or four days at a time tip on average were often together, but I would say at least once a month that several days often twice a month and so I see all the equipment she's dealing with um and it is very bulky, so I would think about me I think that I would want to put it in a closet if I could and I think you're going to need to put some systems in the closet because just like theresa are one of the ladies that was joining us this week said, let maybe leslie they have a big claws that I think it was leslie but it's really not even functional for because you put stuff in there and it's like going into a black hole and you can't find it. So I think you have to remember that a closet is only is good as the shelving and organizational items systems that you have inside of it as just a gn open room is not going to be very fun all for you, just like we were just hearing someone that shelves don't adjust its not functional for you, so if you're willing to spend thousands of dollars on your photography equipment which you are probably just think about adding a little bit more to the budget and creating a closet system, our structure that actually holds even if it's having someone coming and custom build it. That's actually made to fit a lot of the different pieces on shelves in cubbies and pull outs because that's, the only way you're going to keep things organized is having a place for everything. I mean, really, and if that's what you do all the time and you have rooms that you never go in, we're gonna talk in a little bit today a different section about rethinking spaces and using them for things you've never thought of. But if you're piling an enormous amount of photography equipment in the corner of the living room, but you have a small guest room and you never have gassed or you rarely have guessed, I would really think about converting that small room into a closet that works to store all of the things that you use every single day and then maybe think about getting one of those convertible, um, ottomans or hide or bits or something else and make your living room that used once or twice a year the place for guests. So you think about it, we kind of get the equation backwards sometimes of let's, let's make ourselves completely uncomfortable and miserable. Three hundred and fifty days of the year. So on those other fifteen days that we actually have guests, they have a place to live. It doesn't really make a lot of sense, does it? But it's, how a lot of us live.