Sofa, So Good: Working from a Chaotic Home

Posted on by Dr Karen E McAulay
The ankles and feet of someone on a painter's ladder

I’m working, but my mind is scattered and my physical surroundings are a nightmare. This is not the place to describe the unique hell of a redecorating project where everything is in boxes, piles or under dustcloths; floors are paint-and-plaster-dusty; deadlines are consistently missed; explanations are sketchy; and it emerges that the 9-5 by which I have structured the past 42 years is a concept entirely alien to our decorator. As is the concept of Monday-to-Friday. Hence the total absence of workers today.

Lounge? LIVING Room?

Throughout the pandemic, I managed the 9-5 quite effectively from my home-office alcove. Small, cramped, but entirely within my control. Take me out of my alcove into another room in which one can neither lounge nor live comfortably, and I am like a fish out of water. I need two small coffee tables – but the tables are glass – the mouse is ill-at-ease on them. And I’m accustomed to using a mouse rather than the trackpad. Makeshift arrangements make this just about workable. I have carved out a whole morning of peace and solitude, and by and large, it’s working.

Yes, it’s stressful. And I’m not alone – I live in Testosterone Towers, where habitual stress is bad enough, but habitual + domestic upheaval stress makes things extraordinarily difficult, and my caring responsibilities are challenged to the max. (Remember, I said that I’m annoying? I am reportedly becoming more annoying by the day, and I don’t seem able to help myself inadvertently doing it. It’s not that I don’t try to be good, either.)

Can I blog about research today? No, I don’t think I can. I’ve just ordered all the tech I need for my forthcoming oral history project – that felt like quite an achievement! – and I have just received a wee book that a kind Ancestry-user sent me about their ancestor, who happens to have been the brother of the professor I was researching in my post-Christmas idleness. The best thing I can do this morning is to read it from cover-to-cover, then get back to compiling a repertoire list that I started last night. (My need to occupy the lounge – ha! lounge?! – may be keeping Testosterone Towers from their daytime TV, but last night I found I could perform activities like searching the British Newspaper Archive quite effectively, whilst ignoring the TV entirely, happy in the knowledge that Testosterone Towers is not being inconvenienced at all.)

I saw an academic event on Eventbrite that I’d have liked to sign up to, even if it’s a non-working day. I dare not sign up to it. I can’t imagine the redecorating being finished by Tuesday.

My apologies for moaning. Maybe things will be better by this time next week!

Image by Kris from Pixabay

Rewire, Redecorate … Research?

Posted on by Dr Karen E McAulay
White paint-pot and brushes on a sheet of newspaper

Rewired

Followers of this blog will recall that our Edwardian home was rewired at the end of November. ‘We’ don’t take kindly to upheaval, of which there was plenty, so I had to unpack and put back a lot of goods (including hundreds of books) afterwards  – notwithstanding the need for remedial decorating  – in order to make the place bearable for Christmas.  Note the ‘We’ and the ‘I’.

Redecorate: Magnolia and White

Today, the remedial redecorating commences (not a DIY effort), so I’ve been repacking goods all over again. I’m the youngish, averagely fit one – and I’m already knackered!  Even my FitBit agrees.  My back has only just recovered from November/December; my fingers are sore; I’ve run out of empty boxes (how, I can’t imagine); and am almost out of floor on which to stack stuff. We have too much stuff. 

I have done my employed research for the week.  Does anyone else working from home recognise this kind of thing?

‘I thought you might have started cooking dinner by now?’

‘But I work until 5 …’

And I did work. Then I cooked. Then I packed and stacked, and continued stacking and packing this morning.  The lounge looks like a library on the move –  and is now so much smaller, in terms of cubic air volume, that it’s actually perceptibly warmer with the same heater settings.

But even women who feel as though they’ve been dragged kicking and screaming back to the 1970s, against their will, have their limits. The kitchen is being decorated first, so it’s fish and chips for tea. There will be no cooking here.

Research?

I’m only contemplating research to the extent of acquiring a decent recording device this weekend! I’m starting an exciting new research project soon, and as soon as the ethical approval process is complete, I’ll be raring to go. Monday will see the Magnolia and White project going on elsewhere in the house – hopefully my own working environment will by then be spick-and-span – with me sitting enjoying remote training to ensure that the new research project goes well.

Now, what colour shall I inject into my magnolia and white dining room to make it a joyful zone in which to work …?

Image by tookapic from Pixabay