How do you accommodate WFH in your house?

[Houseplantmad]

Another thread referring to a couple who both work from home prompted this. I walk to work locally and pass many houses where I see people working from home, often in what look like makeshift conditions. Now that WFH has become permanent for so many people I'm wondering how it works as I'm not sure I'd be happy to have to give a room over to a home office. Do employers provide equipment so people can work comfortably - what if you don't have room?

We have a lounge diner but no dining table in it. My husband has a desk set up at the dining end and he used to have an office chair but swapped it with a small, cheap, IKEA sofa because he says it's more comfortable. The only thing his office have provided is a laptop, although he connects this to his desktop where he has 3 monitors. We're planning on converting the garage to an office for him, eventually.

3 bedroom rental (overseas) and 2 kids. Both WFH most of the time. Boys share bedroom, took bed out of third bedroom, now office space/TV room/playroom. I prefer to work in living room area mostly. Use headphones and blur background, trained kids to be aware of meetings that can be going on when they get home from school.

If you don't have room that's not the employer's problem now that most offices are back open.

I have a desk set up with multiple monitors and a desk chair in the guest bedroom. It doesn't get used that often and usually on a weekend. My husband has the room that has always been a study since we moved in.

We have all our own equipment but if we didn't we would be able to order them via work.

When I don't need to use second/third monitors I sometimes migrate to the living room or dining room for a bit of a change of scenery.

I’m still working at the dining table. I love working from home but we dont. have room to accommodate an office chair there. 8 weeks ago I herniated a disc in my back and I am in agony every day. The home set up isn’t suitable in all honesty. I expect there will be many more like me.

DH has kitted out our box room as his office. He shares it with piles of laundry and things that are waiting to be fixed or taken to the charity shop. He does - thankfully! - blur the background on calls. His work didn't pay but sent everything he needed: desk, proper chair, many, many screens and other bits of kit (his job is a technical one in TV and so was never done from home pre-pandemic!)

If he's working at site or on a day off I sometimes plonk my laptop on his desk and work from there, but I far prefer to spread out across the kitchen table. To be fair, when I'm working on site it's very rare for me to be in the office and I'm usually spread across a table in one of our cafes (I work in coffee).

Pre pandemic I worked in an office. Pandemic saw wfh full time and I'm yet to return to a hybrid version. I've turned the dining room into an office and the living room into a living/dining room.
During the pandemic when ex dh lived here it was hard, me and 1 dc in the dining room on the table, ex dh and 1 dc in the living toom on a desk.
I look at houses now (when I dream about buying/moving) and I don't see how I can move to them and wfh without it completely destroying my homelife.

Before Covid, DH rarely wfh and I never did. Now DH is wfh 4 days a week and going into the office 1 day (will probably increase to 2 or 3 in the long term) and I am wfh 2 days, going in 2 days (I have Fridays off).

We had a little room that we had earmarked as a study so we quickly bought a desk and chair and DH works in there. I work in the dining room.

It works fine and wfh has mainly been a positive thing for us.

I do wonder how some people are managing. My work has opened offices back up and is allowing hybrid working as long as people have an appropriate space to work, i.e. proper desk and office chair (which the company will supply), and a separate room if others are in the house at the same time. Wfh isn’t allowed if a proper working area and set up isn’t available due to work confidentiality problems and set up potentially causing long term health issues which the company don’t want to be responsible for. I think a lot of companies will start doing the same.

I’m hybrid, wfh 3/4 days a week so I have a desk set up in the corner of my kitchen diner, with laptop and second screen. Everything bar the chair was provided by work, I invested in a proper chair myself.
Althought we have moved to a bigger house since the start of the pandemic, there wasn’t anywhere to work without taking up a bit of space, and I didn’t want to work from my bedroom.
DH didn’t want me set up in the living room and I didn’t either, I need to keep the two seperate otherwise I would never switch off.

I'm in the kitchen, he's in the living room. He's got an old IKEA table that we screwed monitor arms into the wall. I've got my old school desk in between the kitchen speakers. We bought all our IT kit and his chair (work gave me mine for my back). He's staying 100% wfh and I go in once a week.

Reading this I realise how poor mine is. I have 2 part time jobs and I work at home 1 day for both of them, so 2 days. I have a laptop for each, and I sit at the dinning room table with a pad and a calculator, and then at the end put it away in a work bag. How poor is that?

I live in a 3 bedroom house with 2 dc so no spare room. In school holidays like last week and next I WFH on my bed with laptop and all my papers spread out across my bed. When kids are in school then I use dining room table.

DH works in the dining room. It should work as it’s a separate room from the lounge but it’s a PITA as the dining room is a through route to the kitchen. It also looks directly out onto the garden. So I can’t use the kitchen, dining room or garden during the day. Wonderful. Still, he’s happy.

@Phos

If you don't have room that's not the employer's problem now that most offices are back open.

I have a desk set up with multiple monitors and a desk chair in the guest bedroom. It doesn't get used that often and usually on a weekend. My husband has the room that has always been a study since we moved in.

We have all our own equipment but if we didn't we would be able to order them via work.

When I don't need to use second/third monitors I sometimes migrate to the living room or dining room for a bit of a change of scenery.

That’s not always the case about offices being open. In my case, the offices are open but only for essential office-based staff - everyone else is expected to WFH permanently and only come in to the office occasionally for meetings or to catch up with colleagues. Tough luck if you don’t have space at home! Also, you can’t just come in whenever you want, you have to book a desk even though the office is practically empty.

I’m in the office two days a week as I put in a request to go back before they brought in the new rules, and WFH the rest of the week. DH does a mix of WFH and being in the office, and tries to be in the office on my WFH days.

We live in a small house, don’t have a spare room or space for a garden office, and can’t afford to move, so I’m at a tiny desk in the corner of the dining room (have to shift the table slightly to get to it), and DH is on the sofa in the living room with fold out desk if he’s also WFH. I use my own computer but could have requested a work laptop if needed. Also could have taken an office chair home at the start of lockdown (not sure if that applies now). DH has a work laptop.

I enjoy the convenience of WFH some days, but hate not having a separate office space. As our house is so small, I can hear DH on calls and in meetings (and vice versa), which can make it hard to focus.

DH worked from home since 2012 so he had an office space properly designed for him when we moved into our current house.

I have a tiny desk in the guest bedroom, I have a second quite large monitor and need a proper keyboard and mouse so just plonking a laptop on a table doesn't work. We re-arranged the room to make it work as it became clear it may be more permanent than first though.

But - my teamhead still works from the dining room table, he has a tiny 2-bedroom house and no space otherwise. Another friend is now planning a garden house, either as an office or the wife-cave as the old one is now his office and the wife wants her space back.

We have a very small 3 bed house with 1 DC. DH uses the third bedroom as an office, i use the dining table (we have a lounge/diner). I'd like another DC at some point but now with WFH, they would have to share a bedroom because we just cant afford to give up the third bedroom due to lack of space to put a desk anywhere else. I know its not the end of the world but we bought a 3 bed so that any children we had would be able to have their own bedroom.

Now we're a bit stuck - cant afford the next size house because prices have risen so much & cant afford an extension either! I'd rather work in the office but its over an hour's drive away & right now I can't justify doing that everyday with price of petrol. So the dining table it is. Looks so bloody cluttered with my monitor etc on there!

Both at a dining room table, if one needs to be in a meeting the other goes and works in the utility for a while. The spare room can’t be used as we would have to throw away either the bed or the drawers and wardrobe.

Dh is still working from home half the week and will be for the foreseeable. He's set up in the livingroom, fortunately he already had a gaming pc set up, huge desk 4 monitors, comfy desk chair etc. So his laptop just gets plugged into one of his monitors for extra screens and away he goes.

This is ok during term time as I work in a school, but during breaks, like the last 2 weeks and at the start of the pandemic when I was finishing mat leave and then furloughed for childcare (I had a different job then) it's tough because we don't have the space for me and ds to be downstairs.

I freelance and work on the couch whilst doing my work to deadlines alongside household stuff and childcare.

Husband is WFH with a laptop provided and has a desk in our bedroom where he works.

We have a 4 bed house and since we bought it we've had one room as an office, with a standing desk, 2 screens etc. We paid for that ourselves. When the pandemic hit and we needed another office we just turned the spare room into an office space too as we only have one child. The kit in that room was all provided by my work, who have been great at getting us literally anything we require to do our jobs effectively.

We are now back in the office 1-2 days each week and tbh it's a real faff going into work as the set up is better at home for remote meetings.

I really really feel for primarily younger colleagues in rentals etc who are doing everything from their bedroom as whilst my work have been really proactive with buying anything that we require (they sent me an item request list before I returned from mat leave so they could have them delivered to me before I came back) that's only good if you have the space to actually put it.

Garden office - in a tiny garden. Would recommend, both DH and I work in there. It’s annoying when our meetings clash but still OK.

I think it kept us sane in lockdown, just walking to the office we got some fresh air and saw the plants. It was expensive but cheaper than getting a bigger house

Me and DH are both hybrid now but only going into the office once or twice a month at the moment. We only have a smallish 2 bedroom house. I started off in the conservatory and DH in the spare room which has always had a desk with our pc in it. I’ve now moved into our bedroom and replaced my dressing table with a lovely desk paid for by my work. We both been provided with all the kit and chairs needed. Ideally I’d prefer a separate office but it’s worked fine for us so far and we are 2 years in! Might go back to the conservatory for summer if it’s a hot one though.

I've wfh for 2+years. I don't think my colleagues could tell, but I'm in a tiny house with my daughter. One small room is our living space, dining space, her play space and home office. Also in winter the space in which we dry clothes. Constantly moving things trying to make room for one activity or another. I sit on a hard wooden chair and wouldn't have room for 'proper' office equipment if it were offered. But I have a very bad back.

It means I can't relax at home any more. And has shown me how unequal my life is to some of my colleagues. Especially female colleagues in couples, clearly living in nice big 3-4 bed houses, with husband as main wage earner. I do envy them a bit.

I worked from the kitchen table during lock down. It worked well as could have my then 10 year old next to me doing school work.
I made sure to put it all away on holidays and Xmas.
I've since moved jobs and to a hybrid set up so I'll wfh 1-5 days depending on what is happening. My sister found me a proper desk and chair for £30 on marketplace and I've since converted the spare room to an office/spare room.
I'm about to get rid of the bed now as we have a sofa bed downstairs so will get a futon style chair in there.

I’ll be honest and we are very lucky- we just moved to a bigger house. Husband works from home FT and me 3 dpw.
With two children also requiring a room each we needed a five bed house.
Realise I’m very very lucky here and it won’t be an option for most. I would have made do in a corner of the dining room if need be. In our hold house I had the box room and the kids shared a room.