How is almost everybody physically able to WFH?

[someladdersandsnakes]

This is something I just don't really get. I work at a company which doesn't pay that well in a city where housing is very expensive but still basically everybody has somewhere at home that they can work every day. I currently have an office at home because it's a 3 bed and I'm now expecting our second child, when the baby arrives it won't be physically possible anymore to do regular WFH because the only place will be the dining table in the front room, only really suitable for occasional use because there isn't enough space around it for a proper office chair or anything. Nobody else at my company seems to have a similar problem though. I thought appropriately sized housing was a major societal problem yet somehow since the pandemic everyone has a suitable permanent workspace in their house? Including families, young renters, people still living with their parents, etc.

I’m so rarely at a desk anyway due to my job, even if I’m in the office I’m running about / putting it down on tables in meeting rooms, etc. When I’m at home I just work from the dining table and shock horror sometimes the sofa. 🤷‍♀️

@Thepeopleversuswork I disagree - it was the boss who was rude, effectively criticising someone for being too poor to have a spare room. Such boorish behaviour should rightfully be shamed.

It’s not exactly difficult to have a desk in your bedroom. You aren’t sleeping and working at the same time. The bedroom sits empty in the daytime.

Such a lack of imagination to how the other half live. Of course people living with their parents can WFH too - in their bedroom. You can get a neat small desk for not much money.

It’s also incredibly common for children to share bedrooms, especially when young. Your whole OP comes across a bit faux-naive tbh.

Dh has a desk in our bedroom. I'm self employed and work mostly in the kitchen, sometimes from the sofa. Our kids are teens and are at school until after 5 five days a week and when they are around are old enough to keep out of the way if needs be.

Some people in my work were working from ironing boards during covid 😬

I did 4 years at the dining room table. Work provided a proper office chair which really made a difference. I couldn't have sat on a dining room chair for that long.
DS has now moved out so I'm now in his room and have a proper desk set up.

My dh works from home a few days a week and either works on the dining room table, a small desk in our bedroom or at the library/cafe 5 mins from home.

Many of my colleagues are young people in shared accommodation, and work from their bedrooms. I know someone who used an ironing board as a desk! I have a separate room as a home office but I'm in the minority.

I have worked sitting on a birth ball at a camping table which I put up each day in my bedroom blocking the door as no other space. Also at one end of dining table talking on headset whilst my partner used the other end. Most recently at the desk under the cabin bed in my daughter’s room. You make do!

No not everyone, in my company lots of people hated WFH during lockdown because they were working on dining tables/kids bedroom desks etc. I was lucky we had a loft room we could convert into a study (old conversion that can't be used as a bedroom).
Is there really nowhere you can squeeze in a small corner desk? Or a hideaway desk that you can close when you're not working?

I’ve got a small downstairs office. Not a fancy house, average 3 bed semi.

I'm a solo parent in a 2 bed flat, work full time from home. I have a desk/monitor/laptop set up in my living room in the chimney alcove.

My son has a desk in his bedroom and we have a table in the kitchen. So, I can still work undisturbed when he gets home from school.

We have a 1200mm wide desk with full sized screen, and a 1600mm corner desk with full sized screen in our 3 bed house. It is a bit of a squeeze but doable and we prioritise that space as we spend many hours at those desks.

Not all 3-bed houses are equal. Unless you share floor plans don't think anyone can offer an opinion on if you have space for a desk or not.

Desk in a corner of the lounge, have no-one else in the house when working.

The point about house shares or others who are difficult to do work when they are about is why I think anyone who prefers an office should have one to go to.

I found a very small desk in the Next clearance and have set it up in the corner of the living room with cork boards on the wall behind the desk for any notes I need and a printer under the desk on the floor.

I work around the house, dressing table in my bedroom is v good, if not dining table. When house is busy I retreat to wherever is quietest. You can buy small pop up tables for £15 or so, try one?

however in reality I think I’m storing up back issues for later in life by not having a proper set up tbh

have a desk in the living room but it’s cramped AF. Better than going to the office as my commute is an hour each way. Plus the time it would take making myself look vaguely presentable (currently I put my hair up and some earrings and that’s fine), I still think it’s a win.

I have a desk in dds room. She uses in the evenings for her homework. In the school holidays she has to be out of bed for 8:30am then I can start work!
Most other people at work have an office chair at the dining table.

That’s what DP uses if both of us are WFH at the same time. A foldable desk has made a lot of difference as we live in an open plan 2 bed rented flat in London for £££ and we have a toddler

We ended up buying a 5 bed house so that we could have two offices and three bedroom (2 kids). If we couldn’t afford it then at least one of us would be on the dining table or in a corner somewhere. DH is a high earner though.
There is a link between higher earners and wfh, not that that’s in any way fair

We have a small house but with 3 bedrooms and only 1 DS so I have a desk in our spare room (I do a mix of home and office). DH never works from home.

If I didn't have the office I would use the dining table in the corner of the sitting room, but I would set up a screen and keyboard as I don't like using just the laptop. But I would probably go into the office more.

I think most of my team do one or other of the above as well.

DH and I are both self-employed and do our admin at home - I just sit on the sofa with my laptop and he sits in bed with his. We do have a table if we need it but honestly, it's not very comfy for long periods of time.

If one of us had to WFH full-time we would convert the spare room from dumping ground/gym to office/gym, lol.

I’m lucky enough to have a home office… it was originally the kitchen in this house (it was moved downstairs before I bought it). I love the fact that I’m working professionally in what was originally seen as a ‘woman’s place’.
I do realize that I’m very lucky to be able to do this though. Some of my colleagues use bedrooms and dining spaces.

We DO have a home office but DH usually works in there because he needs two big screens. I usually work on my laptop sitting on the sofa but hold Teams meetings in one of the spare bedrooms where we have a table and spare dining chair. I used to work in the kitchen-diner sometimes but then we had to reposition the router and now the signal isn’t good enough in there for Teams calls.

The vast majority of my colleagues work in their kitchens or dining rooms or spare bedrooms. Mostly people use a fake background or blur the background but when they don’t, you can see they’re not in a proper home office.

When dh started wfh we moved to a shaper area so we could have a forth bedroom as an office. He then started a new job commuting to an office everyday, so office got turned into a spare bedroom. Then covid hit, he was whf full time, so he put a small desk in the spare bedroom. Now he's hybrid wfh twice a week and his "office" is a bedroom/office/general dumping ground for laundry and bags for charity (that never quite make it there 😂)