SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA JOB MARKET : COPING WITH COMMUTING : SETTING UP A HOME OFFICE : It’s important not to cut corners when you set up an office in your house.
Ah, to work at home, where there’s no commute, no office politics . . . and no support for your lower back because your chair is a rickety hand-me-down from Aunt Mabel.
One of the biggest mistakes people make when they set up their home offices is cutting corners on the basics, especially on seating, according to Paul Edwards, a Santa Monica consultant and co-author of “Working at Home.”
“Your health, your productivity and your alertness can all suffer,” he says. “Get a real chair.”
Jon Winokur, author of “The Portable Curmudgeon,” has worked as a writer and real estate investor from his Pacific Palisades home for years. “I could never work in a real office again,” he says.
So how do you avoid the mistakes and make your home office comfortable, efficient and appealing? Here are some tips from the experts:
- First, the room itself. Winokur uses a 12-by-15-foot spare bedroom. You can also make a breakfast room, a den or even a converted garage workable. What’s important is to find a spot where you’ll have privacy and be removed from the traffic in your house.
“A big problem I see is people putting their office in the bedroom,” says Sarah Edwards, co-author of “Working at Home.”
“Your office stuff starts taking over; soon, everything is staring at you,” she said. “You try to watch TV at bedtime, you see something you didn’t do and then you work all night.”
Don’t put your office where you’ll have inevitable conflicts with what the rest of your family is doing. “We tell people to child-proof their home office rather than home-office-proofing their child,” Sarah Edwards says.
The Internal Revenue Service will allow a home-office deduction only if the space is used exclusively for business; you won’t be able to share your area with your daughter’s computer or your son’s electric train.
- Next, the furnishings. A desk and a chair should be your biggest investments here. Look in the Yellow Pages under “Office Furniture”--your neighborhood probably has many retailers in the business. Don’t forget stores such as Plummer’s, which carry a wide selection of relatively inexpensive furniture. Also, check publications such as the Recycler, which often carry ads from businesses that have folded and are selling all their furnishings.
Go shopping armed with the measurements of your office space; you can also use a piece of graph paper to sketch the perimeters of your room. This “map” will help you determine how desks, bookshelves and tables might fit.
Sit at the desks in which you’re interested. Use a piece of paper and a pen and pretend to write. Bring your computer keyboard and see how the height feels for typing. Imagine your things--Rolodex, telephone, in-boxes, clock, calendar, etc.--spread out over the surface.
Will you have enough room? Are there enough drawers for your files, or will you need an additional file cabinet? Is the knee space comfortable? Is the top surface durable or will you be terrified to set a cup of coffee down on it each morning?
Once you’ve picked a desk, try a number of chairs with it. You’re looking for a chair that provides adjustable support for your lower back and one that won’t cut off circulation to your legs. Don’t feel rushed--narrow your selection to a couple of chairs and then sit in each of them for 15 minutes, again pretending to work and type.
Many people use two desks--one for writing and telephoning and another for computer equipment. The heights may need to be different on these two pieces of furniture.
When you get home with your new things, set them up but don’t hang pictures on the wall yet. Use your space for a few days; change it around, make sure you’re truly comfortable.
“I’ve tried to make my office as ergonomically correct as possible,” Winokur says. “I minimize the amount of motion I have to do. My chair is on casters so I slide from the computer table to the writing table or to answer the phone. I have a bookshelf right next to the computer table for manuals, dictionaries and so forth. I am constantly trying to think of ways to save motion and time.”
- The computer. It’s no longer a question of whether you need one if you work at home . . . it’s what kind you need. Read Consumer Reports, talk to friends in your profession who are happy with their computers, visit computer stores before making a decision. Another excellent source is Home Office Computing, a magazine geared to those who work at home.
Winokur has found that using a neighborhood computer store staffed with knowledgeable salespeople can be important. “The service is worth the extra cost,” he says. “On a couple of occasions, (my store) has really helped when I had a malfunction on deadline.”
Typically, you’ll also need a printer and a modem. The quieter your printer is, the better.
Many people still supplement their computer equipment with a typewriter, which is usually more efficient for preparing envelopes and quick notes--but there’s no need to spend much.
- The extras. Here’s where you can go a little crazy. Fax machines, which transmit documents via telephone lines, are becoming hugely popular with people who work at home, as are inexpensive and easy-to-service personal copiers. Some of the newest machines around are a combination of telephone, fax and copier--but Paul Edwards cautions against relying on these machines as your sole source of copies.
“The copy quality is usually terrible,” he says. “In fact, when we get faxes in our office here, we copy the thermal-paper copy on a regular copier and throw the fax transmission away. It can fade after six months.”
Many quick-print companies, office supply stores and even dry cleaners offer copying and fax services that are both helpful and cost-efficient if you only need them occasionally. “Many people just setting up a home office forget to value their time,” Paul Edwards says. “If you’re a consultant charging $50 an hour and you spend two hours a week running out for some photocopies, you’re spending $100 a week on photocopies.”
With personal copiers available at under $500, that kind of expenditure doesn’t make much sense, Edwards says. “If you can pay yourself back in three months or less, we recommend that you go ahead and buy,” he says.
Depending on your profession, you’ll need assorted letterheads and envelopes--another place where you can spend as much or as little as suits your budget. “I’m a bit of a stationery fetishist,” Winokur says. “It’s one of my indulgences.”
Good places to find stationery and a huge selection of other office supplies are HQ Office Supplies Warehouse and the Office Club, both of which have stores in Southern California. You can also order everything from computers to fax machines to desks and chairs from catalogues such as Reliable Home Office, available by calling (800) 843-2850.
The Edwardses estimate that you can set up a more-than-adequate office for $3,000 to $4,000--less if you’re frugal. “Equip yourself as well as you can without going into debt,” Paul Edwards says. “If your business is totally new to you, be conservative. But if you’re becoming a consultant after 20 years in the same field and you’re taking three clients with you, it’s better to spend more money and hit the ground running.”
