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Organizational redesign, in progress…
By Jeff Zbar | October 30, 2007
After 19 years of working from home and writing about smart home offices, you’d think I could knock out a spiffy home office make-over in short order. That’s just not the case. It seems that that same longevity in the SOHO (Small Or Home Office) space has led to several issues that make a redesign challenging. One is that I’ve accumulated a lot of stuff. I’m pretty good about cleaning out my office, but I still have electronics, accessories, files, documents and other things that are just plain hard to part with. Every six months I’ll go through a wholesale cleaning (much to the lament of the garbage men who are forced to lift cans filled with 40 pounds of my junk), but the stuff just keeps adding up.
Another issue is that because I’ve chronicled the home office and telework experience for a variety of publications for more than a decade, publicists know me as a home office journalist. So they send me more stuff to review for publication – whether it’s a new piece of software, a telephone headset, a business book or the spiffy new K-Sun line of label makers (very cool, btw). I’ll review them on LifeOrganizers.com or ChiefHomeOfficer.com, and send them back. But in the meantime, the accessories just pile up.
Finally, I’m an old dog. I like my home office. I like my custom-built desk, and my lithographs and my kids’ art on the walls. I’m a picky guy who doesn’t want just any furniture to finish off my home office. It has to be the right furniture. I’ve been to Pier 1 and Target and Ikea and a handful of other retailers. And no one has the hard goods I’m looking for.
So the make-over remains a work in progress. One thing I’ve learned in almost two decades of working from home – and 43 years of life – is the virtue of patience. Rush these things, and the result just isn’t what you’re seeking. I’ll have spent too much money buying the wrong furniture and I just won’t be happy with the result. So in the meantime, I’ll keep cleaning out stuff, upsetting the garbage men - and reporting back when I’ve made some headway…
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