Organise your home for school and work
Are you having to ring the school bell? Making sure your home can function for everything you need whether it is home schooling, working from home or just plain old family life is the challenge facing many of us at the moment. How to make sure you can all stay contained in your home environment, do all the things you need and not kill everyone in the process is really tough especially when anxiety and tension levels are running high. If you haven't managed to get your environment working for you here are some things you can think about to help.
Keep is simple
It is really important to keep in mind that this is just for now, so any changes you make should not be big or indeed permanent ones (unless of course you were planning on building a desk in your child's room - maybe then this is the perfect time to bring that job forward!).
✔ Keep the changes small
✔ Make sure any changes are temporary so it is easy to not only put together but also easy to put back.
Who needs to do what?
Think of who you have in the house and what they need to do:
✔ Do you need to work at the same time as your children are doing school work?
✔ Do your children need input, or are they fairly independent?
✔ Do you have two adults who need to work in the house, are there core hours you need to be functioning?
What space do you have?
Think about all the available space in your house, as well as what items you have that could function to make a work environment.
✔ Look at all the rooms in your house, can you use some of them for work / school?
✔ What about the Christmas table, could that be used to make a desk? Or the garden table, can you wipe it off and pop it into your bedroom?
✔ If you only have one place you can all work (ie the kitchen table), can you put together a rota for when it will be used based on core hours?
✔Also, change it up and use rooms you wouldn’t normally; read in the bedroom or even on the stairs.
✔ Take calls in the garden, sit on your front step - try and make use of your whole house so your kitchen does not start to feel like a prison.
Organise your things
Most importantly, think about the 'stuff' everyone will need, from laptops to book, pens to paper, scissors to glue sticks...
✔ Find something for each individual to contain their work things; a folder, box, file whatever works.
✔ Put all their 'stuff in it.
✔ Find a place to store them.
✔ At the start of the day everyone grabs their box and takes it to their workstation.
✔ At the end of the day, everything gets packed up and popped back to where they live - this has to be every individual's responsibility (through bribes or threats, whatever works!).
Whatever you do in the day try and claim your home back every night so you can all relax, enjoy dinner and a glass of gin (or two). Good luck, and if you are struggling to see how you space is going to work, drop me a message with any questions or give me a call.
