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Perks and Pitfalls of Telecommuting

Luanne Bradley — Mon, 15 Nov 2010 18:43:30 +0000

The soup got torched, again. Zesty flavored whence removed from the can, the now smoky-flavored Trader Joe O’s went to school, anyway, in a pink thermos in the tin Blow Pop novelty lunch box. This, after a cursory taste test confirmed the impossible: She wouldn’t know the difference. Never mind that the cauldron it bubbled fiendishly in was tortured beyond repair. Never mind that she dissects her green beans to remove the bad parts before eating. I was reasoning with the clarity of Lenny from Mice and Men? Show me the rabbits, George. Nah, better not. I’ll probably burn them critters, too.

“Did you burn it while you were working on the computer in the basement?” she inquired, in that accusatory, sassy tween tone reminiscent of the damaged young stars of twit-coms. ”Yes, I did it while working in the basement,” I confessed. “I’m so sorry. It won’t happen again.”

Appallingly, I also was exposed at school upon pick up time. The school secretary reported there was something wrong with the way the kid’s soup smelled. “It smelled off,” shared Juanita, scrunching her nose like my Pug dog, Mr. Jones, when ordering him to stop licking the Bounce sheets. Yeah, lady, what smelled off was my motherhood. Time to set some boundaries, right? Or at least install a kitchen timer in the basement.

Truth is, working from home via the computer is certainly a good way to go, but understand the perks and pitfalls. You save huge amounts of money and fuel by going about your business online. Commuting to work by car and writing it off is still commuting. No, telecommute if you can, even if the mouse in your house is a huge distraction – keeping you from becoming the Alice Waters you aspire to be.

Clearly, more of us are clicking with that mouse to earn a livelihood. The U.S. Census Bureau reports sizable increases in the number of Americans working out of their homes. It shot up from 9.5 million in 1999 to 11.3 million of us in 2005. Half of all home workers have college degrees and earn at least $75,000 a year, and also work longer hours than the average worker to make that dough, about 11 hours per day.

Studies also show growth in the number of employees telecommuting on multiple days of the week, from 2.3 million in 2005 to 2006 up to 2.8 million workers from 2007 to 2008. Chances are it will keep rising, and want-ads will reflect that rise rather than the sprinkling of telemarketing options available now.

In the year 2010, telecommuting is hugely viable and still not always acceptable to backwards employers, who argue nothing replaces relationships formed at the cooler. Not even forgoing costly commercial rental space.

But those who understand the benefits admit technology has outmoded the need to traverse the country in jet planes and rack up business class frequent flier miles to do business. It has outmoded the need to show up to a cubicle every day with your tail wagging to get a bone. That way of doing biz is up in the air and destined to being grounded for good if we keep it up. I know you know what I mean by keeping it up.

Meanwhile, back to the soup. There are unavoidable pitfalls and some avoidable ones to multitasking in too comfortable of an environment, namely, one that you control 100 percent.

Unavoidable

You will find the cut-off time to be elusive when your office is where you also shower, cook, social network, pay bills, wash clothes and generally manage your own life and or the lives of children and other living things. Yes, plants count.

You often cough up your own medical insurance unless the employer has it covered, struggle to squeeze in exercise which actually is easier to do once you are already out and about, and may decide to screw the housework which you would ordinarily fit in before work in the morning or when you get home. Ah ha. See, you don’t leave and you don’t come home. Hello piles of dirty clothes and towels, sink of dishes, unmade beds. Wouldn’t you rather work than tackle those unpleasant chores? Isn’t it because you hate housework that you dive into work in the first place?

Avoidable

Over-scheduling. Don’t do it. It will lead to overwhelm which will lead to wine with lunch on the couch. You can still stick to a schedule like any office rat, just give yourself a window of completing must-do tasks and prioritize as you go. Then visualize the stop button on the treadmill and push it when the time comes to clock out. Warning. If you devote time to social networking during much of your down time, there will be no down time. Limit that as well.

And do place that timer in the home office. My sister gave me one years ago and when I reorganize the kitchen drawers I bet I’ll find it. No school secretary deserves to smell rotten soup. Sorry Juanita. If I can hyperlink, download images, Facebook and Twitter, I should be able to time a pot of pasta soup on the stove. I won’t give up, won’t resort to peanut butter and jelly and return to the cold and rigid environs of a corporate work setting.

Keep telling yourself that. Better yet, send a Gmail reminder to your Yahoo account, print it and tack it on the bulletin board in front of your computer. Add the affirmation, Telecommuters rule. Then get out of your pajamas, have some lunch, do a load of laundry, say hello to the mailman, and get back to work.

Images: Fabio Bruna; SuperFantastic; Shari Thompson

5 Desks to Feel Good About Using

Lisa Hoover — Mon, 21 Jun 2010 18:56:57 +0000

Greening your life doesn’t end at the door to your home office. If you poke around enough, you’ll find there are lots of environmentally friendly desks on the market that can add beauty to your workspace without stealing resources from the planet.

Sustainable Corner Desk with Peninsula

This big, bold desk needs a nice corner to nestle into. We love its curvy lines and raised shelf to accommodate a computer monitor, PDA, or books. It’s made from sustainably, organically-grown Chinese bamboo and, amazingly, fits together in three minutes with no tools required. The desk’s gorgeous form factor, adjustable shelving, and hidden cable management comes together to make a beautiful focal point for any home office.

The Cubby Desk

If you work on just a laptop, you may not need a huge, sprawling space to spread out. This compact desk is large enough to hold a laptop and office supplies on the top, while still leaving room to park a printer and phone on the top shelf. Stash envelopes and files in one of the cubbies, and corral all your pens in the slide out drawer. The desk is made from FCF-certified birch and coated in your choice of six eco-friendly veneers. The steel legs are finished in tough aluminum powder and lend a certain androgyny to the piece, making it practical for a two people sharing a single workspace.

QDesk Combo

Why should adults get to have all the fun? Stash this fun kids’ desk in a corner for your lads and lassies to finish their homework in style. Made entirely of 100 percent recyclable polyethylene, it’s available in a batch of different colors and in both right and left-handed versions. A handy opening at the base is perfect for stashing papers, books, and the gum you aren’t allowed to chew in school.

Personal Air Fresh Desk

Breathe easy while you sit at this unique desk to get your stuff done. Its deep recess run the length of three sides to hold plants, and provide a little privacy. A desk with a built-in personal air cleaner? Pretty sweet.

Uzura Reception Desk

This honey of a desk was built to reside in a reception area, but could absolutely work as a way to carve a home-office space out of a large room in your house. It’s made of liana and plywood, and somewhat resembles a giant sisal tumbleweed. Angled backward into a corner, the desk’s high back gives the illusion of private work area without cutting you off from the rest of the room.

5 Desks to Feel Good About Using

Lisa Hoover — Mon, 21 Jun 2010 08:26:59 +0000

Sustainable Corner Desk with Peninsula

The Cubby Desk

QDesk Combo

Personal Air Fresh Desk

Uzura Reception Desk

5 Green Home Office Supplies We Love

Lisa Hoover — Thu, 03 Jun 2010 17:57:43 +0000

You’ve dug a compost pit, replaced all your light bulbs with the energy-efficient kind, and given up bottled water for good. What about your home office? These five cool office supplies are guaranteed to help keep you productive and planet-friendly all at once.

Sticky Notes – Good things come in small packages, like this pack of 100 percent recycled sticky-notepads. If you use notes all over the place like I do (which is to say, every exposed surface in my home office), then it’s great to be able to feed your craving for stickies without wandering far afield of your desire to be good to the planet.

Handmade Journals – Lots of us use journals to track ideas, plan projects, and collect notes throughout the work day. These beautiful handmade journals are made from 100 percent recycled paper and feature plantable paper covers pre-seeded with poppies, snap dragons, bird’s eye, etc. So when you’ve filled the notebook, just rip the cover off and drop it in your garden or a pot of soil. The annuals and perennials will give you something to look at when you’re on your next boring conference call.

Biodegradable Ballpoint Pens – I’m crazy about these! I have a metric ton of plastic-barreled pens all over my office that seem to materialize from nowhere and never write well. I need to have pens around but I’m not crazy about bringing yet more plastic junk into my house. Paper Mate comes to the rescue with a biodegradable pen that will disintegrate in your backyard compost bin when it outlives its usefulness. Brilliant!

Looseleaf Binders – Whether you use them for work, school, home, or office organization, looseleaf three-ring binders are super handy to have around. The downside is all the cardboard and vinyl components used to assemble them. Earth Binder makes standard and custom looseleaf binders made almost completely from post-consumer material. You can buy ready-made binders direct from the company, or ask them to help you design a custom project at no charge.

Colored Folders – You can’t manage an effective workspace without an efficient filing system. These colored hanging folders from Earthwise are made from 50 percent post-consumer materials and are perfect for getting a mountain of paperwork under control quickly.

Image: Risager

5 Green Home Office Supplies We Love

Lisa Hoover — Thu, 03 Jun 2010 09:03:01 +0000

Image: Risager

Effortlessly Save Printer Ink with Ecofont

Lisa Hoover — Mon, 24 May 2010 18:36:15 +0000

When it comes to green living, even the tiniest steps can make a difference. In your home office, reducing paper waste by printing less is a no-brainier – but when you gotta print, you gotta print. Set to be released this summer, a new font package may save you up to 25 percent of printer ink, so if you can’t eliminate your paper usage, at least you can cut back on toner.

Ecofont is a downloadable font package that saves ink by printing each character with minuscule holes that have no effect on legibility. It’s extremely easy to use, too. When creating a document in Microsoft, simply choose Ecofont as you would Arial, Times New Roman, or any other font you typically use. It’s easily readable on your computer monitor, and automatically prints out on your printer up to an 11-point font.

The font package will run around $20 for home users for a three-year license. Business owners pay a sliding fee, depending on number of users. Admittedly, saving tiny bits of ink here and there won’t save the planet by itself. Every little bit helps, though, especially when you have no other choice but to print a hard copy of something from your computer.

Lost and Found in the Age of Affluenza

Luanne Bradley — Mon, 21 Dec 2009 16:30:10 +0000

I’m always tempted by those clever hooks for purses to keep better track of our keys. They’re usually hidden in my bag under a bushel of important papers, hair ties, various wallets and glasses. Digging for keys is adding years to my life. It’s that stressful because disorder complicates my life.

There are people out there called professional organizers who charge hourly rates to box and label the accumulation in our homes. And everywhere you look, there are attractive storage boxes and baskets for sale to keep things in their proper places in our offices and homes. What I wouldn’t do to keep my family’s things in their proper places. I would glue them down if that worked.

The middle class is begging for these gadgets and services. We are not only being buried alive by constant connection and information, our accumulation, too, is taking over and greatly complicating our lives.

It doesn’t matter that I’m attempting to go paperless by saying no to receipts at the register or reading my news and paying bills online. It doesn’t matter that I spent last weekend eliminating clothes from my daughters’ closets and retiring enough garments to fill five supersize garbage compactor bags. Today, my husband is hauling them to his mother’s so that her nurse can ship the items to her poor family in the Philippines.

As I strive to reduce excess and clutter to make my home the simplified, functional haven I envision, I continue to do battle with the nagging phenomenon of losing shit. Shit! I’m sick of it.

“Where’s the English paper I printed out?”

“Who moved my tax documents? They were on kitchen table!”

“Have you seen my new skinny jeans? I’ve looked in the hampers and in everyone’s rooms and I can’t find them.”

Yes, playing the surprisingly unrewarding game of lost and found remains the most aggravating symptom of the consumption syndrome known as affluenza, aptly defined by Wikipedia as “the portmanteau of the words affluence and influenza and a socially transmitted condition of overload resulting form the dogged pursuit of more. ”

First, allow me to point out that the mother is the sole proprietor of the house capable of locating lost articles. And once the lost treasure surfaces, I rarely see the results I would expect, i.e. a big hug and overwhelming expression of joy on their faces. “Goodness, Mother, how can I ever thank you?”

Take my husband, an intelligent eco man who acquires the least, loses the most, and can’t find objects that are literally under his nose. One daughter has inherited this same bizarre gene. The other daughter was once a registered bloodhound like her mama, but is now losing her shit, and has succumbed to the same bad habits as her influential sister such as getting undressed and leaving belongings strewn on the floor of various rooms. (They also both bite their fingers and devour chocolate like wild beasts, habits I link to the bizarre genes inherited from their mother.)

Every so often, like last weekend, I get on a roll and rifle through closets, sort my kitchen desk nook, organize the kids’ bins of art supplies, and perform the most dreaded and vapid chore of all – filing. Man oh man, does anyone loathe filing as much as I do?

I wish I could get that organizer lady back here to help me make new files and sort all the junk. She made professional labels on her label maker. She was great. I wanted to marry her. I want her to move in and take over and take me away. She’s Calgon to me, minus the harsh chemicals. But wouldn’t you know it, I don’t know where I put her number.

I try not to beat myself up about all of this – to follow the advice of modern clergy and therapists and be compassionate with myself. Sure, I’m a bonehead about keeping order, a little better than some of my most eccentric working friends, and not half as good as most stay-at-home moms.

It’s really a matter of overcoming the selfishness which leads to the over-consumption of material possessions, according to the author of the website My Super- Charged Life. As he sees it, the disease of deriving happiness from the next new toy “is a fruitless pursuit that will quickly leave a person depressed, disillusioned and broke.”

I feel depressed when I drop my girls off at their private school and pass the lost and found corner which is so generously stocked, it resembles a second hand store. Piles of forgotten lunch boxes with rotting contents, abandoned warm winter jackets, essential classroom binders and adorable stylish tee shirts: They all abound in the unsightly lost and found – glaring symbols of affluenza.

At the end of each month, a volunteer parent named Tila from Colombia ships the unclaimed items to the poor in her homeland. The children there are appreciative. Children who barely have enough food to eat don’t snub their cheese sandwiches and abandon lunch boxes on the black top. When you own just one winter jacket, you don’t leave it behind when you board the bus for home.

True, kids will always be forgetful. I was once a forgetful child. But unlike my daughters, I had less and kept track of it. My walk-in-closet contained about five pair of shoes and two toy boxes, one with Barbies, one with stuffed animals. It was easy to clean up after play. It was freeing.

Guess it all adds up to wanting to be free, again, free from the clutter and feeling that fleeting high from getting something new, a wired emotion we don’t feel by accident.

In the ’30s, Freud’s nephew Edward Bernays (known as the father of public relations) figured out how to mold public opinion via third party propaganda campaigns for selling everything from bacon and eggs promoted by the nation’s doctors to cigarettes, soap and books. This marketing strategy dictated to the receptive nation eventually became a familiar meme: Linking the accumulation of goods with feelings of happiness and success.

Ironically, I’m now finding happiness is attainable not by adding but subtracting. If anything should get lost, it is the brainwashing (and sometimes greenwashing) that the more we amass, the better we feel.

I strive to find the simplicity of less. Even more than ignorance, I suspect it is the route to bliss. In other words, it is time to bench Team Edward.

This is the latest installment in Luanne’s column, Life in the Green Lane.

Main Image: Evelyn is Here

Images: Jeffrey Beall, It’s a Purse Thing, Squidoo, Wikipedia

Is Writer’s Block a Pain in the Neck? Get a Good Computer Chair!

Luanne Bradley — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 15:00:59 +0000

If you can score an ergonomic Herman Miller computer chair (above) for a reasonable price at Costco, there’s no excuse to be torturing your body at home or at work.

A good chair is not hard to find. And it no longer costs an arm and a leg. A bad one promotes bad posture and pain, and could be your downfall when trying to be productive. Think about how much those aches and pains block the creative pathways of the old noggin!

Sitting too forward in your seat is the number one way to injure your back and neck, since you aren’t getting the support you need. These days, good task chairs are widely available, including the classic Herman line which began selling two designs directly to shoppers last fall through 400 Costco Wholesale Corp. warehouses and the company’s website, Costco.com.

The Equa office chairs, first introduced 24 years ago by the Grand Rapids, Mi. company, are sold in fabric or leather, and sized for medium or large occupants. They are available in basic black from $320 for fabric to $660 for a large leather chair with polished aluminum base.

A smaller scale but fully recyclable Caper Multipurpose chair comes in three colors and sells at the store for $293. It lists for $600 and currently sells at Herman Miller retailer Sit4less.com for $579 delivered.

Although in-store options are likely to be limited to one variation, shoppers who want a broader choice of colors in the Caper or larger size of Equa could order those from Costco’s Web site.

The good news is these chairs are not only ergonomic but also made using renewable energy in a LEED-certified factory. They also contain 21% recycled content – including 15% post-consumer waste, and all components are 100% recyclable.

Here are some other good options to keep you sitting upright so that your brilliance can flow:

The Humanscale Freedom Chair from Simply Egonomic

The fabric is green in more ways than one. It’s also eco-friendly. The Freedom chair is designed with a minimum number of manually-adjusted controls. Once the chair is fitted, no further adjustment is required. The idea is that movement, which is essential for a healthy body, shouldn’t be constricted by locking mechanisms and manual controls. It has won all kinds of awards in Canada for its ergonomic features and runs about $800.

The Heavy Duty Chair from Ergonomic Home

Much cheaper at around $387 (less $80 for the armless) this chair is big on comfort and sustainability: materials include 93% reclaimed steel, 90% recycled plastic/nylon and glues are a new HVOC-free, water-based glue developed by 3M. The Eco-system/performance upholstery is 100% recycled.

All Bodybilt High Back Chair from Ergogenesis

A contoured neckroll adds head and neck support to this handsome, comfy chair with good upper and lower back support. It also offers a 10-Point Posture Control adjustment to target stressful aches and pains which the maker argues is so often escalated by inferior chairs. The model promotes proper posture with the weight distribution on the surface once you make contact.

A Friendly Reminder

Luanne Bradley — Wed, 21 Jan 2009 12:00:37 +0000

Say goodbye to the old cork and hello to the new pulp. This bulletin Board from Plush Pod is made from stacked reprocessed sheets of left-over, pre-printed office forms and fixed into a recyclable paper board frame. A cool design with varied patterns and striations results from combining the printed text and graphics. (Designer: Adin Mumma for Umbra.)

The 12×12 board works just like the conventional corkboards (no factory wood or metal frame) for holding your pins and notes or simply wedging them into the cracks on the surface. A natural for your kitchen or home office. $26.