Giving up your home office

However committed you are to being a homeworker, there may come a time when you decide you are getting too big for your garden office/shed. A piece at Entrepreneur.com looks at going back to a 'real' office, reasons why (family interruptions, loneliness, improved growth potential, increased professionalism, more space to work) and reasons why not (commuting, overheads). It also includes some suggestions for those who want to continue homeworking including:
* moving to a new home with a bigger office or building your own home so you can design your own home office from scratch
* reinventing your present office by hiring a professional organiser to help you make the best use of your space
* turning an unused room in your home into a storage facility, warehouse or a second office for employees
* outsourcing work to other free agents instead of trying to squeeze employees into your already packed space
* using business centers.

Hut Garden Designs - new designs for 2007

According to Jonathan Satchell, a partner at the impressive Hut Garden Offices and Garden Studios, they will be offering a range of 8 new standard size buildings alongside their bespoke service in the New Year. All the details will be available on their new website from early January.

Christmas design for homeworkers

While office Christmas parties may be one of the casualties of being a homeworker, there's no reason not to get into the swing of things as an article at Enterprise Nation's web site explains. Among their recommendations are a very, very low maintenance Christmas tree (which shedworkers will need to keep a particular eye on) and some 'festive refreshement' for which you might want to turn down the volume on your computer...

Feng shui your shed

Not making money? Feeling lethargic in your garden office? Don’t blame your clients, simply buy a red modem or move your desk. Feng shui boils down to a healthy mind in a healthy shed (or indeed any other home office) with consequently happy knock-on effects for all other areas of your life. It’s all about the the flow of ch’i, the life force or vital energy that links us with our surroundings and we want our ch’i to flow, not be blocked.

First the bad news for shedworkers: as ch’i enters your house through the front door, you should really have your shed in the front of the house to take advantage of the flow of energy. If you're in the back garden, it's harder for energy to get to you. Also, sadly, slanty ceilings are a big no-no since they can suppress your ambitions.

On the plus side, a rectangular-shaped room is considered a great shape and windows a major bonus (if you don’t have windows you are cutting yourself off from the world, literally out of touch with your clients and the general zeitgeist of your work). Don't put your desk right in line with the door or you will receive all the energy force coming into the room which may make you a bit nervous. Also think about interior design - yellow promotes creativity, blue is soothing, and red gives an aggressive edge. Your ceiling should be white as a dark colour will give you the impression there are dark clouds circling you.

Most importantly, your working environment is divided into quadrants reflecting your working life. That all-important wealth quadrant is on the upper left corner of your shed or desk so stick a tiptop bowl of fruit or a nice plant there to help you financially. Similarly, some experts suggest putting a red object (eg a cricket ball) in the same quadrant. Also think about a good rug. Nothing too big and something darkish is reminiscent of a pool of water which is of course very relaxing.

Finally, take a look at your furniture. If it’s secondhand then it has ‘predecessor ch’i’ which could be damaging to you if, for example, the previous owner of your chair went bankrupt.

A version of this article appears in the new issue of The Shed magazine. For a free copy please email me here.

Choosing a shed – Eco Space Studios

Sometimes it's hard to choose which garden office/shed would suit you best, but if you are looking for something environmentally sound as well as attractive, you should take a look at Eco Space Studios. The studios come with green roofs (see earlier posts for sedum roof details - Eco's roof garden includes mosses, succulents, herbaceous plants and grasses) and are made from sustainable Red Western Cedar timber. Eco Space also provide a 'Dalsouple' rubber floor, available in 70 different colours, which is not only hardwearing but has an excellent level of environmental protection, is free from pvc and can be recycled. There are also various enticing options including shower, kitchen and mezzanine level rest/chillout pad - this is very much part of the growing trend towards live/work areas. You can also download a useful pdf brochure from the site which contains lots of beguiling pictures of the studios, including a nice snowy one.

Homeworking in bed

An excellent article in the Sydney Morning Herald by Katie Hafner called The Bed Bug Bytes explores the pertinent subject of taking your laptop, blackberry, etc, to bed with you and what effect that might have on the relationship with your bed partner. "The marital bed has survived his-and-her book lights and the sushi-laden bed tray," points out Hafner. "Can it also survive computers that tether their owners to the office or make the bed the workplace itself?" The article has obviously struck a chord as you can see on the newspaper's blog site here where plenty of readers have their say.

The day of the dacha has arrived

Thanks to Derek Workman for alerting me to the ongoing competition, now sadly over, in the Saturday edition of the Telegraph newspaper to find interesting sheds around the country. Lila Das Gupta, writer of the initial article, argued that her shed is better than a cottage in the country and that "the day of the dacha has arrived". Sadly she skimped on her shed with all too obvious results. "I ordered the cheapest I could find from the internet," she wrote. "Big mistake. As I constantly remind my children, if something looks too good to be true, then it probably is. I have made up for this setback by painting my dacha a rich, velvety plum colour called Brinjal. I think Farrow & Ball paint colours always blend well with the outdoors." Hmmm...

Anyway, more importantly you can see a truly mindboggling array of sheds - not all of them I suspect are used for homeworking or as garden offices - from around the country on the site which were sent in by their happy owners here though there is another page of them which you can find by typing in 'Garden Huts' into their search engine but which has no direct link. My favourite is the extremely green shed pictured here.