Life Changes - Home Working
Changing the way we use our homes happens as the family grows and develops. How to keep on top of changing priorities can be a challenge and if we don’t plan ahead and organise we can so easily be overwhelmed!
One of the main changes has been more mobile working and in particular using home as a our work base.
In my own family, we have changed from having busy office-based jobs to being self-employed and working from home. Although we have benefited from technology allowing us to work in any location, we still needed a base for writing reports and storing documents - somewhere to keep the work stuff encroaching on our home and family life. We needed a distinction between our household and work business.
Fortunately we had space with our sons growing up and moving out of the family home to use some upstairs rooms. We needed to review and streamline our equipment - desks, computers, storage but creating some separate space for two very different businesses has not been easy. We’ve taken time to review what we wanted from our space, and all the mass of paperwork we had been keeping, using shared platforms and digital storage wherever possible. We now have calm dedicated spaces to work.
We seemed to have it all under control when son number one embarked on his on-line vintage ceramic business, the Jacaranda Collection, buying and selling lovely items which needed a home before being purchased. His flat was never going to work for storage in the long term so gradually we became the stockroom and dispatch depot!
It seems to be working now but it hasn’t been easy to ensure that we have a safe place to store fragile items, and can retrieve them easily when they are sold, without overwhelming our home. There’s now an area in the shed for storing packaging materials - (rolls of bubble wrap and piles of cardboard boxes did not enhance our living room!) and the items are stored in a logical way, without a big layout in shelving etc which for a new small business wasn’t affordable anyway. We’ve re purposed wardrobes and used cardboard trays free from supermarkets to create spaces under beds so it doesn’t look like a storeroom and we still have room for guests.
It’s been good for us giving a spur to sort out our cupboards - we’ve found some lost family treasures and stirred some memories but also discovered stuff that had no useful purpose and been able to pass on to charities, sell or recycle, generally making us feel lighter.
It’s a joy giving a home for a short period to some lovely items, and we regularly have some on display. The business is doing well and in time the stock will find a more permanent home but for now we are managing - until the next family request!
If you want to check out some of the stock follow these links to the Etsy and Ebay shops or follow on instagram
https://www.etsy.com/uk/shop/JacarandaCollection?ref=hdr_user_menu-shop
https://www.ebay.co.uk/str/jacarandacollectionlimited
instagram.com - jacarandacollection