Sharing The Home Office

For the past year,
I was the only person
in my household
working at home.

That changed a couple of weeks ago.
Now, there are two of us
working at home.

At first,
we tried to save money
and shared everything.
One phone line.
One printer (linked to my computer only).
No duplicates.

That really hurt productivity.
We were both heavy printer users.
Sharing that printer
slowed us down.

Finally, we broke down
and invested in that home office.
We bought an additional printer.
We bought noise-reducing headphones
and other devices
to make the home office more productive.

As Carla Young shares

“Only share resources
that you each use part-time or infrequently.
For example,
because we both need the telephone,
we each have our own designated line,
but as neither of us uses the printer on a daily basis,
we share a single printer.

The upside to separating your critical work systems
is that in an emergency,
you have the other system as a backup.
So when a telephone battery dies
or a VoIP line isn’t available,
you have at least part-time access
to an alternate system.”

Invest in the devices you need
to make your shared home office work
for you.