Beth Jones
This week Nicole Dean asked a panel of marketing experts a question that she says she knew would spur her into action, because she needed to clean her office:
“People oftentimes ask about my home office and how I’ve set it up. I thought it would be fun to share pics or videos of our offices this week. Give us a tour and show us where you work.”
While I’m not a marketing expert, I thought this was a great idea. People are naturally curious, and they want to get to know you better. Showing others your office space will help to let people into your life on a more personal level.
Two years ago Ray, Leah, and I moved into a smaller rental home, and I don’t have my own “office.” Later I will, but for now my “office” is a corner in our dining room, where we have our big family holiday dinners three to four times a year.
You have to just go with the flow sometimes. This rental house and certainly this room is NOT my personal taste. Most of our house’s rooms have sheetrocked white walls, but the dining room has 70’s-style brown paneling (yuck!). But the room does have two windows that let in a lot of sunlight, which I love. (I dislike dark rooms.)
To improve the look of the dining room, though, I hung our family pictures on the walls (one is nicknamed the “Wall of Fame”). In the corner, our youngest daughter Leah’s picture is above my desk and on the adjacent wall is a picture of The Marriage Supper of the Lamb (I mistakenly called it “The Last Supper” in the video!).
You will see in the video that my “desk” is actually an inexpensive, simple black card table and chair. This was purchased so that I could fit my work space into a corner, since we don’t have a spare room for my office. I work in the dining room which is actually a less-family-traffic area (the kitchen draws everyone!). Some people can work with all their kids in the background running and screaming, or their husbands having a conversation with them. But I need quiet to work effectively.
Is this little corner and my card table my ideal office? No! I’d love my own writing room in a beautiful cottage by the beach with a nice desk, bookshelves to put all my favorite books in, a large bay window overlooking the ocean, with a cute windowseat underneath it and soft, fluffy pillows, etc.
But today I was thinking about it. Writing comes from within the heart. Yes, our environment definitely influences and affects us. Nicole Dean’s and Melissa Ingold’s live plants in their offices are inspiring me, and I think this week I may go buy some pretty plants, too, to liven up this space around me. But you can have the most perfect room possible for your work space, and not be able to write a single word!
Really, we should take lessons from Henry David Thoreau, who wrote 3 1/2 years before he went to live at Walden Pond, “I want to go soon and live away by the pond, where I shall hear only the wind whispering among the reeds.”
I think nature is the best “office” (creative thinking room!) of all. But I can’t live by Walden Pond or the beach right now, and for now my little corner must do. 🙂
What does your work space look like? I’d love to hear about it and see pics. Email me at elizabethdjones@gmail.com or leave your comments below.
Video of office/desk
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