Working at home and the art of keeping warm
I have worked at home on my own for four years now (I know – where did that time go?) and for the entire time I have struggled with keeping warm. I am cold for eight or nine months of the year. You may be surprised at just how cold a house can be in May or September.
I wear a long sleeved T-shirt under a short sleeved one and try to keep it tucked in (I hate that cold bit of back!). I’ve tried wearing two hoodies or one hoodie and a gilet (my preference). I’ve even tried fingerless gloves and a hat.
What I absolutely won’t do, is turn the heating on.
Now I can almost hear you saying ‘Ooh, I really feel the cold, I couldn’t stand that, I’d have to put the heating on’. But here’s the thing, I really feel the cold too. And I absolutely HATE being cold. But there’s no way I’m paying to heat up a whole house just for me to be inside it. So I suffer.
I like to work at the breakfast bar on my MacBook. I love my kitchen. But it’s quite cold.
My MacBook doesn’t have Word and it isn’t linked up to the printer, so sometimes I need to work on the desktop in the spare room. The spare room is a bit dark, it only has a tiny window. And the wifi signal in there can be a bit unpredictable. But it is slightly warmer, due to being upstairs and also having a heated clothes airer in the room.
While the bathroom man was here, I gave up working in the kitchen altogether, because it was too noisy. I spent my entire days in the spare room. I even ate my lunch in there. Also, because it was noisy, I shut the door. I don’t know why, but in our house we don’t shut doors, apart from going to the toilet or having a shower. We don’t shut doors to sleep or for any other reason.
And then – a revelation.
A small room, with a heated clothes airer and a closed door is WARM. Yes, even in all the terrible cold weather we’ve been having lately. I didn’t need two hoodies or a gilet.
It’s taken me four years, but I’ve finally discovered the secret to being warm while I work.
The warmest room in our house is Zs bedroom and it took me about 7 years to realise it. I think he’s because we never shut doors here either!
Funnily enough my younger son’s room is the warmest too. It also has the advantage of the best WiFi signal as it’s directly above the router! Maybe I need to move my laptop in there when he’s at school!
Haha I’m always making everyone close the doors to keep the heat in and the dogs out! They’re allowed in the downstairs rooms but even so I like the doors in those closed to keep the heat in anyway. Great idea to use the heated clothes airer as a heater, our small room is always sweltering when that’s on too.
Nat.x
I don’t know why we never close the doors, it makes a lot of sense to do it, although downstairs is open plan so there isn’t really any doors to close! x