Home office depicts a rather crucial mental photo for me. I grew up in a home based business, where my Mom took the utilitarian approach to decorating. "If it wasn't utilized, store it in the office."

After climbing over my sister's no-longer-used-twin-bed, sideswiping the stack of falling boxes, and wheedling through the mess of stashed Christmas Ornaments that Mom inherited from Grandma, you arrived inconspiciously at the desk. The phone was on the other end of the room, if you stood on your left foot, tapped the wall with your right hand, pushed off the double filing cabinet with your right big toe, and stretched, you could just almost reach the phone with two of your left fingers, nab the receiver and hold it to your ear (if it was still attached to your head after you smacked the shelf hanging over the top of the desk). To write a phone message you had to twist around the corner and grab the pad off the phone stand in the living room (nobody used the office), and the pens were stashed in the box on the floor on the other side of the file cabinet with the broken handle that didn't lock anymore and the drawer kept falling out.

Turn sideways just a little bit and you could sort of sit on the desk chair, and if you balanced the pad on your knee, you could write the message with one hand, while holding onto the phone with the other hand, so the cord didn't snap it across the room and into the plate glass window where the curtains didn't open, because the boxes of files were stacked against them. Replacing the window would be impossible, so you had to keep ahold of that phone receiver at all costs.

This is really, honestly, far worse than the real office, but now that you're laughing...

My own office is somewhat less utilitarian. My desk is a corner variety where my kids sit on one side of the L doing homework while I work on the other part, often doing homework too. My phones are cordless, speaker phones, I'm attached to at the hip, or whatever other place I can hook the thing, so I can go about my day and chatter while I work. Notepads are plentiful on my desk, and stationed at various places around the house (hopefully - I find them all at the appropriate time). Pens are in a great little container I refer to as a pen-cup. However, I have three home schoolers, so at any given point in time, 99% of the pens in the pen-cup don't work, are out of lead, or have a 'messed up clicker', so I use the one I have stashed inconspicuously behind my ear.

My only real dynamic problem with my office, is that I can't quite keep the filing all done, so there is this mysterious stack of horizontal files precariously stacked on one side of my desk, another one in the shelves behind me, and still another dubiously arranged assortment on the small table behind me where the lamp used to sit, before I stole the lamp for my daytime office (the lighting there is terrible).

Remember when someone suggested a paperless office? I'm a writer, that doesn't work.

The clincher of it all is that no matter what your office constructure looks like, if it works well for you, keeps you productive, and allows you to organize your work sufficiently, the specifics of ergonomics are essentially unimportant.

I'd edit this article - but I can't find my red pen.

(c) Jan Verhoeff