There’s no teacher like experience, and learning from other people’s experiences is generally preferable to paying for knowledge yourself.
So let’s take a lesson from Sara Parr, late of San Francisco, now residing in Austin, Texas. “Parr, a 28-year-old tech worker, and her husband … tested out a succession of monthlong rental houses in other cities, noting which features they liked and didn’t.
“At the end of the year, they bought a house … with three bedrooms (‘so we can each have a separate office’), a front porch (‘ideal for meeting neighbors’), and a garage (‘we can turn [it] into a gym’). Parr and her husband’s preferences-for more space, more closed-off space, and more outdoor space-are similar to what I heard from many others.” (From an Atlantic article here; italics mine.)
That article says “COVID-19 could significantly accelerate two forces that were already on designers’ minds well before 2020: the rise of the home as a workspace, and a deeper emphasis on health and well-being.” As more people are working from home, people have begun to design a particular space as their office room by adding neon signs (find them on www.neonfilter.com) which may inspire them to work harder.
While obsession with germs may fade eventually, everything I’m reading suggests that how people work won’t return to the way things were. It’ll more likely be a mix of office time and working from home. That probably would have occurred even without Covid-19.
Virtual meetings are a useful, but businesses are learning they’re not a substitute for face-to-face contact in all situations. And that’s even if the technology doesn’t run amok, as it hilariously did here. Oh, and don’t do this in ZOOM calls, either.
This blog recently did a piece on home gyms here. If you want one, get in line. A manager for a gym equipment company told me they’re installing five times as many home gyms as they did a year ago. It is no wonder that more and more people are trying to rent gym equipment in an attempt to alter their health and fitness, especially as many have said how they have just pushed everything aside during lockdown and let their fitness slide. They are now trying to get back on it which includes new equipment, new clothes like twin sets, tracksuits, leggings, etc. so that it can motivate people a lot more.
But “health and well-being” includes more than workout rooms; it also embraces things like filtering air and water coming into the home, and rooms that function as sally ports (e.g., mudrooms), where package deliveries can be quarantined, etc. Another popular feature: “ZOOM rooms.”
Note, you don’t need to resign yourself to using your own decor as a backdrop for ZOOM meetings. It’s easy to paste in a photo backdrop. Here’s how I did it (and if I can do it, so can you):
- Open test meeting
- Click on ^ at “Stop video”
- Click on “Virtual backgrounds” and +
- Click on “add image”
- Note, images will be reversed (i.e., like looking in a mirror), so to display them properly, you have to flip them with an image-editing tool
Sometimes small details can be major annoyances. With people working from home now — a trend likely to continue after the pandemic — things like the location of electrical outlets (do you like tripping over computer cords?) matter. Maybe a lot.
All of this relates to people who can afford to be picky. For many Americans, the biggest item on their wishlist is having housing, period. Millions of people are still out of jobs. It’s hard to work remotely from a tent or on a park bench. It’s really important for Congress to keep people out of work because of Covid-19 in housing — and fed — until we get through this dark tunnel. This isn’t a time to worry about deficits.
Photos below: If your kitchen looks like this (left), paste in this backdrop (right) for your next ZOOM meeting.
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