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Comment by hrktb | Hacker News Reader

I’m curious what people use the office for.

I’ve seen people run actual companies and they needed a ton of space to keep legal documents, spec books, and a professional grade printer to copy binders of docs. They were fully utilizing the room.

But I doubt most people run companies, and personal docs usualy fit in a single box. Most people also use laptops, consumer printer/scanners are pretty unobtrusive, if people even keep one.

All of that would fit in half of a cabinet, so what I am missing that goes into an office room ?

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In my early days, I ran my law office out of my house, and had an actual office, and clients sometimes came over. I have known a few lawyers to do this. I stopped after a few years because having kids ended up not being very compatible with this setup, but it did mean that our house was virtually spotlessly clean for a long time! My wife liked that.

For me, my "computer room" (office) has a couple bookshelves full of standard computer books, most of them are a decade or two old but still relevant. Things like W. Richard Stevens books, O'Reilly, Knuth, Tanenbaum, some books from college, etc. And I like having a table/desk to hold the model M keyboard and large monitor, and docked laptop. And I have a tower server on the side, and large 4-color laser printer.

But the most important reason for a dedicated office is to keep the cats out of my computer gear. And now that we have a toddler back in the house (S.O.'s grandkid that we are raising), keeping him out too.

That layout is how my house is laid out. The guest room is hardly used, but my wife works remotely, and I like to play around with side projects, so the office is quite useful.

For me personally, it's nice to have the room set aside for "work", keeping me a little less distracted.

I work from home 3 days a week, I use it for that. I'm on a lot of conference calls and need my own space with a desk and a door that closes. I also have a couch I can sit / lay on if I want to during the day, and a tv. Sometimes in the winter we watch tv in the office because it is warmer upstairs. I also use the office to store personal possessions like hobby stuff and work related plaques etc that would be taking up space somewhere else. House is 1500 sq ft and there are 2 people and 3 dogs.

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