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Comment by itake | Hacker News Reader

I'm spending an extra $300-$500 / mo in home office expenses (food, coffee, power, internet, AC, sq footage, etc.) now that I work from home.

I'd love to be back in the office to be near the gym and enjoy the amenities.

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Definitely. Companies are simply externalizing this onto us. My company now occupies about 25 sq ft of my home rent free that I must manage for them.

Really? What expenses have gone up?

Food? Unless your company provided a LOT of food?

Are you paying more for internet? Paying more for sq footage?

Curious

One obvious expense for me is cleaning.

I used to just be able to go get lunch, and relax / do activities on the weekend and come into a clean office and desk, fresh and ready to work.

Now my house, with my partner and I being in it almost permanently, we make a lot of mess that constantly needs cleaning. I find that gets annoying combined with longer hours.

Because we weren't home much beforehand, the apartment didn't get so dirty and just needed a light clean once a fortnight.

Seemingly my sink is never free of dirty dishes no matter how many times I stop in my tracks in the middle of the day and take 10 minutes to do the dishes, breaking all concentration. Everywhere I look there is something to be done. I take a break to piss then see the bathroom is a mess. I go to grab a granola bar and realize I need to take an hour later to go shop at the grocery store, and return to my workspace hungry and defeated. I spend my days alternating between working on the couch and working on the bed, seemingly constantly doing chores around the clock. The list of things to do never ends, I just decide to put most of it off for the day once I'm too exhausted to do any more thinking or spend any more time on my feet. I can't do any deep work anymore with all the shoehorned zoom meetings I have to show face for. I feel more beat at the end of the day than when I was working 50 hour weeks busting ass as a groundskeeper in the hot humid sun.

It's suffocating spending 100% of your time in one place. My apartment feels like a submarine at the bottom of the ocean. My productivity is somewhere down there, too. Despite all this, I drag on, just biding my time for that glorious day when I can get inoculated for COVID.

Re the dirty dishes, one killer way I get around this it to put away everything that I don’t use and only have one of each item I need.

For example I only have one cup, one bowl and plate. If you have multiple items, you generate more mess and are less incentivised to clean things you don’t need.

Absolutely this! Takeout containers or food scraps From cooking alone is a huge factor. And before COVID I could just pay someone to take care of this while we were at work, but where do I go now for even half a day? I honestly considered doing day-by-day coworking space rentals which would be an additional expense. Unfortunately my work involves a lot of talking on the phone and getting a dedicated office, even for a day is getting expensive.

Also I think just because we're home more I have more chance to notice what slobs we are. I never noticed our baseboards in the house before wfh but now I look at them every time I'm in the bathroom. They're WHITE!! And they're getting dusty!

Is that a time or monetary expense? Are you paying for cleaning service?

(More than you would be for the corresponding takeout that cooking from home is replacing?)

Not OP. There are companies where food is (was) either free or heavily subsidized. For me, fitness expenses went up: I have to pay someone to use their small gym instead of paying flat fee for the chain gym. Car expenses went up, I did not drive to work, and now road trips is one of the very few remaining ways of entertainment. Not me, but some other people had to upgrade their internet connection, buy wifi extenders, and additional monitors (sometimes partially reimbursed by a company). Some had to move to the larger house because they’re DINK and need two offices.

To be fair, car expenses for road trips for entertainment are pandemic costs but aren’t reasonably work-related expenses.

True! I can see a gym membership adding a non-significant monthly expense. Or having to re-locate to accomodate additional working space (rent asides, the cost of moving can be significant). Good insight.

Wait, so you normally don't have food, coffee, power, or internet at home? you moved into a bigger home to create a home office?

If I had a job (i freelance), I'd still have my office setup, my pc on 24/7, and fiber internet. Still the same $$.. but I never had a place w/ free drinks either, so coffee was on my own dime.... same for lunch/food.

- $2/day snacks

- $4/day coffee (really this should be higher b/c the cafe at the office made expressos that would cost $4/ea at Starbucks and I drink 3 per day)

- $4/day bfast

monthly food total: $200.

I needed to buy a desk ($100), office chair ($80), networking / power equipment, etc (total ~$200).

Studies have shown that sleep quality is very important and you should reserve your bedroom for sleep and sex [0]. If I work 3ft from where I sleep, I never "turn off" work.

So this means I needed either find space in the rest of my house (the kitchen table or rent a larger place).

Assuming I don't want to reduce my quality of life by working WFH, I'm now spending an extra $300/mo on food, equipment, and sq footage. If I was freelancing, I could write off these expenses on my taxes and my prices would reflect these costs. As a W2 worker, I am not able to write off these expenses from my taxes nor have I been able to negotiate better pay from my employer.

[0] - https://buffer.com/resources/work-bed/

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