The home sauna/office

Sent from the sauna.

I am using our sauna as a tiny office. It’s 50 feet from our back door. My husband and I built it in December and January. It was not one of the high-priority/low-enthusiasm projects we had talked about - like cleaning out the basement. But midway through our second Covid winter, we felt the siren call of the frivolous. And by frivolous, I mean spending 6 days straight working outdoors in December building a tiny sauna, while our kids ate hot dogs and listened to audiobooks, and occasionally came out to hammer a nail.

So, we use it as a sauna at least twice a week, of course. Which is amazing. But I have been getting extra use out of it as a quiet room.

I start a small fire and I get the spaced warmed up to 80 or 90° Farenheit, and I come out with my computer or notebook or some stitching (like the embroidery samples I was working on recently). Usually, this is work I might have started at my desk, but lost focus on, or maybe I just needed new walls or new perspective to keep monotonous work interesting.

Also relevant: there are 4 of us in our house and we don’t have a lot of doors. It’s a really open house. Which I love - the light is gorgeous and it does make heating our home very efficient… but I homeschool my two kids. And my husband works from home. So… there are only so many ways to get space from each other.

A warm, quiet room, with just a task or two in front of me… I can focus here. And if I can’t focus, then I can take a few minutes to stare at the ceiling. (later, while editing this paragraph at my desk, I am also breaking up a no-longer-funny wrestling match on the couch)

It’s a way to get away from all the stuff on my desk and my kids and the other tasks that are calling to me. In my house, everywhere I look in I see something that needs doing: I need to do laundry, I need to plan dinner, I need to make a plan for extra stock from holiday pop-up shops, I need to call our sheep shearer, or just put away all the shit that accumulates over the course of a day when 4 people live in a house (and spend nearly all of their time in it). It can feel like my kitchen is nagging me and certainly the piles that accumulate in the corners nag me. (there is a child in my lap now. Taunting his brother.)

And since they have to put on boots and walk outside before they can ask mom a questions, the kids think twice before interrupting me.