Working from home…

My final long-distance guest of the Spring 2011 Guest Season has left the house.

It’s been quite a whirlwind few months and I am looking forward to the next month of relative quietness—I do have a guest spending one or two nights in mid-May, but she’s from Weimar and knows Berlin better than I do.

Other than that, the three biggest events on my May calendar include Eurovision (So. Excited.), giving a guest lecture (I need to start planning it), and a weekend getaway within Germany (So. Excited).

With my guest leaving Wednesday morning, I was left with a pile of sheets and towels that needed washing – I got the preliminaries (my clothing) out of the way Tuesday night, but this still requires a lot of time.

If each load of laundry takes at least 90 minutes to wash – this limits me to two loads in any given evening, assuming I arrive home before 7pm.

However I had three loads to do because there were lots of towels. Towels take longer than 90 minutes because I insist upon drying towels in the machine in order to achieve softness—so, for good measure, say 4 hours from start to finish. Insane, I know, but that’s the realistic timing.

Consequently, I stayed home Wednesday to do laundry and work.

What’s amazing is how productive I am—in my work I need frequent pauses from focusing on what I am doing.

At the office this entails surfing the ‘net or wandering around and finding people to talk to. I try to minimize the latter as that prevents other people from being productive.

At home the entails cleaning. During my first load of laundry and during breaks in work, I thoroughly scrubbed the bathroom from top to bottom, reorganized my dresser drawers and cabinet, sorted through a number of papers, and emailed T-Com to try and resolve my current T-Com headaches.

Not bad.

The second load of laundry got my kitchen floor thoroughly mopped and the living room vacuumed.

If I were to do this daily, I think my apartment would be constantly spotless.