Worthwhile improvements

Since we’re a couple of weeks into the new year, I thought it would be a good time to identify some worthwhile improvements that I’ve made in our home and work from home setups.

 

I turned 60 last summer and I have to confess that the annual trips up and down the narrow, rickety ladder into our attic to retrieve and replace our Christmas decorations were getting harder and harder, and I was becoming more and more apprehensive that I might lose my balance and drop something of value.  Like my head!

 

Anyway, we hatched a plan through which we would revamp our garage storage and create space at ground level for our Christmas tree and other décor.  This began with the purchase of some additional resin cabinets for the back wall of the garage (two more to compliment the one we already had).  The new ones are not made nearly as well as the original, but I got them assembled and they function well as enclosed storage for our overflow small kitchen appliances, non-perishable groceries, lawn and garden products, my tool box and a few other things.

 

This cleared a recessed area at the corner of the garage furthest back and to the left.  That space was just the right size for three stacks of storage tubs with the Christmas tree in a newly purchased storage bag spanning them.  It wasn’t like walking down the street, mind you, but it was way better than all of the trips to and from the attic!

 

Inside the house, my wife became interested in doing some baking, which she used to do when our kids were younger but hadn’t in a while.  With the pandemic keeping us both confined to home much of the time, she now had ample opportunity to return to something she always enjoyed.  The only problem was that the mixer we had is a smallish hand mixer that’s about thirty years old.

 

So the solution was to buy a quality stand mixer with several different attachments and the horsepower to smoothly blend nearly any combination of ingredients.  I can attest to how well it works, as I’ve had the chance to sample numerous batches of cookies since then!

 

Moving into the work-from-home area, I’ve been working from a home-based office since 2003, with only a few periods where that wasn’t the case.  Since the pandemic struck I’ve been almost exclusively working from home.  And one of the most important purchases I made way back when was to splurge on an Aeron ergonomic office chair, made by Herman Miller, a well established maker of office and home furniture.  For reference, these were the first chairs I ever saw with mesh in the back and seat instead of fabric and there are many points of adjustment to assure a good fit and a comfortable sitting experience.

 

Some years later I thought it would be a good addition to this office chair to add a headrest.  At the time, I was experiencing substantial neck pain, and found a company called Atlas that makes aftermarket headrests for the Aeron, and ordered one.  I have been very happy with this item.  Not all that long ago, I began to look at the need to clean certain things, and decided to explore how to clean this headrest, which was a synthetic fabric over a foam covering.  In researching how to contact this company I noticed that they now make a headrest of the same materials from which my Aeron chair is made, and after some e-mail discussion, the leadership of Atlas kindly provided me with a sample to road test, so to speak.

 

That item arrived last week and I installed it right way.  I have to say that as much as I liked my original Atlas headrest, the new model (which used much of the same hardware to attach to my Aeron chair) is a very nice improvement!  The mesh breathes in the same way as the chair itself, the headrest is wider and stays in a fixed position more easily, and installation could not have been simpler—it even included an arrow to ensure that you are orienting it in the correct direction!

 

If you have an Aeron chair but don’t have one of Atlas’ products, visit their website here:  http://www.atlasheadrest.com.  If you don’t, I encourage you to get one if you spend a lot of time sitting, you’ll be glad you did.  But be sure to add this wonderful headrest! 

 

I also upgraded my trusty iMac desktop computer with additional RAM.  So now it runs faster with everything I do, whether for work or personal use.

 

Improvement all around!