In honor of Blog Action Day, let’s talk about our work environments and what we’re doing to reduce, reuse and recycle in our home offices. I’ll start:

• New readers and nonmembers won’t know this, but I’m in temporary housing while my condo is rebuilt after a storm nearly destroyed it in August. So I’m working within the boundaries of a smaller rental apartment. Still, we’re enjoying the fact that the building offers recycling services - so I carefully recycle every scrap of paper, plastic, cardboard, metal, etc. that I can.
• The $20 lamp I bought at Target for my office? Yea, it has a fluorescent bulb, baby.
• I’m really careful not to leave office lights on when I walk out of the room for lunch or to work at the dining room table (sometimes a gal needs to spread out on a big project!) And when I’m in my office, all the other house lights are turned off.
• I save paperclips. I’m one of those people who pulls them off of everything before I throw it away - old project files, junk mail, whatever, I don’t think I’ll ever need to buy paperclips again!
• I try to use my shredded documents (I use a cross-cut so they are tiny confetti) as packing material when I send gifts to friends and family - that way, I don’t have to buy packing material.
• We saved all the packing material from the few boxes of stuff we moved here (as well as the boxes) and we’ll reuse them when we move home again.

That’s all I can think of; I’m sure there are more things I’m doing, but I think this is a good start. So here’s me, in my little new home office. (Photo courtesy of Matt Mayes.)

So fill me (and everyone else) in: how are you being environmentally conscious in your home office? I would love to hear your ideas (and possibly implement them!)