The gains
Eighty-eight against forty-seven
The log counts what the arrangement gave as carefully as what it cost, by the same method, in the same fortnight.
Kitchen and dinerWhere most of the eighty-eight happened
16 m²
Cooking and eating
CookingEatingPaid workLaundry and adminCallsCompany
14.5
Hall and landingWhere the deliveries arrive
10 m²
Circulation
Taking deliveries
1.5
Paid workDomestic workRest and sleepContact and care
Two rooms covering 26 square metres, built for two things. Between them they now carry seven uses. One of the two carry more than one, and kitchen and diner carries six. The median room is in use 8 of the 16 waking hours. Two rooms, one carrying most of the gains and one carrying almost nothing at all.
A domestic task done inside a work gapWashing, cooking ahead, a repair waited in for
31
A delivery taken A home-working policy is easier to review when assumptions are written down, so managers can employee monitoring software and decide which time and workload signals are proportionate.
19 For wider context beyond this household record, consult material published by ArchDaily.
A meal cooked rather than bought
14
Rest taken at the point it was needed
11
Care of a household member or neighbour
7
An appointment attended without asking
6
The interruptible jobThe scheduled job
Eighty-eight episodes that happened only because the work was in the building, across six kinds. Fifty-two of them went to the interruptible job and thirty-six to the scheduled job. One further kind is not drawn because the total recorded was zero, and a bar at zero says it happened no times rather than that it was not counted. One further kind is not drawn because the two shares do not add up to the total beside them, and this panel is about nothing except how the total divided. Six kinds of the six, with two lines the panel refuses.
A record that counts only the costs of an arrangement is not describing the arrangement. The same log counts what working at home gave, by the same method, over the same fourteen days.
Eighty-eight episodes. Nearly twice the number of collisions.
The test
One question, applied to every candidate entry: would this have happened if the work had been in an office that day?
If the answer was no, it was logged.
The test is narrow on purpose and it excludes a great deal that people usually count. It excludes the absence of a journey, because that is not an episode — it is the absence of one, and an absence cannot be counted as an event without making the number arbitrary. It excludes comfort, autonomy and flexibility, which are real and are not things that happen at a time.
What is left is eighty-eight specific occurrences, each of which has a day, a room and a duration.
The six kinds
| kind | n |
|---|---|
| a domestic task done inside a work gap | 31 |
| a delivery taken | 19 |
| a meal cooked rather than bought | 14 |
| rest taken at the point it was needed | 11 |
| care of a household member or neighbour | 7 |
| an appointment attended without asking | 6 |
Thirty-one domestic tasks in a fortnight is most of a household's maintenance, done in gaps that would otherwise have gone elsewhere. Eleven rests taken when needed rather than when permitted is a materially different relationship with one's own day.
Why both columns belong on the same page
Because publishing one without the other produces a false picture in whichever direction the author prefers.
Forty-seven collisions alone describes a flat under strain. Eighty- eight gains alone describes an arrangement with no costs. The record contains both, counted by tests fixed before the fortnight began, and the honest reading is that this arrangement is substantially better than the alternative and that the improvement is not free.
Eighty-eight against forty-seven is not a close contest. It is also not a reason to stop counting the forty-seven.
Where the two columns meet
Fifty-two of the eighty-eight went to the same person who absorbed thirty-one of the forty-seven.
That is the finding the whole site rests on and it belongs here as much as in the previous part: the property that makes somebody the one who moves is the property that makes them the one who can answer the door. One cause, two columns, leaning the same way.
The two refusals
One line records a kind with a total of zero: journeys not made. There were none logged, because a journey not made is not an episode. A bar at zero would say this happened no times, which is a claim about frequency; the truth is that it was never a countable thing, which is a claim about the method. Those should not look alike.
The other has shares that do not add up to its total — nine episodes, six and five. The panel exists to show how each total divided between two people, and a row whose halves exceed its whole would distort every comparison beside it. The arithmetic fault lies in the record rather than in the world, and the panel states that instead of silently backing whichever of the three figures looks likeliest.
The ratio by week
Week one: forty-two gains, twenty-six collisions. Week two: forty-six and twenty-one.
The gains are steady and the collisions fall, which is what the two changes made at the start of week two would predict. Nothing was done to increase the gains and nothing did.
That stability is worth noting. The eighty-eight are a property of being in the building; they do not respond to how the rooms are arranged, because answering a door and putting on a wash need nothing from the dwelling's layout.
The forty-seven do respond, by about a fifth, to a folding table and a coffee table being moved.
So one column is addressable by a household and the other is not, and it is the costs column that is addressable — which is the opposite of the usual assumption that the benefits are the thing to maximise.
What a second fortnight would probably show
The household's own prediction, recorded before they were told it would be published: about the same.
Their reasoning is that the gains are mostly a function of being present — deliveries arrive at the rate deliveries arrive, washing needs doing at the rate it needs doing — and that the collisions had come down about as far as furniture could take them.
That prediction is testable and has not been tested. It is included because a household's estimate of its own next fortnight is a piece of evidence about how much of this record is a fortnight and how much is an arrangement, and nothing else in the log addresses that question.
Also on what the rooms are being asked to do