I moved into a new 1-bedroom apartment a few months ago, which I'm super excited about. That said, I like to invite my parents to visit once or twice a year, and they usually come for a week or two at a time because it's an expensive flight. When they visit, I will give them my queen-sized bed and I'll sleep on the couch (or I'll share the bed with my mom, and my dad will sleep on the couch).

In the past, I had my work-from-home desk set up in my bedroom. I always hated this because I felt self-conscious about having a bed in the background of important video calls. It was fine during the pandemic since the whole world was caught off guard, but it started feeling unprofessional as people were gradually returning to offices (maybe this is my own insecurity to get over).

Given all of this, I was pretty happy that in my new place I could create a really cool WFH background behind the desk in my living room. The living room and kitchen are combined and are quite large, whereas the bedroom is tiny and you only have room to walk the perimeter around the bed. I was thinking this was a great floorplan because extra floorspace in a bedroom is a waste.

But I totally forgot about my having my parents visit. In the past when they've visited, I've either had my WFH set up in the bedroom, I worked for a company that had an office, or I've been on vacation when they visited.

I've thought about getting them a hotel or an AirBnB, but I'm in a high cost of living area so that seems expensive. I know I could take calls from my bedroom, but I would literally need to be sitting on my bed and I wouldn't be able to reference a second monitor or take any notes since the only thing in my lap could be a laptop. For people with fully-remote jobs, does your company give you an allowance to spend on WeWorks or some place to work that is more functional than a coffee shop?

How are people making this work? Maybe there's an obvious solution I'm missing!