Work From Home? What You Can Do During a Boring Conference Call

Today's post, just like Monday's, is another follow-up from last week's musings on "22 Things To Do During That Boring Conference Call." The ones I proposed generally assumed someone was in an office. Even if you could close the door, it would not be possible to, say, do laundry.
But what if you work from home? There are many upsides to telecommuting. One of the downsides is that you might wind up on even more conference calls, in an effort to keep people in far-flung locations "in the loop." So what can you do? To the original list of 22, add these:

1. Get moving. Best not to get out of breath -- you may have to chime in at some point -- but you can certainly use an ear piece or headset and go for a stroll, either around the block or on a treadmill if you have one. Elliptical machines, stationery bikes and weight machines can also work for these purposes, as long as you don't crank up the intensity too high.

2. Lie "cool-bedded in the flowery grass” (to borrow a phrase from John Keats)

3. Bake cookies (or another easy recipe you almost know by heart)

4. Pull items out of your closet to donate to Goodwill
5. Weed or water the plants. In general, you shouldn't do too much home maintenance, as you don't want the rest of your family thinking that emptying the dishwasher and cleaning the bathrooms is your job because you work from home. But at least weeding gets you outside.

6. Practice yoga poses

7. Look through old photo albums

8. Tackle a clutter hot spot in your home office

9. Do something creative: paint, cross-stitch (but probably not practice the tuba)

10. Be grateful that at least you didn't have to commute somewhere to waste your time on a call!

If you work from home, what do you do during those inevitable conference calls?