20 pledges for 2020: Working from home has led to a lot of working on the home

British Member of Parliament (MP) for Bath, Liberal Democrat Wera Hobhouse, works on a laptop during the novel coronavirus COVID-19 pandemic from her home in Bath, south west England, on April 21, 2020 (GEOFF CADDICK/AFP via Getty Images)

This was always supposed to be a year of working on our home: thanks to our pledge, and our renovation-requiring property, I was looking forward to getting stuck in with improving our flat. I didn't expect that it would become quite such a year of working at home.

Being here so much thanks to coronavirus lockdown has led to more thoughts than usual about what our home does sustainably, and how we can do more of it. Now that our flat is also the office, I'm coming to appreciate quite what a task living and working sustainably can be, and how much more can be done.

One of the many things that have struck me since we moved to working from home is how much energy use I took for granted. Each day, I would spend hours using heat and charge without thinking, and which seemed as little to do with me as the colour of paint used on the office walls.

When working in our office, or indeed any office, these questions are out of hands and above our heads. It is a place where the lights never go out and the air conditioning is never turned off (if someone is around). The hot water flows endlessly and instantly, thanks to a hot tap that starts with just the press of a button. The printer is always prepared to provide you with whatever you want on a piece of paper.

At home, though, that is quantified down to the specific number. As we leave the lights on through another gloomy day, the electricity meter whirrs away counting how much to charge; if I turn the heating up to make our new workplace a little more comfy, I might lose the little green leaf that the Nest thermostat rewards you with if you're being especially environmentally friendly in your choices, and find myself upset to have let down my heating system.

What's more, I realise there's plenty we can do: getting used to wearing an extra layer, keeping windows shut and being judicious about when the heating is turned on and all, hopefully, will reduce our impact on both the planet and our energy bills. Doing so makes financial sense of course, since we are living in the house for so much longer each day and are now responsible for more of the bills, but it also adds a sense of control that is severely lacking in just about every other bit of life.

The current crisis has made us all more aware of all of the often hidden parts of life that are either taken for granted or not spoken about at all: the underappreciated key workers who ensure that the country keeps working, and have put themselves in the danger to keep doing so; the failure to properly look after the people who look after us; the loneliness and risk of people in care homes; the precarity of those small things that keep us going, from seeing family to even going for a walk. Perhaps one of these things could be an increased recognition of the kinds of damage we do to the world, too, without even really knowing it.

For the environment, all kinds of lessons are already coming out of the current crisis in lots of different ways, of course, as people realise they perhaps don't need to drive into work every day, or that a business meeting could just as easily be conducted over a video call than a transatlantic flight. As with all those lessons, I hope they linger long after we have beaten the virus; that returning to "normal" could look very different, and much better, than before.