Noise: The Home Office Destroyer

 Shut up in there, will ya!

Home Office is a godsend work option for everyone who has to travel long distances to get to their job. Or for those who just don't like basically living in an office. Thanks to the internet and all the technological advances, working from home has become more common among office drones. But you got to be aware that working from home comes with a great deal of responsibilities and problems.

Being able to wear nothing at all while working has its downside. One of the problems is that you're pretty much available 24 hours, so a lot of bosses will ask you to do something even if it's way past the end of your normal workday. There are a lot of examples and very specific situations that every person will face when working from home. But I think there's a problem we all have in common: Noise.

The world can't and won't shut up! Some have really noisy neighbors. Some live close to a very active street, with cars, vendors, and people polluting your ear canal. Some have a noisy family. Some have all of the above and more! I'm not here to provide solutions to this horrible problem (but I will mention a few of them), what I want to do is to complain about it and share how I have fought noise at my home.

The Noisy Outside

Living in this city means living in a valley full of noise and air pollution (quite literally). Next door parties, musicians trying to make a living, dogs barking, assholes in cars with their music cranked up to 12 and vendors using a big fat megaphone to catch your attention are some of the most common examples the average CDMX-ican has to deal with.

Peace and silence were raped and killed a long time ago and we are supposed to... get used to it!? You can politely tell your neighbor to turn the volume down, but that person is already showing his/her lack of empathy and reason, so most of the times it's better to never interact with them or things might escalate against you. Call the cops? They can't do anything to stop it and they might even join the neighbor with their shenanigans. They can fine the people that's partying on the street or have loud music coming out their cars, but there's very little chance they actually show up. 

You can't dialogue with the musicians nor the vendors because they're trying to make a living. And that's their excuse for everything in their lives. The good thing is that they are just passing by so just bare with them for a couple of minutes. 

There are articles and videos on everything that can make all of those annoyances a little more tolerable, ranging from acoustic panels to earplugs. A lot of people say acoustic panels are the best option, and using two of them, maybe three, will make a considerable change in your room's sound absorption. But that's the problem. Most of them are designed to deal with the sound that's coming from inside the room, not from outside! I've seen comments and videos that said that the outside noise can be reduced down to 30%. Where did those calculations come? I don't know! "30%" is probably just a number that sounds good enough for this case.

Nevertheless, I remember there was a video where the guy buit his own acoustic panels out of wood and a bunch of towels. "Why did he use towels?" you may ask. In the first half of the video, this guy makes a couple of scientific-ish experiments with a big speaker and a microphone. He put the speaker on one end, then the mic on the other and different "soundproof" materials in between. He then showed his results and found out that towels have greater sound absorption properties than the "professional" acoustic panels.

Another advantage of these DIY acoustic panels is that they actually block a lot of the noise that comes from outside. Maybe 30% or so. He also said that building the panels himself saved him a lot of money.

I want to make a few of those panels for my room but it's not as cheap or easy as he said it is. At least is not cheaper in MXN. Maybe someday I'll have enough money to make my own. For now, I've been dealing with all the noise by using headphones and earplugs while working. Sometimes I spend the night working while everyone's sleeping. That's the only time that the street will be quiet, and that's not 100% true. All of my "solutions" work alright but with everything that's making noise outside, it's not enough.

Home of Noise

I don't know which one is worse. Noise from outside or noise from inside. When you live alone, the only sounds that will bother you are those coming from outside. Unless you start hearing weird noises inside your home, then you should call pest control or a priest. But when you live with your whole family, things get complicated.

I have a brother who enjoys making weird loud noises every time he enters my room, and when he is walking around the house... and pretty much when he is doing anything or nothing at all. He doesn't have any kind of disability (that we know of), so my best bet is that he does it because he hates me. 20+ years suffering the same punishment, but locking my door does the trick most of the time. And I said most of the time because the walls aren't thick enough to block all of his noise.

I just want a little bit of peace and silence to read, to write, to play, to dream...

God bless my parents for all their love and support and everything they've done to give each of us a place to have some privacy. I thank them from the bottom of my heart for everything they do for me, for us... but I can't wait for the day I move out of this house.