How To Create A Great Home Office Space
It can prove pretty easy to take over a spare room and call it your home office. It is quite another thing altogether to turn that space into a truly great working environment. Turning a room into a functional, and quiet place, is the key to success at home. The goal here is to turn a workable space into a truly great space that will up your productivity and make you actually like being in the room.
Here are just a few tips on how to turn “good-enough” into “great”:
- Turn down the noise and turn up the privacy. I don’t know about you, but if I’m distracted by a loud TV or even a pet wanting attention, it can really hurt my productivity levels. A good start is having a space that is far from busy and loud spaces like the kitchen or family room. Also, it is handy to have a door to your room that comes complete with a big lock. If you lack either of these options, I suggest investing in some screens. You can prop these up around your work space pretty inexpensively and they will help hide a lot of distracting things like a TV.
- Good Lighting is Essential. When I first started working at home, I was lacking a desk lamp. At first, I didn’t think this was that big a deal, until about a month in. If your workspace is not lit up properly, your eyes get tired a lot faster. Try staring at a computer screen in a dark room for a while to see what I mean. As soon as I bought a good desk lamp, it was like I was seeing for the first time.
- Decorate. I can remember how much I loathed my cubicle when I worked in an office. Don’t make your home office resemble a cubicle. Decorate! Your office should be a place you like to be, since you will spend a lot of time in it. It should be a place of inspiration, not complete boredom. Purchase a few interesting pieces of wall art, and by all means paint. Your office does not have to be drab. Make sure to hang a calendar and cork/dry erase board for practicality.
- Organization is Key. Nothing gets my hair up like seeing a desk covered in papers and other miscellaneous things without a home. I am a firm believer in having “a place for everything and everything in its place”. If you are organized, you will be more productive. Take a trip to Staples or IKEA and buy some desk organizers, and a small filing cabinet. You can now buy these items in virtually any colour scheme or pattern, so there is no need for boring office supplies. It’s amazing how getting your space organized will make you feel more organized in general.
- Your Home Office is a Place for Work. Now that you have personalized and organized your office, don’t go overboard. You want to love your office as a great place to get work done. You don’t, however, want to end up being in there doing things unrelated to your job. Leave TVs, non-work-related books, and exercise material, anything that could distract you from your tasks, out of the room. You want your time spent in your home office to be productive, efficient, and focused.
Hopefully these 5 tips prove to be helpful to you in building a great home office space. Good luck, and have fun designing a space that is truly yours.
The Trials of Working From Home
As I’m getting used to working from home ( I now work from home about 80% of the time) I am noticing that I am my own worst enemy.
The main difference between working from home versus working in an office is that there is no one to answer to but yourself. I am now my own boss, essentially. As I am a freelancer, I have to find my own work. If I don’t search for and find jobs, I don’t work and don’t get paid.
Therefore, the person responsible for my success, or failure, is me. I really learned this lesson the hard way. I was very much proactive when I first started working from home, as that is what I wanted to do and writing and editing were what I wanted to be doing as well. However, as time went by, I got more lax with my work schedule. Sleep seemed more and more tempting to getting up and working, and, as I was my own boss, the only guilt I felt was my own.
This guilt, in the beginning, was not enough to make me turn off the TV and get out of bed. However, quickly I realized that if I stayed in bed, my bills did not miraculously get paid. So lesson learned.
Working for yourself, in a home-based business, really takes a lot of proactive measures to succeed. Don’t be your own Achilles heel. Take it from me: you don’t want to fail before you really begin.
Copy Services
This is a link to my Elance account profile, where I complete contract freelance work for a variety of clients on a regular basis.
If you need any freelance work completed (editing, or writing) Elance is a great site to outsource this type of work. And people like me are willing and able to complete all kinds of work at competitive prices.
At Home, At Work
I find that as I work from home, I spend most of my time locked up in my home office alone. All this alone time could be dangerous. Shouldn’t people, as social beings, be around the company of others?
As much as I despise working in an office environment, I almost want to work in one just to have co-workers. I also kind of miss the ritual of getting ready for work. My work attire now consists of sweatpants and a t-shirt most days, whereas if I worked in an office I could have fun picking out an outfit.
Now, of course, I save precious hours of sleep time by not having to have the “getting ready for work” ritual and the *gasp* much hated commute. And I definitely love my extra sleep time and most definitely love not having to commute. But still, I find I still have a love-hate relationship with working from home. We always want what we don’t have until we have it don’t we?
![Four in a Row [Explored]](http://static.flickr.com/7018/6782703137_25b3b3b811_t.jpg "Four in a Row [Explored]")
