Letâs face it when you run your own business, you spend hours and hours in your home office. And sometimes, because we are so busy, we let it turn into a less than tidy, less than lovely space, I know I do!
Creating a sense of peace, and productivity is essential when you are a self-starter. An office should be personal, functional and aesthetically pleasing.
When you enjoy being in a space, you are likely to work more positively. So what can you do to make your home office that little bit sweeter?
Up, Up and Away
Use those walls for the betterment of your storage. This works exceptionally well if you find that you donât have all that much floor space available. Make use of the vertical space by adding in some floor to ceiling shelving, to store any paper files, and reference books.
Walls make the ideal place for things like chalkboards, whiteboards and vision boards so when you need to do some thought-showering and make messy notes, theyâre a great place to start. You can also pop up some pin boards with elastic ribbons for extra storage and keeping notes you have to remember in your eye line.
Slim it Down
Think about how much you really need that big desk or large office chair. With smaller spaces, and with only one person in the office you simply donât need them. You should take a look at a smaller writing style desk, a standing desk, or something of equally small size.
Lightweight chairs with generous back support make much better sense in terms of space, and size. There is nothing saying that you canât have them brightly coloured, or indeed a huge desk if you really want – but you probably donât need it.
Lighting Matters
You should ideally have a few sources of lighting at different times of the day. To start with some early morning sunshine is going to be perfect. Bright daylight to wake you up and to sit for your first coffee too.
Later in the day as the light begins to set, a warmly toned bulb in an industrial retro lighting fitting brings design and function into unison.
Working on a computer for most of the day can cause you to have eye strain so try to balance the screen brightness with your surroundings.
Sky Storage and Top Technology
Well, almost sky storage. Make the most of all of the cloud storage possibilities so that you donât have to have stacks of files cluttering up your desk or your desktop.
Whenever possible go wireless, so that you donât find yourself tripping over or getting caught on loose cables. If you do need to have the wires, then invest in some cable management. Cord clutter can be a massive pain in smaller spaces, and a hazard too.
Backdrop
If you have a lot of video conferences, youâre going to want to make sure the space behind you is pretty neutral with nothing that can glare on the screen or camera, and nothing too personal or offensive either. Do a test setup using a backdrop with a friend ahead of any calls.