Make Your Home Office Work For You
It sounds like a dream: waking up at your leisure, skipping out on the daily traffic crawl through downtown, and being able to work inches away from your beloved kitchen. Working from home has its perks, but what are the costs to productivity? Conscious and mindful decisions to stay productive at home can be few and hard to come by when constantly being distracted by at-home luxuries. So while your favorite couch invites you to start relaxing while you’re trying to work from home, by shaping the environment around you can ensure that you stick in an eager and focused mindset. With the following key tips, we want to help you create your perfect at-home workspace, whether working remotely is a rare luxury or a daily grind.
Written by Shai Wallach
Create A Designated Work Space
The key to having a successful home office is to keep the space separate from the rest of the house. This is crucial for several reasons. Firstly, with endless amounts of samples and materials, your workspace can easily take over your whole home. By choosing a specific location in your home to be the workspace — whether it is a full blown home office or the dining room table — you can ensure that your work stays tidy and organized. However, more than just for keeping organized, designating your workspace will put you in the headspace for productivity. By working at home, you run the risk of becoming distracted from the luxuries of working from home like TV, kids, and even your pantry. Having “your place” for working will make sure that you don’t succumb to the many at-home distractions and put you in the right mindset for a successful day on the job.
Designed by Brittany Haines of Authenticity B. Designs, Photo by Cristin Bisbee Priest of Simplified Bee
Schedule It Out
Though it can be tempting to work at a more passive pace at home, you can very quickly lose precious hours in the day when you meant to be more productive. To best utilize the day, break out the day planner or Ivy Calendar and start scheduling! Block out your full work day, morning to evening, and commit to it. That being said, make sure to reap the benefits of working on your own schedule — you may want to take an easier morning or finish early to be with your family — so create a schedule that works for you.
On the other end of the spectrum, you may become overly absorbed in a project that you end up working past your set time frame. Though this may not sound too bad, it can lead to skipping out on family time or simply overworking yourself. Break this by setting appointments out of the house, committing to family time in the evening, and taking breaks throughout the day. You may want to factor rest into your schedule, you have to make that time for yourself.
Surround yourself with living things!
Besides the fact that we are suckers for good greenery, studies show that having plants in your workspace yields many benefits. Purging the air of pollutants and toxins, relieving stress at work, and even enhancing moods are just some of the reasons to make sure your home is filled with plants. Feng Shui experts also recommend to bring plants into the home office for their many palpable benefits along with the positive energy they bring. Some of our recommendations for durable indoor plants are the spider plant, lemon balm, chinese evergreen, and the parlor palm (which was even featured on NASA’s list of the best plants to filter air).
Design by Brittany Shields, Photography Courtesy of Ponce City Market via Rue Daily
Fully Equip Your Office
This step can mean different things for different workspaces. Whether your space is a kitchen counter or a full blown home office, making sure that your locale has everything you need is central to designing the optimal workplace. Budget permitting, being equipped with printers, monitors, and quality stationery will create a rewarding workspace. Make sure to organize well too! We recommend a tall, open bookcase for all your catalogues, fabric sample books, and everything in between. In more temporary settings, making sure you have all the materials you will need along with a good water bottle and some healthy snacks will set you up for success.
Photo courtesy of Amy Kim of Homey Oh My via Front + Main West Elm
Make It Yours!
Start making your workspace your space! This is by far the best part of being able to create your own workspace. By adding small details like decor, or using color theory to spark emotions, you curate your locale for best practices. When you make the space yours, you can fuel your creativity and channel inspiration directly from your own workspace. One way to make your home office a creative shrine is to create a mood board. They are the perfect way to cultivate inspiration and one of the easiest ways to refresh any dull backdrop in your work environment. And like you, your mood board is ever-changing, drawing inspiration from anything around you, so have fun with textures and color. In the case that your at-home work is temporary, organizing your materials in an aesthetic arrangement that stimulates you can be the key motivational tool in ceasing your day.
Rebecca Taylor’s Office designed by Homepolish Designer Tali Roth, Photo by Julia Robbs
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