Personalizing Your Office
The home office has become the business center of our lives. Whether you work from home, run a business out of your home – like today’s client, or simply use your home office for personal business, personalizing your office and making it work for you is a worthy investment. (If you don’t have space for a home office, consider creating a household command center.)
Home offices tend to serve multiple purposes and end up becoming underused or misused. The client we are featuring today is an entrepreneur who recently transitioned from a rented office space to working primarily out of her home office. Prior to this change, she and her husband shared their home office space. She had half the room for business-related items, and he had half the room for his “man-cave” items – trophies, awards, and other items of personal value. Additionally, this room served as the guest space when needed. Because the switch to a home office occurred rather suddenly, the couple didn’t have time to really rethink and repurpose the space.
After only a few months, they realized the current set up of “his and hers” just wasn’t working for them. To gain a fresh perspective, they brought in our professional organizers.
Our order restorers used 2 organizing strategies that can also help you in personalizing your office:
1. “Only” Policy
One of the first things our professional organizer did was to implement the “only policy”. This is one of our favorite and most-used organizing strategies – we call it our “secret weapon”!
- First, take an objective perspective of the space and examine how the space is used.
- Next, simplify the purpose of a space to only one thing. Decision-making about what goes in a space is much easier when the space has been given a purpose!
- Before placing an item in a space, ask yourself “Does this live here?” Only items that “live” in the space get put there.
In this case, the office became “only” Her office space. With that filter in mind, the items in the room were sorted and items that were not part of her business were re-homed throughout the rest of the house.
If you don’t have an entire room to devote to one purpose, you can also apply this “only” policy to closets, drawers, rooms, even a shelf in a closet. It is a great way to start having your home work for you! (Read more about this policy and other organizing strategies in Vicki’s book Reclaim Your Life and Get Organized for Good.)
2. Be Creative with the space
Move IN what you need, and what really makes it yours
Once you have established the purpose for the space and removed items that don’t belong, it’s time to bring in the items you need to make the space truly work for you. During the sort process, you will discover how much you have of each type of item that you will be returning to the space. This is when you can introduce storage products and solutions for maximizing the space.
Strategy: Shop your home! Make sure you look around the rest of your home, too. Find where office supplies are hiding throughout your home and see if it makes sense for you for them to be relocated into the newly reclaimed space.
For this client, we created “reference cubbies”. We found that the client had books, binders, and other materials that she needed access to on a regular basis. It was important to give these items a space where she could both quickly find them and quickly put them away.
Strategy: Look for piles! Step back and determine the reason that items are piling up in a location. Sometimes it’s as simple as inconvenience – putting the item away where it belongs is inconvenient enough that you end up piling it on the desk instead.
Consider how you use your space as you fill the space.
Another item we brought into this space was the rocking chair. This is an item that the client loves and that brings her a sense of relaxation.
Strategy: Make your office reflect YOU! We spend so much time in our office spaces, and they are often sterile or uninviting. By personalizing your office and bringing in special touches that make the space yours, you will be more likely to spend time in the space.
Our client does a lot of Skype calls with her clients. So, we created a beautiful and useful gallery wall behind her desk. She now has a backdrop for her calls and place to whiteboard with clients while on calls! When you take time to consider what you do in the space, you will begin to think outside the box and discover unique solutions.
Remember, when personalizing your office think of how you really use the space. Look at your own work flow, the areas of the room that you’re naturally drawn to. Also look at where things are backing up and piling up. These are all clues about what is and isn’t working in the space. Get creative and base your decision on what works for you.
If you are inspired to take on your own work space, please share pictures! We would love to see what you come up with.
You can watch the whole office transformation featured on More Good Day Oregon here:
Related
- Get hands on help for your own makeover project. Learn more about our Consulting Services
- For more ideas on outside-the-box thinking around your home, read Vicki’s book Restoring Order To Your Home
- Learn more helpful organizing principles in Vicki’s book Reclaim Your Life and Get Organized for Good
- Is Paper a problem in your office? Check out our Home Offices Workshop DVD
- This can be done at work, too! Watch how Vicki personalized a cubicle on The 700 Club
